The beauty of being honest
A few days ago I woke up feeling very light, rejuvenated and relaxed – and it was only 2am.
I realized that this was exactly the same feeling with which I had gone to bed with the day before.
I had not specifically done things differently than usually, but had simply been very honest with myself, letting myself not be guided by my thoughts or knowledge, but by what I was feeling.
Well, I have to say that in fact I always knew what would have been a wise choice for the next steps in my life, but often I have let myself been guided by anxiety or comfort and have walked a different path. These paths never carried me of track totally but looking back, some proved to be quite a detour.
Whenever there was a decision to be made, there was a clear feeling deep inside of me about what to do at first, but then I would let a spiral of thoughts kick in, pretending that I was evaluating and analysing the situation from every angle.
In truth I was just constructing arguments
to defend against the world and myself
what had long been decided.
Only within the last few days it has become really obvious to me, that we have exactly one chance to make a decision and that chance is the moment we meet a question or situation for the first time. Here we can either say „yes“ or „no“.
As soon as we start thinking, checking or evaluating, we have already said „no“ – though this will not mean, that we will not meet this situation again in a similar or different form – especially if it is something very profound for us to learn.
The difference is that if we are prepared to choose instantly, it will be with ease and naturally the next choice will present itself immediately. So frankly said, anything else than choosing instantly means simply delaying ourselves, as we will meet these situations over and over again until we dissolve them.
Such decisions can only come from honesty and self-love. As honesty and self-love are nothing that is sitting in a drawer waiting for the next moment they might be needed, the first choice is to implement them into our daily rhythm and lives and work on them in all the small moments that make up our lives.
Once implemented, this love for ourselves will support us in holding ourselves in the more difficult moments in our lives and will set us free to stay independent of what others might expect us to do.
Fascinating about this process of making choices is that it is not lineal, that nothing is exactly the same and that all unfolds from one moment to the next – depending on how and what we chose before.
For example, in one moment it can be loving to do something that I feel I am craving to do, although I know that it will not really be good for me. Loving in so far, as the enormous amount of tension and hardness I would have to bring to my body to not do it would be even worse.
The love here on the one hand is to not beat myself up for not being perfect, yet at the same time being prepared to look at why there has been craving from something that does clearly not support me in the first place and to start working on that.
Then there are different moments, where saying „no“ for example, if some part inside me wants to just gulp down more and more food, is much more supportive than giving in to the craving; these mostly are the moments where I just want to do things, because I do not want to feel all that I would feel otherwise.
Very often what we avoid is the pain of old hurts. Avoiding them means that we will not have to be honest and take the steps necessary to heal them – steps that might often seem quite big and uncomfortable at first.
Saying clearly „no“ in these situations has helped me a lot to really feel the pain that before had been buried inside of me for quite a long time and from there I have been starting to heal it.
My resumé from 1 ½ years of a more honest observation:
The worse and more difficult doing something feels to me or the more challenging someone seems to be, the more there is for me to discover; usually something that is sitting deep within me which I resist to look at, not wanting to know what I could learn from this person or situation.
If I choose honesty, those seemingly huge tensions usually just fade away and something deep inside of me – and the other – is healing very simply and profoundly.
The choice for honesty and letting go of my control has brought much more stillness and simplicity to my life.
It lets me live much more with the beauty and ease that I can well remember from my earlier childhood.
I have met many moments where I felt that the world would explode if I choose to go with what I felt and express it, only to often realise that instead of an explosion there usually was anything but total relaxation.
Honesty creates space and does free us
from the need to play a role.
The world is as simple as we felt it was when being children, just living into the day, not knowing anxiety about our lives or our future.
A time when joy was as natural to us as breathing in and out.
The world is a wonderful playground to discover ourselves playfully, nurture ourselves and evolve, a place where we can joyfully find a real connection with ourselves and others again, discover even more together and constantly grow.
Honesty, Self-love, Truth and Beauty – a joy to have rediscovered them.