Episode 119: Confidence and Truth Telling

The starting point of fall confidence is in radical truth-telling. Lies, half-truths, and dishonesty stem from insecurities and fears and you might be dabbling in this area more than you realize. But the good news is that you have options! You can learn how to be a radical truth teller, and best of all you can create a life of security, certainty, and quiet confidence. 

Welcome back my friends! I’ve missed you! We’ve had a busy few weeks. We are in the process of some big home projects and end of the school year things and family growth things and it’s all good but I’ve missed you and I’m so excited about today’s topic.

I was talking to a group of people recently and the topic of honesty came up. Someone asked this question: If you received $100 for every lie you tell what would be your daily balance? And I was listening as this group shared their fictional daily balances well into the thousands and their reasons and justifications for it, it was a lot of people pleasing but mostly it was in response to their inner insecurities.

Like, when asked, “hey what do you think about this?” They didn’t want to be honest and say they didn’t like it so they lied, “Oh I love it” or you know when you don’t want to do something or go somewhere but instead of telling the truth you say, “oh yeah, I can’t wait”. Right? And I know, some of you are thinking, “but wait, what do you say or do in those moments?” And we’re going to get there because there is a way to be honest – radically honest that isn’t abrasive or rude. 

Think about other times when you’re telling a half truth or just a flat out fib – Sometimes its not wanting to feel insecure like you don’t want to appear to not know something that the other person or people seem to know – have you ever had that? Where you’re in a conversation and everyone is talking about this topic like it’s everyday common knowledge and you have no idea what they’re talking about and so you just smile and nod and occasionally pipe in with validations – which is still a form of lying. 

And along a similar line, in conversations where someone is sharing their opinion  that you don’t agree with but they’re sharing it rather vocally, passionately and intensely you shut down a bit and end up conforming to them because being honest and real seems intimidating and in that moment kind of scary. Which again, isn’t honest. It’s not honest to you and it’s not honest to them. 

A lot of these examples are different aspects of people pleasing which people pleasing is another form of lying. Confident people don’t people please. Confident people are able to be radically honest no matter what the circumstances are because they know that the circumstances don’t create how they feel. And that’s really the main reason why we people please in the first place. We’re afraid that they’ll say something or show up in a certain way and then you’ll feel a negative feeling. 

If you think about that is the root of all those examples and lies. It stems from your own inner insecurities. Kids can be so honest and say the wildest things sometimes because they haven’t learned their insecurities yet. Insecurities are all learned. No one is born emotionally and mentally insecure. It’s because of our thoughts, our story, our learned perspective that we start adopting these fearful, limiting beliefs about ourselves and so to try and cope with these we developed the habit of lying and telling half-truths in attempts to shield or avoid negative feelings – but what we don’t realize is that all of that comes at steep cost.

1.) It’s sabotaging your ability to feel and create confidence.

2.) It perpetuates the perceived need to lie and to not show up authentic

3.) It blocks and stifles your relationships with others

4.) It creates even more insecurities

5.) It doesn’t do what you think it will – we lie in an attempt to not feel a negative emotion but that’s what ends up happening anyway and we have more added negativity because we’re not showing up as ourselves either.

I’m sure there’s more but you get the idea. This is not a habit that is healthy for you. It will never and can never give you what you really want and that’s really where I wanted to center this episode today. I teach a concept called, quiet confidence. And no matter what your season is, what you’re going through, what your circumstances are – if you’re struggling with your marriage, your weight, your kids,  your in-laws, your career – this quiet confidence is what we all  deep down want and need to succeed.

Quiet confidence is really being able to create solid certainty and security for yourself. It’s synonymous with faith –  it’s knowing without seeing yet. Which is the ideal for confidence and being able to move forward. We don’t move forward  oftentimes because we can’t see the next step – we don’t know how it’s going to work out. We don’t know what the future holds or really how we’ll feel moving forward and so we stop, we limit, we hold ourselves back and then all that just gives you evidence of why you can’t progress. It’s really a dangerous cycle. 

It shows up like this: for example, if you’re struggling with your in-laws and say, they don’t respect boundaries, they come over whenever, tell you what to do, plan family gatherings and you feel like you have no say, right? And what usually happens is that you want to say something because you don’t want them to just pop in whenever, you don’t want them critiquing or dictating your schedule but you don’t say dare say anything because if you did they might make a fuss and be upset and then you’d be upset. It’s just better to not rock the boat.

Is this familiar to many of you in one way or another? It is for a lot of my clients – okay but here’s what I want you to see – you didn’t want to rock the boat because you believed that THEY could say or do something that would hurt your feelings and you don’t want to feel negative feelings so you go along with it but how are you feeling inside going along with it? Terrible right? Resentment, feeling stuck, feeling unseen, unheard, angry, irritated, all the feels and none of these feel good. So even though your brain had this plan to avoid negative feelings – you still ended up feeling all kind of intense negative emotions.

