In his new book Personal Development for Smart People (my review here), Steve Pavlina claims that the root of all successful personal growth stems from following three key principles: truth, love and power.
I really dig that.
And I really dig the part about truth today. After all, truth was a big driver towards making 21 Dragons a reality (or like I described truth in my first post; ‘losing the ability to bullshit yourself’). And now, looking back, I can see so many times in my life when I refused to face the truth or tell the truth and I lost out.
It makes me think back to my old NLP days. Those days we would face certain truths and do our best to re-frame them, beautify them or squash them altogether, just because they were ugly.
Before you slap the whole truth is subjective, the map of the world is relative argument on me – hey buddy, been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, and I ain’t saying the model ain’t useful.
Like all things it seems, it works sometimes and falls down flat the others.
Because truths are true, no matter how much you try to deny them, and they can be ugly. They won’t settle for make-up and they won’t let you pretend they’re anything other than what they are.
Some truths don’t change just because you put better décor around them.
You can re-frame that feeling in your gut all you want – but there’s an important message there that you need to hear, and until you listen to it you’re ignoring the most important part of you, the part that’s actually honest and smart enough to tell you when you need to change.
In other words, if you can’t lose the ability to bullshit yourself, you’re utterly fucked.
And sometimes, the truth can be subtle. It can come at you softly in the night, like an untraceable, insistent feeling rather than an obvious supernova of light. But that kind of truth is no less important.
The truth that tried to tell me I needed to find my own voice distinct from Life Coaches Blog started whispering to me near a year ago, but I was either unwilling to face it or it wasn’t the right time for me (yes, I think now that certain truths need the right timing – why not?).
My friend Dom had known from day one that I should have started my own blog, but I wasn’t ready to listen. But I started to listen one day, and listened more and more, until the banks of doubt burst and I understood what I had to do.
The truth might or might not set you free, but it at least will set you straight.
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Word.
True that.