It is what it is.

Tip #27 - Ruthless honesty with yourself

This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to mid-November 2024, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.

Tip #27 - Ruthless honesty with yourself

There’s so much to this.

Entire books are written about accepting yourself, your life, the fact of other people, how other people’s lives bump into yours and mess shit up, how people are awful to other people and it messes shit up, how we too are awful to ourselves and other people and it messes shit up…Radical Acceptance is a good good good one.

You know this part in Kung Fu Panda where he’s thinking of quitting to make noodles with his dad and Oogway is like “you are too concerned with what was and what will be” - I always thought that phrase of yesterday and tomorrow and today being a gift was kinda cringe, but here’s a new spin on it that makes more sense and meaning for me.

Acceptance is aligning yourself with time. Acceptance is a full understanding of your power in the current moment. Acceptance is living in the present moment. Acceptance is the way it works, living well, being present, feeling that peace.

When we’re anxious, worried about everything that’s not in our ability to impact, not taking the steps to make moves on what we can impact, afraid of the unknowables in the future, feeling guilt or shame from what’s happened before, we can’t inhabit the current moment.

When we are “too concerned with what was and what will be”, our souls aren’t aligned.

I see it in my head, the talk of alignment, being in tune with yourself, in order and whatever, I see it like my spine is the anchor. A vertical horizon line if you’ll go with me there. The head and the heart have a glow thrum to them and should be in line with each other too and in line with the spine. Then the soul of me, is like a bundle of those glowing soul noodles like the ones the fates snip in half in the animated Hercules movie lol. Imagine a mess of soul noodles, glowing around the spine of me. When there’s an alignment in the all of it, the soul noodles buzz around the spine nicely, evenly, and mostly between head and heart.

Then the vibes get good and the glow magnifies and is warm.

Nice, right?

The guts of my ideal spirit self all out for you to see.

BUT HEY, we were talking about acceptance, what’s the alignment spine horizon glow in the dark soul noodles gotta do with that??

EVERYTHING.

Here’s why.

Honesty is fucken hard to do. To look at the ALL OF IT of all of it.

It is one thing to want to swipe your arm across the mantle of your life’s fireplace, it is another to look at the mess you’ve made by deciding to clear your life up.

Here’s another thing. Duplicity is toxic. Dishonesty is toxic. Omissions of truth are toxic.

And I’m not talking about how you treat other people right now though DUH that also applies. I’m telling you to look at yourself.

Look what you have done. Remove the weight, the guilt, take the feelings off it for a minute and just look at the things that happened.

Reading Liars recently I was reminded how much I felt that, the value of looking at the things that happened in the crumbling of a hard relationship you put everything into. In court recently, I brought receipts of what had happened, and that made people mad. Just the facts in a row of actions taken.

There is power is saying this is what happened to me. This is what I did to you. I did this. You did these things. This happened next, and then we decided to do this about it.

No meaning claimed, no persuasion, no justifications or overlooking, just the act of saying what was, and what was next, and what was next.

That can be tough shit to look at and tough shit to remove emotional manipulation about and to separate emotional bleed from. It is tough. It’s scary too. Looking at things brings up the feelings about them. It’s hard to look at what’s happened and just let it be.

The reason for the glow in the dark soul strings that hug my spine, is because that feeling is the motivation. Getting to that place where I can release, and let things be as they are, as they have been, as they happened, and just let it exist that way because that’s the way it is anyway…when I got there, felt that alignment, that’s motivation and a peace like nothing else.

I’ve been reading The Power of Habit - yes I’m like 10 years late to this I know.

Besides being completely appalled at the history of American toothpaste use and wondering if my basal ganglion has been disrupted by emotional trauma and that’s why things that are automatic for people that I still have to expend effort to think about, I’m learning from the power of habit that in order to change behaviors, we have to want it like real real bad.

Real bad.

Crave it even.

So what type of peace do you crave enough to get you to voluntarily look through the things that hurt and accept it? To consider the areas of your life, your behaviors, your beliefs, your relationships, your habits, your dreams and actions, and think about what’s incongruous and in need of fixing, and say it’s fine this is what it is and now that I know and have accepted it as such I can begin to alter it towards a better path to find that peace and that aligning glow?

Is it coming together?

