Truth Telling and Fear

The power of truth telling and how fear keeps us from telling the truth. Understanding how building our capacity to cope is fundamental for breaking through our fear of sharing our truth. Explore the limits of openness and the Rule of Thumb for sharing our truth with others.

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Workbook Pages 35 - 37

Wow. That was hard work, wasn't it? And I hope you're able to find your level five and that's the hard work I'm talking about. If you're willing to sit in the fire and see your part, you'll be able to break through those internal barriers to achieving your goal. If you're willing to do that work, you're a well on your way to becoming inevitable.
Because the goal here is, is to be able to be ruthless and telling the truth to ourselves and skillful in telling the truth to others. So think about how, what keeps us from telling the truth. Really it's our fear. So imagine swimming in the ocean and you see this shark, right? What would you feel? You'd feel fear.
But imagine going into that very same ocean and seeing that very same shark, except this time you're in a shark cage. Would you theoretically feel less fear? Yeah, probably. But think about what changed. What changed was not the shark, but our ability to cope with the shark. So it wasn't something outside of us.
It's what we did to cope with that shark. So if we're able to look at our fears, we really only have that one fear. And our one fear is our fear of our inability to cope. Okay. I'm not afraid to tell you. That that, that we have a problem in our relationship or to tell my boss I want to raise. I don't have, I'm not afraid of that.
What am I afraid of is my inability to cope with our reaction. And that's the same thing for truth-telling, for sharing with other people. And that's why we tell ourselves we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. It's because we pretend that we want to save them and not hurt their feelings. But what's true is we're afraid we can't cope with their reaction to our truth.
So the more we're willing to deal with our fear, the more we're willing to tell the truth to ourself and others. Okay. So imagine you're walking in a field and it's a beautiful spring day, and he feels it's so fresh and beautiful and you're energized, and suddenly you see a snake and your heart stops and you jump back, and then you look a little closer and you see it's not a snake at all.
It's actually a rope. And you could look at that rope for 10,000 years and never again see a snake. And that's the way it is with our fears. If we're able to look at our fears and sit in it, if we're able to go to our level five truth, we can turn all those snakes into root ropes and build our capacity to cope, you know?
But there are limits to openness, right? I don't want you to think you have to go around telling the truth all the time. I don't. You don't. I don't think anybody does. However, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. I have this thing called a rule of thumb, and my rule of thumb was truth-telling is if I go to sleep thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it, it's something that I need to talk about.
I might not talk about it right away, but I know if it's occupying my sleep time, I need to have that conversation because what's true is you can't fix a secret. Another thing that I do is I have this thing called first truth first. So if I'm having to engage in a difficult conversation, remember my one fear is my fear of my inability to cope with their reaction.
First truth first is I say to someone, you know, I'm my first truth. First is I'm really afraid to have this conversation with you because I think it's going to affect our relationship, but I really want to share with you this. So if you get that out of the way, your true fear, it kind of deflates the situation and you're able to break through and be clear and kind in the conversation.
You know, David Foster Wallace said, the truth shall set you free, but not until it's had its way with you. And I found that to be true for me. So now that concludes our conversation talking about truth. Remember I talked about three pillars of South personal responsibility, mindset. We talked about the fixed and the growth mindset, your willingness to tell the truth.
And next we're going to talk about the power of choice. We'll see you on the other side.