Are you honest with yourself?

“The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy.”

Richard Bach

Don't know about you, but I'm not honest with myself all of the time. Sometimes it takes for someone else to get direct and confront me on a certain issue, after which I sit dumbfounded while realizing, not without frustration, that they are right. Yes, I do deny things. I suppress unpleasant memories and sometimes live with delusions. Not proud of it. At least I admit it.

Perhaps, we all hide the truth from ourselves occasionally. We want it to be congruent with everything else we're thinking even when it's not always the case.

I think this is especially dangerous with something you've been presenting to others as your position for a long time. You just keep this momentum of what you've been saying without giving it much thought. Maybe the first time around you weren't entirely honest, maybe something changed, but now it's so normal, you almost forget how you really feel.

Another trap is listening too much to people around you or complying with general opinion with no reasons of your own. They say certain events are negative, you shouldn't be treated like this, this is not the way you do it, the list can go on and on. Sure, relying on society's assumptions makes for an easy explanation, but is it really what you want to settle for?

What's been bothering you? What do you want? Why is it this way for you? That's when I try to push everyone's voices aside, just stop and think. It doesn't have to be shared with anyone, it's almost never on the surface, but I want to get to the deepest roots.

You can't fix a problem without understanding its true cause.