BRUTAL honesty doesn’t seem like quite the right name for this topic. I mean it to be something about ‘owning my truth’, honesty, forthrightness, not withholding, not sugar-coating, but not being brutal either.
As this social experiment progresses, I realize that I didn’t have as much to fear about my own honesty as I first thought I might. I was sure I had to be bold, rude and blatant to be honest, but as it turns out, I’m not really ‘hard-wired’ to be rude. My ‘wise self’ (Cheryl Richardson) or my ‘essential self’ (Martha Beck) is actually quite the diplomat. She can be brutally honest without being brutal. That’s her true nature – my true nature – is to be kind and gentle and diplomatic, sometimes at my own expense.
It isn’t in my bones to be mean-spirited or hurtful, in fact, it is in my nature to be the opposite – too consiliatory, too kind, to the point of sparing my own truth. This is a totally liberating realization – I don’t have to fear myself, I actually just have to embrace her and the best will emerge. JOY!