Radical Honesty with Yourself

Do you often feel like something is missing from yourself or your life? Do you ever find yourself comparing your life to a vision of what you think it “should” be? Or measuring yourself against an idealized version of “you”? I’ve done this. I still find myself doing it sometimes. I get it.

Here’s the thing. As long as we’re measuring ourselves and our lives by an ideal, we will never measure up. We will always fall short. The saddest thing about existing in that space of comparison is that we miss out on what’s really beautiful about ourselves and our lives. We live in a holding pattern, putting off our contentment and happiness to a time in the future when we’ve finally “arrived”.

Guess what? We will *never* arrive. We’ll never catch that carrot dangling in front of us, no matter how hard we try. Know why? Because the carrot doesn’t exist. We made it all up. We’ve each created a story in our head based on our cultural conditioning, religions, and family systems. This story informs our expectations of ourselves, our relationships, our careers, and our lives.

In my opinion, the most powerful spiritual work that each of us can do is to get radically honest with ourselves and to question EVERYTHING. Isn’t that scary? Fuck yeah it is. But it is the most liberating thing you can possibly do for yourself.

There is no other way to uncover the inner bullshit — all of the “shoulds” and expectations. There is no other way to know who you really are, what you really think, and what you really want and need than to allow yourself to question everything.

I so clearly remember this moment back in 2015. My therapist asked me, “April, what do YOU want? Apart from anyone else — what do YOU want?” I could not answer her. I had NO idea what I wanted, or how to even know what I wanted. I could not separate my desires from my perception of what those around me wanted or thought I should want. Just trying to answer that question for myself made me so confused that it gave me anxiety.

That moment was an extremely important part of the liberating, terrifying, and beautiful journey of learning who I am. The past 10 years has been a journey of radical honesty with myself, questioning all of my assumptions about myself and about life, and letting go of anything that doesn’t withstand that test of honesty.

The result of this process is that I am more connected to myself and my life than I’ve ever been. I’m learning how to connect with others from a place of authenticity, rather than relating based on what I think is expected of me. I’m still growing, and I always will be, but I am getting freer every day.

My dream is to be an uninhibited, white-haired, wild and wise old woman one day, guiding the younger women in letting go of their inner bullshit and teaching them to love themselves as they are.

What is your dream? What does your future life look like without the inner bullshit holding you back?