Standing up for yourself makes your voice shake the first time. By the tenth, it’s steady.

The shake is not a sign you are wrong or weak. It is your body treating an unfamiliar act as danger, which is exactly what it does with anything new and exposed. Nothing about that reaction predicts how the conversation goes. It fades through repetition, not through waiting until you feel ready.

Start where the stakes are small. Send back the wrong order, say you would rather not, tell a friend the joke landed badly. Let your voice shake and say the sentence anyway, and count how many times you have done it.