A practice for telling the truth

What would it change about your life if you told the truth more?

Maybe nothing, maybe everything.

There’s a book called Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton. It’s a bit controversial (all the most impactful books I’ve ever read books are) where Brad goes in-depth on how if we learn to tell the truth, we’ll be happier. Highly recommend.

The book itself blew my mind, but the practice has been life-changing.

Here’s a story about practicing it:
I had driven two hours to see this guy. We had an amazing first date, and he lives in Phoenix. But when I got there, we immediately didn’t click! I was up for spending time with him and learning more, and I was also paying attention to the feeling of “hmmm this isn’t right” that was now the reality. We had plans to hang out for two days.

Instead of waiting till the last minute to cancel, I told him I was going to go back to Sedona instead of hanging out longer. We ended up agreeing that we were glad we got to spend more time, but we are in different places and it’s a mismatch. I was overwhelmingly grateful for his honesty, and I was grateful to myself for not waiting to tell the truth. Now we can begin to be friends in an honest place.
And now we both have peace of mind.

My radical honesty practice started with me exploring the long-term effects of withholding the truth, and the long-term benefits of telling the truth.

I’m not saying that it’s ALWAYS best to tell the truth without some level of consideration, because it isn’t. Like EVERYTHING, it’s completely subjective and requires discernment. This practice is personal.

So that is what I’ll offer you today.

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1. A concept:
Honesty as a service to ourselves and others

2. A breakdown:
I’m not sure I need to go very far in saying there are probably things (like hard conversations/feelings/needs/wants/boundaries/fears/disappointments) that go unaddressed but you think about them all the time. If you think about it all the time, it needs honesty in some form (even if it’s just journaling and telling the truth to yourself) Regardless, the concept is to view honesty as a service to ourselves and/or to others.

3. A personal experience:
After a lifetime of people pleasing or being manipulative to others for various reasons (to stay safe, to be right, to avoid responsibility for my actions), it’s very much a practice to go out of my way to be honest.

All my life I was afraid of being disliked, rejected, unheard, unseen, unloved, abandoned, or hurt for telling my truth - but when I held back the truth, I realized I did that all to myself, and it made me sick. So I reframed it and focused on the benefits of being honest. It turns out, people enjoy me being honest more times than not, and I enjoy it, too :)

4. A practice:
a. Reflect - In a journal or piece of paper, reflect on what are the feelings you’ve experienced of telling the truth. What makes you feel good about it? What makes you resist and avoid it? What are the benefits? What are the consequences that make you hesitant?

b. Reframe - Consider for a moment that when you take the time to identify your thoughts and feelings, accept them and have arrived at a place you are ready to share, how might that be of service to them and you?
How does it benefit the relationship to inform another and release yourself of the truth?
What are the long-term effects of not telling the truth that telling the truth more would correct?

c. Invest - “The truth will set you free” as they say, but I think first you need to spend time with it. Become friends with it. I wholeheartedly believe that this is one of the most important things someone can do. Spend time and energy discerning what the truth is for yourself, what you think, why you think it, where it came from, how it affects you, and how it might affect others if you say it/don’t say it.

At the end of the day, only you know what the truth feels like, when you hear it and when you speak it. Whether you speaking it is worth it or not, is the practice.

The truth not only sets us free, it makes us strong. It is a guide we can follow through life, a metric to measure if we’re living closest to ourselves, and a way to live closer to others.

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If you like it exercise/use it, I’d love to hear how it went. What did you discover?
Alternatively, I’d also love to hear if you didn’t like it and why!