Ep 123: The Transformative Power of Being Truthful with Yourself

Ever wondered if you're being completely honest with yourself?  In this invigorating episode of Truth and Transcendence, we explore the truths we're potentially ignoring and examine how self-honesty could unlock a surge of well-being.   We discuss the natural human tendency to evade full consciousness of our existence to protect ourselves from overwhelm, but how, sometimes, allowing ourselves a more truthful awareness can be empowering and healing.

Throughout this thought-provoking journey, we navigate from feelings of tiredness and indifference to the exhilaration of alignment with your passions, equipping you with insights to break free if you're feeling stuck. We introduce the empowering question: "Is there anything I'm not being 100% truthful to myself about?". Whether it's about your eating habits, relationship, or work satisfaction, acknowledging these truths could be a stepping stone to transformation.  Tune in to this insightful episode for a deep dive into the power of self-honesty and how it can lead to an extraordinary sense of authentic enthusiasm and well-being.

Transcript

Catherine Llewellyn: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence, brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 123. This week I'm going to talk about self-honesty. We've all heard about the importance of telling the truth to other people, and also about telling the truth to ourselves, and it's that second one I would like to talk about today.

Catherine Llewellyn: 0:39

They say and I think it's probably right that if we were to be able to be consciously aware of everything that's actually happening at every moment, we wouldn't be able to cope, and I suspect that's actually right, and that, of course, is the reason, one of the reasons why I believe we have a faculty within us, a highly developed faculty, of slightly fudging what's actually true, because if we were always completely connected to everything that is true, or possibly true or possible at any moment, that would be overwhelming or could be overwhelming for us. I say this hypothetically, because I've never experienced that. I don't know anyone who has at least this side of the veil, and so who knows? But theoretically, it actually makes sense for us to censor and dilute and fudge, if you like, our understanding of what's going on, and that applies as well to our relationship with ourselves. If we were always 100% aware of, and clear about and conscious of every aspect of ourselves and our experience and everything we do with our experience. That could be, for us, overwhelming. So most of us spend most of our time somewhere in between being completely oblivious and being completely hyper-hyper-conscious, or super-conscious, as some people call it. In that particular space, there are aspects of us of that that we don't have access to, that are out of our control and that are automatic. Just as for most of us, we're not able to consciously control things like the way our heart beats and the way it pumps blood. We can consciously control our breathing to an extent, but I would suggest that most of us are not able to control it to the extent that we could stop ourselves breathing and literally die. I don't think we're capable of doing that, and that's probably a very good thing that something overrides that doesn't allow us to be in complete control, with our conscious mind, of all of these different things that need to work in order for us to survive and to flourish and to participate and to contribute. So, coming back to being honest with ourselves, there we are.

Catherine Llewellyn: 3:06

We're pottering along through life, we're being more or less aware of what's going on, of what we're experiencing, of our own internal process and our own external process and our behaviour and our relationships and everything else, and it's all, relatively speaking, manageable most of the time. Some of the time it becomes or feels unmanageable or seems unmanageable to us, and then we can experience distress and problems and issues and in those moments we're called to become a bit more consciously aware, perhaps, and to actually participate and engage more in areas we might prefer not to so. Very often, when things go outside of our sphere, our scope of comfort and reasonable manageable-manageableness or doable-ness in our lives, very often we're actually called upon to focus on something for a particular period of time in order to deal with it. Alternatively, when those things happen, we might find ourselves actually disconnecting from the area of difficulty, because connecting with it actually makes it worse. That can also happen and with certain mental conditions.

Catherine Llewellyn: 4:34

There are situations where somebody lives in a state of semi-denial or denial about something and actually for that person, under those circumstances and at that time, that is necessary for them. That's what they need to do, and sometimes it's temporary and sometimes it's not. A bit like if we are wounded, physically wounded sometimes the best thing for us to do is to go into a deep sleep or even, in some cases, a deep coma, a medical coma, whether it's induced artificially or whether it happens naturally, or if we're unconscious. Sometimes we go unconscious because that's what the body needs us to do in order for it to be able to do its work internally and help us to recover. So, when it comes to ourselves and our consciousness, sometimes we need to just shut things out and switch off and be oblivious for a period of time. However, there are other times when it's very, very useful to become more engaged, more conscious and actually more honest with ourselves than perhaps we normally might be.

