Life Is For Living: Embrace Your Truth - Be Authentic and Live it With Gusto

Your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.

Don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Steve Jobs

Living an authentic life and embracing truth does not mean telling everyone everything that is on your mind - that is just dumb as there is no reason to antagonise people needlessly by telling them what they do not want to hear.

It means living your beliefs everyday; it means being honest with yourself; it means keeping your word to yourself and others; it means embracing who you are in your totality, the beautiful and the warts.

When you do not honour your word, live what you believe, and say what you think, you lack integrity and that makes you a liar. That sounds harsh but we are all in this together; integrity and honesty go hand in hand.

Here is an everyday example: how do you feel when you leave a meeting, conversation or gathering wanting to kick yourself in the behind because you did not say what you wanted to because... in those moments you do not like yourself very much and the memory of those times lingers, until the next time.

Time to change that habit.

So, am I an honest person? Would you believe I used to say 'no' I felt embarrassed to admit that I was?! That does not mean that I will always be truthful about everything to everyone. Some things must be kept private but I will continue to speak my truth as uncomfortable as it makes me feel at times.

I am a work in progress.

Have you ever lied and the memory stuck with you years later? That happened to me on three memorable occasions and the last time was in 2009 when I did not keep my word. I felt two inches tall and that memory is indelibly etched in my brain.

Plus, lying makes me feel too uncomfortable and it is such a waste of time and energy as well, so why bother.

Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself. James Allen

Considering someone else's feelings is not a factor when I have something to say. I will not deliberately bruise someone's feelings but I have to express how I feel and what I see.

Whether it is accepted or not is irrelevant and if the person feels hurt, it is really how they receive the message that hurts them. Do remember that you cannot hurt anyone's feelings nor are you responsible for how they feel. Children excepted of course.

However, I am not one of those idiots who believe they have to say everything just because... silence is golden at times.

Do you believe that you are an honest person?

When you are being yourself sometimes you feel uncomfortable because you stand out when you stand up and not many people are at ease in those circumstances. We lie about: "honey, do you like this dress?"; the classic "Does my butt look big in this?"; "Are you okay"; "Any problems with this...?" and it goes on ad nauseum.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. Einstein

Gandhi said Whenever you have truth it must be given with love or the message and the messenger will be rejected. That is because most of us tend to react defensively when we hear true talk from someone; it is not the norm in any society, and unfortunately most tend to use it as a blade to "get back" at someone who has hurt them, and so the crap continues.

I have learnt that you can speak your truth without belittling anyone.

All of us are responsible for the way they feel and thus react; it has nothing to do with you and you can only make them feel comfortable by lying. There is nothing wrong with being honest!

Your security in life depends entirely on your recognition of your divine nature. Udel S. Andersen

Blaming someone else for anything that happens in your life is a lie on a grand scale.

My personal motto is "Don't ask me if you don't want to know" and that is the kicker here: honesty is the best policy and truth is personal because none of us have a lock on it. When we speak truth it is our truth. Linda Elinor says it best:

What you perceive, your observations, feelings, interpretations, are all your truth. Your truth is important. Yet it is not The Truth.

Speaking truth builds you in tremendous ways; it buoys you up, it lights up your path enabling you to clearly see the boulders, crevasses, pitfalls, pebbles etc. so that when you inadvertently fall, and you will, you pick yourself up if you know what's good for you with "Oops, my bad" and move on.

You give away your power when you lie to yourself thus refusing to accept responsibility for your actions.

It is irrelevant how a situation evolved.

The bottom line is that YOU gave away your power to someone else whether it was in a relationship (make me happy); at work (lack of responsibility); on a contract (you signed it without reading it); verbally (you wanted to believe what you heard); in a store (you did not ask questions); buying stocks (you pretended you understood); a medical procedure (you did not get a 3rd or 4th opinion), and so on.

This was all your responsibility (and mine).

Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions. James Allen

I had my power taken away very early in life. The pattern was set then and I ended up giving it away everytime I felt the crunch because I knew no better.

I learnt the hard way that it opened the door to all forms of abuse. We humans love our self-destructive habits despite what we have learnt. We are happy being unhappy because that crap was recorded in our psyche in our growing up years.

We mightily resist change and become our own victims when disaster strikes because we ignore the persistent feeling that something is awry. It usually turns out that we were correct (but we took no action) then gleefully point accusing fingers "See, I knew it".

What is wrong with this picture?

It is time to get real people!

If you cannot or will not allow yourself to act as you feel comfortable being - okay, don't go out in public naked, people will think you are definitely nutz and call the cops - then you are doing yourself an injustice and will continue to be unhappy and feel dissatisfied and the self-abuse will continue.

Embracing your truth is not for the fainthearted. It is a self-learning app and you are going to pat your damn self on the back every time you step out of fear and do what you are afraid of or unaccustomed doing.

Live each day with gusto and savor it!