Raw self-talk: The ugly truth about you
Channel: Quest for a Meaningful Life
Date: 2019-12-14

Well, it's another rainy day here, and today I'm thinking about some of the obstacles to really getting started on the path of self development and living the life that I want.
And I think that one of the big things for me is simply that to face the truth, it's really ugly.
And as much as I always wanted to see myself as somebody who could face the truth, you know, no matter what and, you know, don't sugarcoat it, give me the blunt truth, that's always been my ideal.
But when it comes to the truth about ourselves, all the worst aspects of ourselves, that's when the truth becomes the most difficult to take.
So even for people that love the truth and love facing difficult truths in principle, to face the real truth about ourselves is essentially everything that you don't want to think about, everything that you don't want to acknowledge, that's what it is.
It's as bad as you can imagine, because it's custom-made for you.
It's your custom blend of all the worst things about you.
That is the ugly side of the truth, and these are the little ugly things that nobody wants to think about.
What bothers some people may not bother you, but what other people don't mind, it may be the thing that really bugs you.
And we will do almost anything, it seems, to avoid facing these worst details.
We simply don't want to believe it, and if we're seemingly forced into believing it by the evidence of our lives, then often we will try to avoid it in any way, simply escaping.
This is one of the big drivers for escapism, is simply "I don't want to face this truth." So it's almost like an automatic defense that we have to simply not go there.
All the things that- I mean, of course, when it comes to social interaction, these are all the things that you would never say to somebody under any normal circumstances, you know, pointing out somebody's weak points or their worst failings.
This is what we don't do, because it's so sensitive, so hurtful.
And yet, it seems like facing these things is a big step towards being ready to change.
It's being able to see what's there and simply accept that it is true.
To be able to face the ugliness of our own worst faults.
Once we do that, then we are able to do something about it, to say OK, yes, me at my worst.
This is me at my worst.
This is the picture of me at the lowest I can be.
Just like we have this sort of ideal image of ourselves, of the beautiful, perfect image of us at our best, we can have the counterpart to that, the image of ourselves at our worst.
And if you describe somebody else's picture, it'd be like oh, OK, but when it comes to yourself, we each have those things that are just pushing those buttons.
And if we can draw that picture, be willing to press all our own buttons, if we can do that, then we have a sense of where things are.
There's something very freeing about that, to simply say OK, this is me at my worst.
It's pretty bad, pretty ugly, but it's not so terrible.
And it is finite.
It's not infinitely bad.
This is me at my worst.
These are my weak points.
These are my failings.
Now I can begin to do something to change them.
Now, in my case, a big part of it was this feeling of being weak and lazy.
A lot of my worst points: I'm weak, lazy, hiding from life.
And these qualities are difficult for me to accept.
But when I was able to simply accept, OK, that is my worst qualities - of course, going into all kinds of detail that you don't need to go into that publicly, but we all have this is the list of all the worst things about ourselves - when I was able to make that list, and simply accept this is what's wrong with me, this is the worst, I was able to kind of relax into it in a way where I just kind of stopped trying to pretend that wasn't true.
It's all the energy, the effort, that would need to go into bending the truth, oh, it's not really like that, and oh, it's not so bad, and oh, really it's counterbalanced by this and that, and really that's just a perspective, you can look at it another way: all that inner effort that went into changing how I looked at that and not looking at it in that way, that energy was all suddenly freed.
It's like OK, I can simply accept it.
When we accept things that we don't like, it frees up energy to be actually able to do useful things with.
And so I remember that it was about four years ago that I had this state of mind of really just like accepting this idea of me being a very weak and lazy person, and then that is where it started to lead into OK, what I need to do is start exercising.
Because that covers weakness and laziness right there.
Exercise: it seems to be the thing to do.
It is, you know, from everything that I hear, it seems like this will start things moving in a good direction.
So that was the very beginning of me starting to exercise.
And of course, physical exercise is only one part of that. [...]