THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

"You never find yourself until you face the truth". -Pearl Bailey

"I really don't think its that big of a deal"

"It's only a few pounds"

" We are just in a rough patch right now".

"I'll quit soon".

We as a world have drifted so far from truth that we have forgotten it is a major foundational virtue of a functioning society, family, workplace and individual. We have gotten to a point where deception, fraud, and outright lies to ourselves and others is normal. Ask yourself right now what you are hiding. Ask yourself right now what you don't want to admit about yourself. Imagine if you co-workers knew everything about you. Or your parents. Or your kids. Do you get a sick feeling when you think about this subject? Stop. Feel that feeling and ask yourself why you feel it. To make real changes in your life you MUST get honest with yourself and others. If you have not practiced honestly and authenticity in a while it can be very uncomfortable.

If you have some nagging issues in your relationship but don't discuss them for fear of "rocking the boat", you are a prime candidate for an "honestly inventory". If you have a few things you hope your boss never finds out about because if she did you might lose your job, you may very well need to evaluate your honesty. If you don't like to budget because you don't want to "face" the reality of your finances - you need to assess your authenticity.

Ultimately "truth" and "honesty" is nothing more than living in reality. When you are being dishonest to yourself or someone else you are actually living in a fantasy land that you created. You become incongruent with reality. When you live incongruent with reality to any real degree you make uneducated choices. When you make uneducated choices, you increase the probability that those choices will end up with a poor outcome.

If you lived your life under the fantasy that people can't get injured, you might do all sorts of things that aren't good for you. If you still believed in a Santa Clause you might think you didn't have to save up any money for the kids' Christmas! At their very core, isn't profound mental disability nothing more than profound dishonesty?? A severely psychotic person literally sees and hears things that aren't there! Well, when you distort your real situation to make yourself "feel better" or to avoid conflict or shame or guilt, or any other negative emotion, you choose the path of fantasy world and then operate your life as if that fantasy were reality.

On a very practical level, lie to yourself about that weight gain and you will keep operating like you aren't fat and unhealthy leading to more ill-health and a lifetime of chronic medical conditions. Choose to keep saying "i'll do it later" when you know you won't just means it won't get done. Keep pretending that staying at a career you really hate makes sense to you somehow because of the money or the pestige and you will operate from that story and spend the rest of your life a slave to your occupation. Keep calling your disintegrating marriage a "rough patch" or keep making up stories about how "all marriages are like this" and divorce is not far away.

The first step to any life change is truth. Brutal, unequivocal, some-times painful, often liberating, TRUTH!

"I have to lose weight"
"This marriage is broken"
"This job is not for me"
"I am addicted"

The truths are the launching pad for change. The person who decides they will not spend 60 hours a week at a job they hate starts to think about alternatives. The one who drinks alcohol, watches tv, or does any number of escapes to pretend their career is fine and just "not think about it" is lying and destined to stay at that career until someone else forces them out.

Ever wonder why practically every diet program or exercise plan begins with you assessing your current situation or taking a"before photo"? Its so you get in touch with reality and then use reality to guague your progress. Truth is nothing more than finding reality and admitting its existence.

Identify those areas in your life where you aren't being fully truthful with yourself or others. Get out a notebook and write down the brutal truth. I know it may feel scary at first but believe me, you are closer to change just by doing this exercise than you may have ever been before. Go through the major areas of your life like career, finances, spirituality, relationships and physical health and do an "honesty inventory". Identify where and why you are distorting reality.

Remember stating the truth doesn't mean you WILL fix something right away. Alot of people don't like this exercise because they feel that identifying things they aren't ready to fix will make them feel guilty. Maybe it will. But let me be clear about what I am asking you to do. I am asking you simply to be honest. You may very well say something like:

"I am significantly overweight and unhealthy right now. I don't feel good about myself and I know that I am endangering my health living like this. But I don't have the willpower or self-discipline to lose this weight right now so I am not even going to try".

That MAY be the truth!! (I submit it probably isn't but that's for another post!). If that is your truth right now, so be it. Even THAT truth is better than "I really don't want to lose weight because I think diets are unhealthy", or "It's not that bad", "I'm not that vain". Lies. Truthfully admitting you have a problem you are unable or unwilling to solve right now is far better than lying about not having a problem at all. Try it. See what comes up. Often when you do this exercise you realize that what you have been saying to yourself is not true. You start looking at the issues that you are lying about and decide that you can change the truth to a new truth.

This is how change happens.

"The truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time but it ain't going away. - Elvis Presley