Are We Telling the Truth to Ourselves?

Even if we feel lonely and isolated, we can’t help but actually belong to many different groups. Our gender, our race, our culture, our country, our age group, our religion, our community, our workplaces. And many of us also belong to other organizations that we’re members of. But within all of these groups, are we telling the truth to ourselves?

Each one of these groups has their own belief systems and rules that we follow which allow us to be part of that group. These are necessary as they help give the group its identity. As long as these rules don’t conflict with our own urge to grow into our full self while finding our belonging, there’s no problem.

“But when there’s a conflict that arises between our need to grow and our need to belong, we have to risk the approval and support of the group by growing.”

-Maggie Kelly

Both of my girls who are in their 20’s now are quite outspoken in their beliefs whether it’s about politics, veganism, climate change or the like. Each time they speak about their convictions, they are having to take a risk to be real with the knowledge that speaking their own truth will perhaps alienate them from the group they belong to. It’s no different than the man or woman who feels they are in a dead end job and yearns to make a change. Perhaps they also have a few kids on their way to college in the coming years and leaving that job would mean a lower salary that may make it difficult to pay the college tuition ahead of them. Or when I myself considered going back to school for a Master’s degree smack dab in the middle of opening my second location for my business in a different state from the first location.

Do we choose the realness of our longings and our beliefs and trust that if we do, the person who emerges will be someone who is deeply satisfied and excited with their life? Or do we shrink back to who we think we are supposed to be, who we think we are supposed to satisfy and thereby actually minimize our own true and real selves? Are we telling the truth to ourselves?

There’s no right or wrong choice. Instead, these situations point out why it’s so important to keep listening to and acting on our intuitive voice to change and grow, to move on, to speak truth to ourselves and then act on it. If we don’t we risk allowing the other factors to easily pull us into additional reasons to stay in the status quo which in terms, only solidifies the notion of us staying the same.

Many of my clients tell me they “just don’t know what to do.” But I think more often than not, we actually do know what to do but the cost of our realness just seems too high at the time for us to actually take the risk to follow.

Truth asks us to pay attention and to act intuitively the first time.

I’d love to walk through your choices with you and perhaps uncover the ways in which you need to move forward with bravery and the ways in which, quite possibly, you can find freedom in content. Join me for a 30- Minute Introductory Coaching Session to find out exactly what is holding you back.