Quiet confidence looks at that situation very differently. And this is where honesty comes into play in a major way. That rhymed. Quiet confidence knows that THEY can’t hurt you emotionally even if they say words, even if they get upset, even if they make a fuss because THEY, your in-laws or whomever that is – are your circumstances and circumstances don’t create how we feel. If that were the case then everyone would feel exactly the way that you do in that setting and they don’t. There are others that are totally on board with those plans and that agenda. So it’s not that, it’s not them. 

YOU create how you feel by the way you think about your circumstances. Quiet confidence knows this and knows that THEY cannot hurt me emotionally – only I can do that and why would l want to do that? So quiet confidence knows that I are going to be okay no matter what the circumstances are. 

Confident people don’t lie – ever. Confident people are radical truth tellers. They tell the truth to others and most especially to themselves. And listen, here’s the best part of all of this:

All growth and progress starts with truth. 

Really think about that – all growth and progress starts with truth.

If you want growth and progress in your marriage – then it needs to start with truth. It needs to start with you being truthful first and foremost with yourself so that that can overflow into your relationships instead of what’s happening right now where our insecurities are overflowing instead.

This truth that I’m talking about doesn’t mean that you have to know all the things all the time – but truth is you being willing to ask yourself questions and then sit with the question long enough to get to the truth. The truth isn’t always on the surface. Sometimes, oftentimes it takes a little work and effort to get there but when you’re willing to be all in – growth happens – massive, lasting growth happens.

You have to be willing to ask yourself honest questions and create a dialogue of transparent truth. 

Let’s talk about what this can look like. When you feel the urge to tell a half-truth, a lie, or to people please ask yourself why. What part of me feels threatened here?

Going back to the in-law example and not wanting to “rock the boat” dive in deeper. What does that mean? How can you “rock the boat”? What do you really want in that setting? And why?

And then listen. Listen as you answer those questions because the on the surface/easy answer is, “Well I don’t want to rock the boat” – okay, what does that mean? What would that look like? Which really is asking, what are you afraid of? And then listen as your mind brings it to the surface.

It might be something like, My Mother-in-law gets angry easily and she’ll say something rude and then I’ll be the bad guy.

Question your thoughts until you get to the truth because is there really a “bad guy”? Can you prove that? Do we know for certain that she’ll be upset? Your brain will want to say “yes” and give you evidence to prove it true – but radical truth telling is, “No. I cannot prove something that will happen in the future” – you don’t really know how she’s going to show up because it hasn’t happened yet. And confident, secure people won’t ever indulge in a story that is hurtful to themselves – and that’s really what that would be doing. You thinking ahead of how she might respond and then telling yourself a negative story only hurts you right now and why would you want to hurt you? It’s the hurt that you’re trying to avoid and interestingly enough – the hurt that you’re creating for yourself. 

Fascinating right?

So then from there move onto “what do I think I want? And why?” And maybe it’s to say no to that gathering. I have other plans. I want downtime and not to make other plans. I want to be with my own family that day. Be honest with yourself. If you’re not honest even with yourself – think about how damaging that is internally. If you yourself aren’t a safe space – then who is?

And I’m gonna tell you – in this process if this is a struggle for you – get a coach. Coaches are that safe, safe space where you can say and work out the messiness in your mind – to say the things you’re too afraid to say and work with you to create solid footing again. That’s one of my favorite parts of my work. I love that I can create and provide a safe space for the human mind to work and declutter. So tell yourself the truth first and then from there you can decide what’s next. You don’t have to share all the things to everyone. Not everyone gets to hear your story – it’s that whole idea of not casting pearls before swine. They don’t need to know all that you know for you to be honest with them but you do need to give that to yourself and then prepare in such a way where you release them from the false notion that they can hurt you emotionally.

Remember and this is so key: they cannot hurt you emotionally. Your feelings are protected from them, from your circumstances by your thoughts. They don’t have access to your feelings only you do. So really engraining that into your mind will help you to be radically honest.

And then you can decide what that next step will be. And maybe that’s telling them, “Hey, I love you and I love that you love to come by but it’s not a good time for me” – no further explanations required. “I love you and it’s a no” is more than enough.

And then they can choose how they want to react or respond next but all of that next stuff has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. So again just as we release them from hurting our feelings – we release ourselves from hurting their feelings. They’re feeling however they’re feeing because of what they’re thinking and we have no control over that and we don’t need to.

Confidence is telling yourself the truth and not diving into a negative story. Sometimes you’ll feel the urge to want to spin a story and your brain will investigate and look for “clues” like evidence to prove that story true but if that story won’t give you the results you want – which means you need to look ahead a little bit – and you know that story won’t create the ending you want – stop spinning it. 

You know when you tell yourself that someone is acting weird around you? And then your brain wants to know why and we don’t know why so it’s starts spinning a story and most of the time it’s not a good story and it won’t create good results but rather disconnection and hurt so – truth telling – can I know that story to be true? Is it true? Can I prove it? If not, then that’s a lie. Stop running with that. 

And listen, here is one of the best parts – when you stop running painful stories and instead focus in on truth. Which is, I don’t know why she made that look but I do know it wasn’t about me. Because what other people think is never about you and it’s always about them and what they’re thinking and believing to be true.