Catherine Llewellyn: 5:51

Now. I'm talking about situations like we wake up in the morning and we realise that for the last couple of days we've been feeling a bit off, feeling a bit out of sorts, a bit out of sync. Things are not quite right, things don't feel quite right to us. That's a time when it might be appropriate and useful for us to ask ourselves the following question Is there anything that I have not been fully truthful about to myself? Is there anything that I'm not being 100% truthful to myself about Now? That's quite an interesting question, because if somebody says to you, okay, what are you not telling the truth about. Our immediate response is to say who the hell are you to ask that? And of course, I'm telling the truth. And how dare you? And I'm offended. Now, all of that reaction is self-protection, ego-paced self-protection. It's perfectly reasonable. There's nothing wrong with it. If, on the other hand, if that person whether it's somebody else or whether it's we ourselves are asking us that question, we could alternatively say okay, let's ask myself that question.

Catherine Llewellyn: 7:10

If there is something that I'm not being completely truthful with myself about, what might that be? Could there be something? Might there be something? So the answer could be I'm not being truthful with myself about the fact that I am comfort eating. I'm not being truthful with myself about the fact that I'm not very happy in my relationship. I'm not being truthful with myself about the fact that I'm not fulfilled in my work. I'm not being truthful with myself about the fact that I feel hurt and offended by something somebody said or did. I'm not being truthful with myself about the fact that they actually want to leave the country and go and live somewhere else. They want to go and live somewhere else, whatever it might be, whatever it is that we are putting off telling the truth to ourselves, about owning up to ourselves about that can be incredibly powerful.

Catherine Llewellyn: 8:16

And how do we know that that might be the case? Well, one very good sign is any kind of feeling of depleted energy. Of course, that might be due to the fact that we need more sleep and that we're not getting enough good quality protein and minerals and everything else, but sometimes we just get a sense of a kind of malaise, a lethargy and apathy, and sometimes what that is suggesting is that we're not being self-truthful about something Anything. It could be something really small. It could be just a weird feeling we had about inner conversation that we didn't go back and resolve, and then that just kind of erodes and gnaws away and sucks our energy.

Catherine Llewellyn: 9:03

Equally, if we're feeling really, really good and things are going really well, it can be fantastic to ask ourselves what is it I'm really being truthful about with myself? What am I really telling the truth to myself about? Which could be? I am being truthful about my passion. I am being truthful about where my heart lies. I am being truthful about what I'm interested in and what I'm not interested in. I'm being truthful in regard to how I want to do things, how I want to word my communications, how I want to dress, where I want to live, what I want to eat, all these different things which, when we tell the truth to ourselves about, can create a massive release of energy and an extraordinary sense of wellness and well-being. And that's because we are in alignment, we are congruent. When we're congruent, in alignment with ourselves, everything works better, we are happier, we are more successful in the way that we want to be successful. We're not trying to make ourselves feel better, we're not trying to paper over the cracks in our integrity, the cracks in our own relationship with ourselves.

Catherine Llewellyn: 10:22

So this week, my invitation is to take a little time. Maybe go off by yourself, maybe take some quiet time, maybe listen to your favorite music, maybe go dancing, maybe go to the spa, whatever it is. Do this by yourself, or do it with a loved one, or do it with your coach or your facilitator, your mentor. Have a conversation with yourself, possibly supported by somebody else, in regard to what am I really telling the truth to myself about at the moment, and what am I not really telling the truth to myself about fully? And are there any areas where I'm just not sure or it feels a bit foggy, a bit unclear, a bit unresolved, not quite right, and just explore that because it's incredibly liberating, although I do warn you there's a caveat Initially, if you're not used to doing this, it can be initially a little bit disruptive or a little bit miserable when we start to do this, but that's only because we've not been doing it and that miserableness is a clearing out.

Catherine Llewellyn: 11:36

It's a clearing out of residue, of what you've been carrying in you with the best will in the world not your fault, not a bad person we all do it and we're designed to do it. We're designed to be truthful and we're also designed to be untruthful, which might sound like a conundrum or a contradiction, but actually it's absolutely true. So that's my invitation for this week. I hope you have a wonderful week. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next time. Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on beingspace. world. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.