A little, I hope. Let’s continue.

The honesty is knowing I can’t eat nerds and expect to run well. I can’t be sleeping 10 hrs a day and bingeing Housewives if I’m trying to start a business. I can’t say I want to be in love and then not consider if I’m acting from places of love towards others (and/or leaving the house to be in the world ever).

It’s just an honesty within yourself.

I had a conversation with one of my kids the other day about how much we’ve been doing that’s voluntary. How we have choices about what we fill our free time with, what endeavors we pursue with passion, intention, and repetitive work and how those are optional exactly because they are what we chose to do from the options we had and knew about.

In this chat we were trying to figure out if a change needed to be made. Another thing that happens with this act of radical self reflection, acceptance, and honesty is that complaining about your life goes WAY down. That one its own is a massive happiness increasing thing. Once you accept that you are the one in charge of your self your choices and your life, you accept accountability for your self and your choices and your life I think that’s empowering. It has become empowering to me to be the one accountable for myself

Anyway, so we were talking, my kid and me and I said, if we want to do this many things and have committed to this many things, then it means we’re doing this many things because we’ve used our agency to choose that. If we want to change that then let’s change it. Either way, fine. No way any better or worse if we’re acting from the motivations of what we want to do to enhance our lives. But let’s not choose one thing and then pretend we don’t know what that option entails. Or choose it halfway and relinquish responsibility for our life.

We will be of our words by our actions.

We will know we can change and adjust when something isn’t working.

We will know we can work hard.

We will work hard to show up for our talents, our choices, and continue to make better ones.

The radical self honesty also applies in how relate to each other. To relate, as in how we cross into each others lives. The relationships we have.

Remember when we talked about how we want to say yes to better things? How no is a full sentence? How we need to do an audit of our peace? Begin to establish boundaries?

This is why.

All those things show us what is true.

All those actions increase our ability to accept, without emotional overwhelm, the state of our experience in our life. Those practices and questions help figure it out from a place of calm observance.

If and when you do this I hope you will feel a sense of empowerment.

Look at all I have done.

How does that make you feel?

Radical self honesty means knowing your credit score and when you have to pay your bills and what that means about how many books and pizzas and movie tickets and cardigans you can buy in a month whiteout making it tough on yourself.

It’s no implication of sudden perfection.

It is a practice, like most things.

But it releases the panic when things go awry.

I knew this was working for me when I had a car issue and didn’t immediately go into an anxiety and panic. I hate car problems. They used to cause me so much stress. SO much stress. Even worse, I somehow felt they were a reflection of my incompetence and moral failings. I’m not even kidding, it felt like that. Like if I was a full adult I wouldn’t have a flat tire right now - the hell type of correlation and causation bull is that, but I really used to feel that way. And going through all the steps of calling for a tow, figuring out where to get the car taken to, changing the tire myself, all felt like daunting punishments and proof or penance for my idiocy.

It would exhaust me totally. Just car stuff! Just car stuff.

Now, I still don’t like it, at all, but I don’t panic having to call my insurance, I don’t feel like an imbecile with a dirty soul cosplaying as a grown human when I need to ask a friend to pick me up and when I need to call and ask a question about my warranty or something like that.

Radical self honesty helped me not confuse bad luck with feeling like the universe found me repulsive.

Radical self honesty helped me accept the shitty stuff I’ve been through with sense to know what parts I did and did not have control or have influence about.

Radical self honesty helps me bring data and information to court so the facts can speak to the argument and I don’t need to argue with anyone who tries to get me to rsvp to their problems.

Radical self honesty helps me see warning signs.

Radical self honesty clarified what I want and can offer in relationships.

Radical self honesty helps me speak to my boundaries with peace and care, instead of feeling before like I was horrible for not being able to just deal and manage everything everyone else wanted me to do to their specifications.

Reality can be really really difficult. Like a lot of the time it is.

But it’s there.

Real.

Unchanging if we remain unchanged.

You don’t have to know anything about the future, just start feeling out the question of -is this *look at the honesty of your life right in the eyes here please* how I want it to continue?

Go after whatever your version of soul glowy spine noodles are.

Go a little at a time too, if you need to. That still works.

Have a look. Have a think.

Lmk whats up.

You are a positive and I want good things for you.

ttyl - Marian.