The Truth Does Not Hurt - Shedding light on Hidden Lies

You know, when you find a negative self-belief and you hear that inner critic talking, it's hard not to believe it sometimes. And we can even get into this pattern of thought. It's something like, you know what? The truth hurts. And this is just the truth because it feels real to me. I'm going to question that in today's video. So stay with me. I've got a really great question here from Abel. And Abel's question, it starts off with, I recently got some very bad feedback at work and my confidence has been badly set back. While I prefer to think well of myself and build healthy self-esteem, if I'm honest, I think I'm not good enough. All the positive thinking in the world doesn't seem to dent this perception of myself. I keep thinking the truth hurts. I feel it is the truth because I have a strong emotional reaction to it. How does one go about moving away from a self-perception that seems so real? Questioning it seems pointless. So this is that thing we run into quite often. The truth hurts. You just have to grin and bear it, get real about yourself. This is the truth about you. Now, it's very, very difficult to accept this on face value, but the truth doesn't hurt at all. And if you're in touch with some kind of self-narrative or self-talk or based on something someone has said and you've internalized it and it feels terrible, you are not hearing the truth about yourself. This isn't me. I can honestly say hand on my heart that I'm not putting a positive spin on this. The truth does not hurt. The truth makes us feel alive. Really what's happening is it's the hidden lies we hold about ourselves that hurt once they're uncovered. That's the thing that really hurts. Now, it can feel like the truth because it was hidden away and maybe somebody triggers it in us and now we're left looking at it. We're almost surprised and shocked by it sometimes, but it's a self-awareness of something that was hidden in the dark before. And we are having an emotional reaction to it because we do believe it. So that was the thing we've been believing, but it's not true. And every time we are able to shed some light on it, as uncomfortable as that can be, it's actually an opportunity to bring that self-perception into a corrected state. It needs to be corrected. It isn't the truth and it shouldn't be, well, I guess that's that now, just because we weren't aware of it before. This is the whole point of self-awareness is to become aware of the things we secretly think about ourselves. So it's very hard to accept that the truth doesn't hurt because we've all been hurt so many times in the past and disappointed. And there's that quite often that inner critic can be very, very incessant and repetitive, but it's not true. And just because it's very, very vocal doesn't make it more true. In fact, it's probably an indicator that it's not true because there's inherent insecurity if it has to speak so loud about its perspective. So the emotion is really the litmus test and anything that makes you feel good about yourself, self-empowered, makes you feel like your life is worth living and it has purpose and there's hope. That's the truth. That is steering you towards the truth at the very least, capital T truth. And emotion is what we follow with that. In Abel's question there, there's this emotional reaction he talked about and that emotional reaction is an uncomfortable feeling that only comes up because there's a need for correction to take place that has to be brought to the truth. It isn't the truth itself. So one of the things we have to really come to terms with here, I say it quite often, it's the acceptance that we have a perceptual problem. And this comes with an awareness and an acceptance that the thoughts that are in my mind that I'm reacting to so strongly emotionally are anything but trivial. It's because that inner critic is so repetitive and so vocal all the time. We kind of have this coping strategy where we just kind of dismiss thoughts as just chatter. And the truth is that our thoughts are anything but trivial. They are very, very powerful and very, very significant. All of them are. So the problem is, of course, it's kind of helpful in a way that when we're feeling and hearing this self-talk all the time and the self-condemnation and judgment, it's easy to, it's kind of helpful in the moment to kind of say, well look, it's just thoughts, it's just chatter. But the danger of that is that we won't, we'll have an attitude of not taking our thoughts seriously. And that can put us into a mindset of helplessness where we're not really consciously making deliberate choices about what mindset we're going to live from. One that's fear-based or one that's self-empowering and self-expressive and creative. The truth is that we're actually afraid of our own thoughts. The mind is a very, very powerful thing. And we can become afraid of it just because it can be such a bully towards us sometimes. Usually this is all internalized stuff. It's not even our own thoughts. It's from the past usually. But we can become afraid of it. So we choose to kind of see them as ineffectual. But the way out of this is to start to recognize that the mind is a very powerful thing and it is worth respect. And if you can respect the power of your own mind, now you're in a real position to start changing it a little bit and to get in touch with the truth, not these hidden untruths we hold about ourselves. So I've talked about many ways in which you can sort of challenge those thoughts. Inquiry being one of them. Challenging those old narratives. But we also want to get into, there's a kind of a problem if our inner work is all about undoing guilt. I mean we don't want to be constantly focused on undoing guilt. We want to get into proactive mindset where we're being creative. And our mind is now, has become an ally. Something that we use in our lives rather than something that only needs to be kind of corrected because it's problematic. Your mind can be a great, great asset. But it can also be a very, very challenging thing to deal with if we don't respect the power of it. So any kind of thing that we can do to shift from a mindset like that. Inquiry being one of these things. Choosing different thoughts. Self-awareness. Which is I think Abel, something that you are actually developing here. Which is very, very good. Anything we can do to shift out of that mindset. Choosing your own story. Choosing your own self narrative. One that maybe is new and not something that you've carried over from the past. Because we carry these narratives for years sometimes. It's painful to become aware of them. But you're not becoming aware of the truth. You're becoming aware of an old narrative. An old program running in the background that has not served. And it's once we become aware of it. Now we can really start to do something about it. But it needs to be awareness. Then it needs to be corrected. And the correction is to shift into an entirely new way of seeing yourself where your perceptual problem is gone. And you're seeing yourself in an entirely new light. And that is possible. It takes practice. It takes a little bit of mind training to do it. But you actually can do that. You have the capacity. We all have the capacity to do that. That is the good news about this. Our ultimate responsibility and our ultimate power comes in accepting that the way I see myself and my life story is a matter of choice. And I can choose to disregard this old narrative that has been holding me back, keeping me down for so long and replace it, correct it with an entirely new story, a new way of perceiving myself. So I hope, Abel, that is helpful. If that old narrative is really deeply rooted in place, that's okay. The good news is that over time we can start to shift away from that old narrative. And it is possible to do it. In fact, one of the biggest obstacles we have to change is the belief itself that I can't change. The other one I talk about sometimes is the belief that I'm not even worth changing for. So those two are two real big roadblocks we'll come into contact with in this work. But change is possible. The mind can be very resistant to change. But the part that doesn't want it to change is the same part that tells us it's impossible to change. I hope that makes sense. So, Abel, I hope that's useful and a great question. I hope it was useful to somebody else out there watching as well. Thanks as always for being with me and I'll see you again very soon in the next bit. Take care of yourself. Bye.