Facing The Truth Can Be Humiliating And Hard

But it’s better than wearing cement shoes

“What a man dares to do, he should dare to confess- unless he is a coward.” ― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

Truth.

We hang on to our past mistakes longer than we should and avoid hard conversations that need to be had, all in the name of self-preservation.

There’s just something about coming clean that paralyzes.

Who could blame you? Why would you be eager to unveil a carefully guarded slip-up or failure when it’s perfectly nestled in the corner of your mind?

There are reasons.

But the biggest one is that you’ll never be able to fully open yourself up to anything or anyone new until you do.

Even knowing full well that other pain could occur and that you could fail again, it still feels better to hold on to the unsettling past you know.

The one you’ve grown comfortable with even though it plagues you.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Here’s the thing. If you want to wake up to the real you, to heal yourself and start fresh, the act of dumping everything out, getting it out on the table, staring it down, and bidding it farewell is step one.

Easier said than done, but there’s a way to free yourself.

What’s the story?

Going deep and unraveling the story with all of its ugly details is the first major step. Get a journal and write it all down, including who you were then, how you felt, what your values were at the time, anything that you can remember that led you to make that decision.

It’s easy to flow right into your version of the story, but in order for this to work, you have to commit to the complete truth. No need to sugarcoat, it’s just you here.

Anything from your lifestyle, the people who surrounded you, the external contributing factors, all of it is relevant here because everything played a part in your decision.

Once you have it all dumped out, distill it down to the thing you repeat in your mind about it.

Example: I wasn’t a good mom. You conclude that because you focused on work and missed milestones in pursuit of success it made you a bad mom.

This is the bottom line if you conclude that because of your focus on work, what your success meant to you based on the way you were brought up, you put your kids on the back burner.

At the time, you thought you were doing the right thing because you had a certain idea of what you wanted your life to be like. You wanted to be successful so you could give them a good life and a great education so they could be successful too.

That led to a lot of late nights, missed events, and things you only heard of or were able to see captured in photos. And that made you feel guilty. Still, you pushed on. You had a mission.

As the years went on, you began to realize what you had been missing, but by now, your truth is that what you’re doing was necessary and valid. Even though it became increasingly hurtful, you kept going.

That is your story.

Is it true?

Are you really a bad mom? Do the people that love you and know you believe that? Do your kids even believe that? It’s unlikely they do, but it doesn’t matter. You are the playwright and that is how you believe it to be.

The truth is, we all know what bad moms are, and you’re probably not one of them.

When you seek the answer to Is it true? you will need to zoom out from how you feel about the situation. Look at it purely as an outsider who knows nothing about you.

Could it be that your definition of a bad mom is the driver of this feeling? Where does that idea come from?

Most of the time, your answer will be, “no. It’s not true. It’s just what I believe” In other words, you may have defined it as such, but no one else would.

Free yourself from your story when you reveal it isn’t the truth.

Would the same thing happen today?

As you grow as a person, learn about the life, get older, your priorities change in big ways.

You may also learn that your beliefs about what matters in life are no longer aligned with the person you’ve become.

But as life would have it, there isn’t a way to go back and do things over.

You can however forgive yourself for what you didn’t know then. All you can expect of yourself is to act according to what you know and believe at that moment.

Forgiveness. That’s a big part of being able to move ahead with whatever it is you want to do next.

You have to forgive yourself and understand that you may have not made the same decisions today, but you did your best with what you had at the time.

Now move on.

“The past has no power over the present moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle

Make amends

If the past is to be left completely behind and you want to heal yourself from the hurt, you can make amends wherever with whomever you can.

You may not be able to do this in every case, but when you can, apologize, commit to do better from this point on, and start to move ahead.

An apology isn’t always easy and many times it can be the very thing that will keep you from ever facing your failure or shortcoming. But to heal an open wound, it’s the soothing balm you need.

Own what you did, apologize, commit to being better now as the person you are, and then let it be part of the past for good.

I believe that things should be let go once they are discussed. Apology accepted. End of story. — Brad Goreski

Let it go, keep the lesson

Undoubtedly, there was a lesson in that shortcoming or failure. It’s much easier to see and understand it now that you’ve allowed yourself to honestly evaluate all of the circumstances that led up to it.

Ultimately, it does still land on you, but on that version of you, that did what they thought was fair and right at that moment.

You can hold on to the responsibility of it all, and you can have some remorse, but when it’s all said and done, forgive yourself and lose the shame. Make room for the lesson and carry that with you from here on.

You are not bad just because a decision was bad.

We all have things we wish wouldn’t have happened or that we hadn’t done. Failures and bad judgment calls plague every last one of us.

The key to moving on is to allow yourself the freedom and grace of a clean slate. You have no one to answer to but yourself.

There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don’t help them by doing the job yourself. ― Laurell K. Hamilton

If you feel like you’re being judged by others, that’s just your own grief and shame casting them into the perfect narrative you’ve created. No one else matters unless you’re ready to fully give away the power you have to create a beautiful life.

Face the truth.

Get unstuck.

Your amazing next chapter is waiting for you.

In the process of letting go you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself. –Deepak Chopra

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