Please note: transcript not 100% accurate.
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00:00
We could have avoided all your unhappiness if I just knew what the trigger was or what was affecting you.
00:11
This is Dr. Meenal and welcome to Uncover Your Eyes, where we uncover reality. As a mom and eye doctor, I want to know it all. Recently, my four-year-old brought home a book called Speak Up. I was wondering what could be in this book where they’re teaching a four-year-old to speak up. But as I started reading it to him, I was so shocked at how
00:39
amazing this book is and was really teaching us as even adults to speak up a little bit more. It started with speaking up about how your name is pronounced. So teaching kids to say their name correctly or speaking up if your name is mispronounced at school. Then it started to talk about rumors. If people are spreading rumors about you, it’s important to speak up to say you didn’t do that.
01:10
or that this is wrong what’s happening. And then speaking up about forms of bullying. But it was also really interesting how the book talked about speaking up in a positive way as well. Speaking up and telling others that they’ve done something kind or speaking up and being kind ourselves to others.
01:36
speaking up about our emotions and how we feel towards each other, teaching our children about relationships, speaking up if you love somebody and how to verbalize that. It was such a beautiful book and it just made me so overwhelmed that it helped ground me and bring me back to the basics of just speaking up. And remember, speaking up doesn’t have to be something negative.
02:06
but speaking up can be positive as well. And just speaking up about different things, whether it’s speaking up about being grateful for where you are, you know, whether it’s job-wise, family-wise, friends-wise, and expressing to others your gratitude, your gratefulness towards them. And…
02:30
You know, it made me realize that we had an episode on kindness. And that kind of brings me back to that. That we lack that basic sense of kindness in the world and being grateful and speaking up about gratefulness and kindness is so important to bring us back to those old days where those things mattered to us. For me, I think speaking up has been a huge process.
03:00
When I was younger, I was very shy. So, you know, I was very introverted. I’m still a secret introvert, but I was very introverted and I didn’t speak up about a lot of things. You know, firstly, you know, I never spoke up about my name being mispronounced or just when things were being done that were wrong towards me, a friend, a family member, I didn’t speak up enough. But as I got older.
03:26
You know, into my 20s and 30s, I started realizing that it was so important to speak up for things that you want or you need. And someone once told me something that really stuck with me, and he said, a closed mouth cannot be fed. So it’s important to be able to ask for what you need or you want. You cannot assume that others will miraculously know.
03:54
You have to be able to tell others, whether that’s professionally or whether that’s family-wise, relationship-wise, that’s so important. And that’s also a lesson that we need to teach our children to be able to verbalize to us what they need, what they want, so that we can take those actions to make them feel safer, more secure. And also with friends, the basic concept of just asking them.
04:22
You know, is there anything you need from me? And I’m grateful for this or I’m grateful for you. Again, those days are gone and we need to get back to the basics of speaking up. With that, I also want to express the importance of speaking up about things that are wrong and that are going on that are wrong. It’s so important for us to be able to speak up for our rights, whether you’re being underpaid,
04:51
compared to a colleague with the same position, or whether you’re being bullied at school, or whether you’re being treated poorly by a family member. Speaking up is so important so that you are not being a victim and also not being an ally in this toxic or negative relationship that you have.
05:19
And it’s so important for us to just verbalize that it’s wrong. Whether you’re telling a friend, a colleague, or just emailing something saying, Hey, you know, this is wrong. If you are someone who can’t stand up for yourself or others face to face, it’s important that you do it in some way that is comfortable for you. I know that with time, we have gotten really good at speaking up, but I feel that we speak up a lot on mediums such as social media.
05:49
I also think it’s important for us to just speak up in general, whether it’s teaching our children to talk more to us and talk more to their teachers or, you know, for ourselves, talk more to our employers and explain, you know, what is wrong, why you’re not happy. I think that’s so important. Recently I was talking to one of my staff members, you know, and I noticed her mood had been dropping slowly over time.
06:18
I brought her into my room and I asked her what was going on and, you know, why there was this mood change over time. And she expressed that she was unhappy with certain things. And I said, but why did you not tell me months ago? We could have avoided all your unhappiness if I just knew what the trigger was or what was affecting you. And that’s so important for us to have these conversations. Again, it can be with colleagues.
06:47
at your workplace with employers, employees in relationships. And I think so many of us don’t even talk to our spouses or our partners or children about what they’re feeling, what’s going on, what’s wrong. We don’t speak up about our feelings anymore. The other day someone mentioned to me, you know, I posted something on LinkedIn and they said, oh, you know, how did, why would you post that? And I said,
07:15
because I’m not afraid to post something that is meaningful to me. And it’s important for me to speak up such that others may follow in that act. And it was interesting because the post that I had put up, then I saw someone else post something similarly about the same things. And that’s a movement. We wanna start these positive movements, these positive shifts towards kindness, gratefulness, thankfulness, and just…
07:44
shift because the way we’re going right now, we are going to raise this whole entitled generation of ungrateful, unthankful people who want to be close-minded and keep it all within and not speak up. And this is why if you’re having difficulty speaking up or talking to others, it’s so important to seek professional help.
08:10
you know, whether it’s a therapist, whether it’s a psychologist, whether it’s a psychiatrist, but just talking to somebody such that you can figure out how to navigate, how to speak up. Going back to the book with my four-year-old, I know he’s only four and reading it was not, you know, it didn’t, not groundbreaking for him, but it brought me to that basic conversation to say to him, Hey,
08:38
Did you notice these couple of teachers say your name wrong? And he said, yes, I noticed that. And I said, have you ever told them that your name is not that? And he said, no. And I said, but I think that’s important. Would it make you feel good if they said your name right? And he said, yeah, because that’s not my name. And I said, exactly. So I want you tomorrow to go to school and see if you can speak up. He ended up not doing that, but…
09:07
I think it was an important shift kind of in his mind to feel validated that his name was being pronounced wrong and that his mom validated that. And one day I do hope he speaks up and I think he might. I’ve also noticed with my other kids, they’ve started speaking up more and I advocate that more for them. I say to them, you know, they’ll say, hey, can you email my teachers or can you do this? And I said, no, can you do that?
09:35
It’s important that you ask for these basic things because then tomorrow, as life goes on, life becomes more challenging. There’s more social media. People aren’t speaking to each other as much. You won’t be able to speak up and even ask for basic things. Again, speaking up doesn’t have to be something negative. I think that we are not speaking up about anything anymore, whether it’s asking a question, whether it’s speaking up about an act of kindness or being.
10:05
or speaking up for your basic human rights. We all need to speak up. So next time you have something to say, speak up.