Stephen J. Hopson ^[1] is guest blogging for Alex today.

Not on purpose of course!

But because the world is full of a wide range of people with different cultural, economic and educational backgrounds, you’re bound to offend someone along the line because you said something or made a decision that didn’t sit well with them. Has that ever happened, despite good intentions?

Think about this for a minute. There’s talk going around in the blogsphere that if you are always playing on the safe side, afraid to offend anyone or concerned about potential backlash, then in my humble opinion, you’re playing it too safe.

Today I want to challenge myself (and you) to have the courage to step out and feel the freedom of saying what you want to say without worrying about how others might react.
This complements an article I once wrote at my blog entitled “What Others Think of You is None of Your Business! ^[2]”

I know that having the courage to speak up is harder said then done because I would venture to say most of us want to be liked and respected. We don’t want others hating us for the choices we’ve made.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from my life, we’d never get anything done if we allowed ourselves to be paralyzed with indecision for fear of offending someone with something we did or said.

A case in point – about a week ago, I finally made the decision to move my Adversity University blog from Blogger.com to Wordpress. For days I combed through a ton of different themes, wondering which one of them would make a good fit. On a couple of occasions, I caught myself thinking, “I wonder if they’ll like it.” As soon as I thought that, I found my stomach tighten in fear.

Here are 3 tips I used to help myself through the selection process:

1. Ask yourself – Am I truly coming from the heart with a win-win situation? I wanted the ability to expand Adversity University so that readers would have an opportunity to browse through the blog for older articles with ease. I also wanted to write about other topics outside adversity.Win-win? Yes!

2. Ask yourself – Do you think that you are inherently a good person from the deepest part of your soul? Only you know the truth to that answer.

3. Examine your emotions/feelings when making a decision that will affect others. Are you excited or do you feel terrible? If you answered each of the three tips favorably, then what does it matter how others perceive you? Their reaction is not your responsibility. The way they reacted was their choice, not yours.

For instance, after I moved to the new location, I had asked some people who were subscribers at the old location if they had signed up at the new blog. One man got offended and felt I was pushing him!

When I wrote to this particular subscriber, I felt that there was nothing wrong with asking if he signed up or not. I knew my intentions were good and that I was coming from my heart. Perhaps he reacted this way because of his inner beliefs that I was not aware of. We don’t know what set of beliefs others are operating on. My words “did you sign up” triggered an emotional reaction that had nothing to do with me.

What could I do?

I believe those whose energy and level of understanding are in alignment with yours, will be attracted to you. If they are already with you, they’ll stay. The rest will fade away easily and effortlessly.

Stephen J. Hopson is a former award-winning Wall Street stockbroker turned motivational speaker, author and the first deaf pilot in the world (yes, you read that right) to earn an instrument rating in 2006. This is a rating that allows him to fly as pilot in command through “bad” weather where radio use is actually required (how?? – email him at stephen(at)sjhopson(dot) and he’ll tell you!). He just moved his ” Adversity University” blog from Blogger to Wordpress at www.adversityuniversityblog.com ^[1] If you’d like to see him in action as a speaker, you could visit his professional speaking website at www.sjhopson.com ^[3].

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