6 Why PowerPhrases?
- Silence isn’t golden when people need to be kept in
the loop. - Silence isn’t golden when people are saying or doing
something that affects you negatively.
Silence Isn’t Golden When They Need
to Know the Truth
Where do the words you’re afraid to speak get stuck? Do they
get stuck in your heart without any attempt to voice them? Do
they make it up as far as your throat where you choke on them?
Do they get taken off your tongue by the cat?
Oh, you can hold back words that need to be spoken just
like you can hold back a dog that wants to smell a hiker or a
river in a rainstorm or my niece when there’s a sale on shoes.
You can do it for a while, but it isn’t easy, and you wish you
hadn’t in the end.
Sheila backed off at the first sign of resistance to her words from
her boss. She wished she hadn’t in the end. Her boss was every-
thing she respected in a manager and in a man—he was suc-
cessful and rich. He even told her where he was going when he
left the office. So Sheila had a habit of not questioning him.
When he asked her to transfer funds, she expressed a tiny
protest. She said,
Aren’t you asking me to transfer partnership funds into a
private venture?