Hello and welcome back. This episode I call The Truth Will Set You Free. And so weâre talking about honesty.
Weâre talking about telling the truth in this episode.
Honesty, truth, and authenticity have been coming up for me in such a big way. Itâs coming up in a much deeper way than it ever has before, maybe even in a clearer way. So Iâm going to do my best to share with you what the heck is going on in my brain and what Iâm seeing.
In this clarity, I see so clearly how honesty is at the root of Shine. Everything in the book Shine, the three discoveries, the 10 Disciplines, every word in there is about honesty. Itâs about you being honest with you and you being honest with others.
As I was reflecting and thinking about this episode, it reminded me of EOS. When I created EOS and the sessions we take leadership teams through to accomplish the objective of implementing EOS, there was one and only one expectation we had of our clients in every session.
The expectation is simply this. Open and honest. Three words.
All we ever ask our clients to do is to be open and honest.
Over 20 years ago, I put that into EOS. Maybe it was my soul putting it in there, but it was so clear to me that if we could get every leadership team in the world to be completely open and honest, the world would be a better place.
Now letâs zoom out. Weâre talking about you and me and the whole world. All 8.5 billion of us. If we could all just be open and honest, the world would be a better place.
My goal in this episode is to give you a golden nugget I learned during my sabbatical.
When I say open and honest, those two things could not be more different.
When I say open, itâs about being vulnerable. Itâs about opening yourself up. Itâs about exposing your soft underbelly. If you donât know what that means, listen to episode 58. Being open means you are vulnerable and open to receive whatever comes. And that is scary.
Honest means you see life as it is with no filter. You are absolutely honest with yourself and with others. You demand honesty from other people. It becomes a requirement in your relationships.
Imagine if we were all full of truth serum and could only tell the truth. It would probably be messy at first. On the other side of that, I think it would be powerful. I believe the world would be a better place.
My favorite word in this whole conversation is authenticity. Being authentic.
When I think of that word, I get chills. I looked up the definition of authentic. It means being in fact, not fraudulent, not counterfeit, not false. Genuine. Real. True to oneâs own spirit.
The synonyms are genuine, real, true, original. What a world that would be.
We are not ourselves when we are performing. We are not authentic when we are performing. We are taught to perform.
So back to the point. Open and honest. The truth will set you free. Hereâs the golden nugget.
During my sabbatical, I read a book called Radical Honesty. What I realized is that book is a deep dive into Discovery Number Two. All decisions are made from love or fear.
In the book, the author talks about three levels of telling the truth.
The first level is revealing the facts. This is about the past.
Itâs about looking back at your life and revealing deceptions and withholds. Telling your parents, significant others, friends, or whoever else you need to tell any long withheld secrets.
This is where I blend his advice and mine. These are things that weigh on us. We think they will hurt others, but by holding onto them, letting them weigh on us, everything youâve learned in Shine applies here. It is killing us.
I trust youâre sophisticated enough to decide what to do with this. Iâm not pushing you. The idea is to go back, clean up messes, and get clean. Getting clean means nothing is blocked. The past is cleaned up.
Start with yourself. Be honest with yourself first. Then be honest with others.
Level two is honesty about current thoughts and feelings. This is about whatâs happening right now. Sharing your emotions, thoughts, and judgments in real time.
When we donât do this, we are manipulating. We manipulate ourselves and we manipulate others. We convince ourselves weâre being kind, but itâs not fair to the other person.
Saying âIâm not angryâ when you are angry is not honesty. Saying âIâm triggered right nowâ is honesty.
Itâs admitting youâre angry, jealous, scared, judging. Whatever it is. Saying it. Seeing life as it is.
Level three is exposing the fiction. He calls it your pose. Your ego. Your persona. Your personality. The performing self.
This is admitting that who you really are does not match who youâve been pretending to be. Itâs recognizing when your ego is online and youâre not being your True Self.
Thatâs Discovery Number Two in its purest form.
Itâs just being honest and saying, right now Iâm not being my True Self. Right now Iâm performing.
That context is incredibly powerful. Everyone gets it. I could see the fear in my own eyes when I read it.
Now a disclaimer and a rant.
The disclaimer is simple. Iâm walking this path with you. I donât have all the answers. Iâm sharing my journey as youâre on yours.
Now the rant.
When I share this message, people ask, âWhat about kindness?â
I hope we all tell the kind truth. But I donât understand why people equate honesty with being mean. Nothing Iâve said is about being mean. Itâs about telling the truth.
Words only matter when ego is involved. When truth comes from the heart, words donât matter. It canât be mean. It canât be unkind.
When Iâm being very honest, I sometimes say, âI hope you can feel my love.â Or I say, âWith all due love and respect,â and then the truth follows.
Sometimes we say things terribly. Sometimes the truth hurts. Sometimes it exposes that someone is just an asshole. And thatâs okay. Truth reveals what is real.
My successor at EOS Worldwide describes me as ruthlessly and lovingly honest. Sometimes he would tell me I was being an asshole. That brought me back into my heart and made me a better person.
We owe people the truth. We owe ourselves the truth.
Iâll end where I began.
The truth will set you free.
Be open and honest in all of your interactions with every human being.
Letâs change the world.