So best part – you then get to decide what to make it mean. This is one of our greatest human freedoms and gifts – the ability to choose one thought over the other. To choose what story you want to run with. You get to decide instead of feeling like you HAVE to run with that negative story. 

As soon as you listen to yourself and start telling yourself the truth of what you’re thinking and believing that’s the moment when you’re able to be open to your inner wisdom, truth, light and start making progress. Forward movement.

It’s so pivotal to growth and building confidence in yourself. 

Tell yourself the truth. Dig in until you find the truth. Be willing to ask yourself uncomfortable questions.

Why don’t you have the results you want yet? 

Why haven’t you written that book yet?

Because I’m too afraid that others will reject me.

Why didn’t you have that conversation yet?

Because I’m afraid of how they’ll respond and that I’ll make it mean something negative about me.

Why haven’t you reached your goal weight?

Because I haven’t figured out how to create healthy habits yet.

Do you see how really allowing yourself to answer honestly is the starting point of progression? Because now that you know what’s really going on – now it becomes what I like to call, “Math” – now it’s a problem that’s solvable.

“I’m too afraid that others will reject me” – Math says, can they? They can say words but the rejection comes from what you’re making it mean and when you spin it that way the ball is back in your court and you get to decide – will that story serve me? obviously not – so what do I want? 

Truth: Be a truth teller – I want to be accepted.  I want to share my voice with others. So now it’s math. It’s not about them anymore. It brings it back to you. It opens the door for that security and certainty.

Going through all of these questions and these unknowns is the root and starting point of progression and magic. You can’t solve for what you don’t know.  A doctor can’t effectively treat a patient that they know nothing about. Be a truth teller.

If you’re willing to step into this space, this unknown, unchartered terrain then you’ll start to step into the known. When I ask myself questions that I don’t have the answers to yet – that’s when my brain goes to work in tandem with the spirit that guides and testifies of all truth that’s when I start to know something. 

And then from that knowing you can feel certain and secure. There’s no surprises just knowns. 

And when you think about the knowns – it’s another name for certainty, security, faith. We get up and we share our testimony by saying, “I know this to be true”. When our kids were little and we teaching them what a testimony is because they wanted to get up and share it too so we didn’t want to feed them their testimony so instead we just said, start with, “I know…” and truth builds off truth. 

The more you practice getting the known there’s a distinct and powerful shift that happens to you, inside of you. You start focusing more on what’s real and not what’s imagined. You spend less time indulging in stories that hurt you and more time making decisions for you – like faith – I’m choosing to believe and to know that this is what’s true for me.

And I love truth. I love truth telling. I love being honest and authentic in my relationships and I love being around others that help it to be easier for that to be present. Sometimes people are surprised by honesty in all things. They’re used to telling half-truths – even in things like, “Do you like these cookies?” And they’re used to people pleasing, “yeah they’re great” when they’re not. That not only hurts you – because inside you have this guilt now and secrets from them which just disconnects you from them and what would happen if they found out you were just saying that?

It certainly would’t bring you closer together, right?

So instead can you be honest? “You know, you’ve made amazing things in the past but this one just isn’t my favorite. Thank you though.” 

And they might be disappointed but not because of the words you said but by their own thoughts – and then listen, what would happen the next time they offered you cookies and you did like them? And you tell them that. They never have to wonder or question or doubt if you’re just saying things. They can trust you. Transparency and radical truth telling only serves to connect and strengthen you and your relationships.

Truth telling is a gift you give yourself AND others. 

But you have to start inside. You have to start with you and being honest inside.

When we tell the truth we invite the Holy Ghost to confirm that truth. One of it’s jobs is to testify of truth and so when we stop and listen we open ourselves to the influence of the spirit.

Stop lying to yourself and others. Be honest. Start asking yourself questions and don’t stop until you get to the truth and don’t let yourself fall prey to the easy trap of “I don’t knows” – because that’s a lie. It’s a defense mechanism – almost like you’re afraid to know the answer but why?

What are you afraid to know? Is it because you might know someting about yourself and then you’d make it mean something negative? You are the only one that can hurt you – make the decision that you won’t do that to yourself. It is a decision and commitment. When you ask the questions and decide that “I don’t know” is off the table then your brain will answer and then you WILL know. That’s progress. That’s growth. That’s forward movement. That gives you something to work with and to work from.

Because you do know, you have wisdom and insight to give inside when you’re willing to work for it and willing to listen.

That’s the beauty of quiet confidence and what everyone wants but they don’t know how to get there. Radical truth telling is the key. It’s the catalyst to living the life that you want, to have the relationships that you want, to having the progress that you want or having the body that you want.

Honesty. Truth. Wisdom all are aspects of quiet confidence and I want that for you because it’s amazing. Start today. Start asking the questions and then telling yourself the truth and see what happens. Pay attention to the growth that it allows.

You’ve got this my friends. Okay, that’s it for today. Have a wonderful week and I’ll talk to you all soon!