Let Your Feet Do The Talking

The message ‘let your feet do the talking’ takes me back to my younger days as it was something my dad would say before a particularly big football match. I never quite realised up until recently how that message has impacted me in all areas of my life. Predominantly, it is about life position and knowing your worth, which is important for all of us.

In our football changing room before a match, we had lots of different personalities – those players who would make others laugh, start the banter or tell the coach how good they were. They might question the coaches’ decision on why they were substituted and so on. 

Personally, I was the captain for most of the teams I played for but was also one of the quietest in the changing room. Perhaps a different way of leading by example – making sure my shirt was tucked in and sleeves rolled up. Then, when we crossed the white line, it was like a switch turned on and I turned into a different animal.

Whilst I was quietly confident and trusted myself for the talent to come through, I can’t deny that I did sometimes look at those players and think, ‘I wish I had the confidence to stand up and say ‘look, I’m good’ or ‘I’m the best.’

I can certainly see how having that personality to be in people’s faces – metaphorically speaking now, can put people on the front foot initially and leave you feeling like they are better than you. Psychologically, if you are coming back from injury or experiencing trials and tribulations on a new team, those people who were able to give it the big ‘I AM’ would very likely be slightly ahead, be listened to more, get more opportunities – even if there was no substance to their claims.

Then, the doubt can start to kick in – ‘am I really as good as what I believe to be the case…why don’t I trust myself as much as I used to?’ Perhaps you can relate to this in an area of your life?

The Different Changing Rooms

So, moving away from football now, what if we applied the concept of Changing Rooms to our general lives? We could call it a ‘life changing room, business changing room, relationship  changing room, or social media changing room. We could call it whatever we like!

In our Business Changing Room – what if we have a product that we know will be so useful, is better than others products, and will have so much impact on people?

In our Social Media Changing Room – what if others have more ‘friends’ who are willing to share their stories, their ideas or their progress more and have so many more followers or people liking and sharing things related to their posts compared to ours?

In a Career Changing Room – what if we’re producing the goods behind the scenes and have been working so hard to please the boss so we can work towards that promotion? Our colleague, however, is the one that is always jumping up and down saying, ‘look how hard I’ve been working’ and gets noticed more with praise as a result.

This is where the meaning of ‘let your feet do the talking’ takes on a whole new meaning and becomes really impactful – and it certainly has for me. 

In truth, there will always be times when we see people being more confident and drumming up their abilities more than we do. We will see others are telling the world they can do this or that. We will see others wishing to showcase their information or their products. We even see someone who is wanting to impress in a manner that you would only cringe at doing.

There is absolutely no judgment on people doing that by the way – that is completely OK. I have also needed to do that at times in my life and certainly in my business. However, if that does not feel like the most natural way to approach things, it’s also okay too!

In my opinion, ‘Letting your feet do the talking’ encompasses:

• A solid foundation – just knowing yourself and where you’re coming from and you’re happy with that
• Knowing your position – not that you’re better than the next person, rather that you’re equal to all those around you
• Confidence, self-reliance, knowing your worth, and trusting yourself
• Having faith in your ability, despite what others tell you or what you hear others say about themselves
• Having knowledge that whatever you are and whoever you are will shine through in the end

There is so much more to ‘letting your feet do the talking.’ Perhaps though it is worth considering that those encompassing aspects I’ve just mentioned are things that we are all born with. We’re inherently confident, we inherently have faith in our ability, we inherently trust ourselves. They are our homebase starting positions. They are our natural state and believing otherwise may indicate we’ve moved away from our natural well-being for some reason.

For example, we’re comparing ourselves against others; we’re coming back from injury and are doubting ourselves to perform at the same level that we know we can; we haven’t achieved our pressurised goals; or someone has told us we can’t do this or that.

If that happens, we can always remember that we’ve got this far, we must have been successful in our own way, we have made it to this point and we’ve always got ourselves. Coming back to homebase and knowing ourselves as we do, we can always just get back to ‘letting our feet do the talking.’

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