How to Build a Safe Space for Speaking Your Truth
*This post references a Tedx Talk by Diana Morena that you could watch here.
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I climbed my way out of depression through the help of YouTube videos and content creators.
Like many of us from my generation, watching the lives and hearing the stories of people online helped fill my times in solitude. Whenever I feel the most lost and disconnected, I turn to the YouTube search bar for the answers to all of my problems.
Amongst the videos I consumed were hours worth of TedX talks. One of them in particular stuck with me as I put the puzzle pieces together of what I wanted The Hustle Legacy to be.
The talk, given by Diana Moreno, human rights advocate, was titled, "Real Talk: Mapping Our Identities Through Personal Narrative". It immediately caught my interest because, well, that was exactly what I was trying to do.
As I continued to build The Hustle Legacy over the years with Diana's talk in the back of my mind, I began to use it as an actual map to guide me on how to build the community I was seeking to build.
There were many, many, many, many times that I thought that I was just a naive little girl chasing after a pipe dream.
Trying to make your dreams come true while also struggling with your own mental health is no joke.
This video always helped remind me that my dreams are much bigger than my life or my problems. That I am but a piece to a much larger social concept and have a responsibility to see my existence through for all it could be.
It grounded me at times where I felt like I was drifting in the wind. It helped me understand how to build The Hustle Legacy. And now, I'm going to share the blueprint with you.
Conscious Raising
In Moreno's talk, she discusses the concept of "Conscious Raising". This organizing strategy, designed by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and later adopted by the recent feminists movement, believes that speaking your truth and listening to the truth of others helps you make connections and validate your own experiences.
It's what I was searching for when watching all of those videos on YouTube. And it's what I'm trying to do by choosing to build my own podcast over sustaining a regular 9-5.
Making connections and validating our experiences is what we all wake up every day searching for. We're just being taught to look in all of the wrong places.
The Hustle Legacy is about calling society out on its bullsh*t, starting with acknowledging the fact that there's bullsh*t to be called out:
Our society is filled with stereotypes and limiting beliefs that allow people that belong to some identities to prosper while people that belong to other identities believe that they live in a world where they're unwanted.
Our generation has become the one that's iconic for calling this type of behavior out.
We love a good conscious raising sesh. Diana Moreno just helped us put a name to it, but we've been doing this for a while. And now that we have a label on it, we could really educate ourselves on how to do this right.
Conscious raising requires vulnerability, honesty, and courage from all members of the group.
I intend to do that by sharing my experiences with you and bringing you along on my journey of navigating through the world and learning how to make it a better place.
I ask you to do that with me by:
Being engaged
Sharing your thoughts
Pushing the conversation forward
Daring to make an impact
By me sharing my story and you sharing yours, we could all prove to each other that we are not alone. We are all in this together.
But sharing your story require one very, extremely, crucially important rule. And that's...
Active Listening
First of all, let's understand that your liberation and my liberation is intrinsically connected to everyone's liberation. That's another topic Moreno dives deeper into in her talk. By genuinely understanding one another's perspectives, we will naturally create a better society.
That requires us to be better listeners.
You see, speaking your truth means that you need to get better at listening to the truth of others, not better at yelling yours louder. That's a lesson that took me a really long time to learn.
A sh*tty a** depression era, a big move to a new city and a move back in with my parents, a break up, and a year and a half long break from building my brand later and I finally learned it.
The most important skill you can have is to be an active listener. We have to be able to empower each other through dialogue about our identities. The thing is, that's a lot easier said than done.
Being forced to listen to people with different perspectives, opinions, and experiences than you can get ~ triggering ~ to say the least. It's important to create an environment where everyone feels safe enough to speak their truth.
That's what I aim to do with The Hustle Legacy. Here, we empower each other. Here, we are all part of a bigger purpose - a legacy.
So, let's talk about how to do that.
Setting the Ground Rules
The last concept of Moreno's talk that I intend to adopt is the importance of setting ground rules. In order to forge an environment that nourishes conscious raising and enables people to speak their truth, we need to set clear expectations on how to encourage dialogue.
In order for these ground rules to work, they need to be:
Fostered to Build Trust: The rules for the ground rules is that its intent is to empower each other to speak our truth. That requires honesty, vulnerability, and courage. You don't get that from people that you haven't built trust with, so we gotta build trust with one another.
Flexible: The dialogue and The Hustle Community will always be changing, so we need to be okay with the idea of our rules changing with us. What we set today does not have to be set in stone.
Agreed Upon by the Group: I'm just telling you that we need to set ground rules, but I can't set them by myself - that wouldn't foster much trust between us. We need to decide on these rules together, so I'm asking you to help me set them.
How This Ties into The Hustle Legacy
Each month, we'll focus on unpacking different societal topics to help each of us map our identities and change the narrative. This month (September 2023), we're going to focus on setting the rules so that we do this in a way that raises our collective consciousness.
Help me set The Hustle Legacy ground rules by commenting under this article, leaving a review under this podcast episode, following me on social media and engaging with the content, and, to the Hustlers that are really committed, joining The Hustle Legacy groupchat on CaughtUp (an app I just happen to be a co-founder of).
We'll be discussing this topic all month long to come to a collective decision of how we will empower each other to speak our truths.
The Hustle Legacy is a blog, podcast, brand, built to help Hustlers map their identities through personal narrative. It's meant to empower each other to push the conversation forward so that we each could make our mark to change society for the better.
I hope you'll join me in building this Legacy. I'm so excited for our future.
Watch Diana Moreno’s Tedx Talk
PUSH THE CONVERSATION FORWARD
As I share more of my experiences and perspectives, I’ll pose thought-provoking questions to help you take these topics beyond my stories and apply them to your own. If anything I say resonates with you, please share your thoughts in the comments. Your engagement helps The Hustle Legacy go deeper and unpack how society is set to hold us back. You may even hear us talk about your points on future podcast episodes.
Questions for This Article
Where do you feel the safest to speak your truth? What about that environment fosters trust?
What makes a person a good active listener? Do you embody these traits? What could you do to be a better active listener?
What rules should we set for The Hustle Legacy that we all come in with in order to foster a safe space built for trust and communication?
