10 Excuses used for withholding the truth and options
Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 4:05AM More often than you may be ready to admit, you hold back from expressing how you feel, from sharing what you sense and intuit. In essence, you muffle some of your abilities and hesitate or prevent yourself from realizing certain dreams.
Witholding the truth is always potentially a lie, and each new situation calls for a moral decision. Do you keep things to yourself and if so, do you do it out of self-interest, a desire for power, for approval, for the interest of the person from whom information is hidden? Maybe you are not aware of the why.
Deciding to be more honest with yourself may seem to be an extraordinary task. It would require the never-ending burden of self-discipline. This helps explain why many people decide to live a life of minimal honesty. They brainwash themselves into believing its too hard to change or, not even in their interest.
This said, rewards exist for meeting the challenges of living with integrity. Although your course may seem frequently diverted, or plans suddenly thwarted, you also underestimate rather than overestimate your foresight. And, excuses are not necessarily bad. Consider ten excuses for withholding truth and how similar views help or hinder you;
1) You do not believe you are ready. Something within you may echo you do not have the courage, ability, skills or presumed experience required to go the next step. What you believe becomes your reality. People also read your vibes.
2)You imagine people will criticize. Part of you fears other people will judge or not understand. Yet many people actually share or resonate with you, and also tell themselves nobody else will get it. Your self-doubt leads to misperceptions that may prevent you from connecting with kindred spirits.
3) You assume things are not in your control. If part of you senses untapped skills or potential, then you may reason these things will be sharpened and a plan clarified by fate if you are mean to use them. Another way to view this is fear of success or failure. Either way, you remain where you are.
4) You find solace in secretiveness. Something may appeal about keeping knowledge to yourself. It is said the meek and humble are wise and silent. The expression of thoughts, feelings and perceived insight may seem suitably withheld. This is not always for the purpose of self-interest.
5) You fear embarassment. You may have nurtured feelings for someone, or value something you sense others will not value as you do. You fear your views or feelings will not be appreciated or shared. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
6) You argue timing is everything. Perhpas you are an expert at postponing or putting off decisions. You may be assesing and re-assessing the capacity of another person to use the information for reasons you would support. That you contemplate means you resist listening to your gut. You decide the right time when you relinquish the need to control.
7) You are too proud. You feel more secure in the thought that you are not contributing to the confusion of the world. Your opinion of yourself would not permit you to shatter the image you have created. Appearances can be deceiving.
8) Your views conflict with your entourage. Rather than sense non-conformity is the way to go, you may be willing to sacrifice what feels right for what appears to be right in the minds of people you respect. You choose to put their needs or expectations before your own, whatever the cost.
9) You prefer the hard way. The more honest you are, the easier it is to continue. The more lies you tell yourself or others, the harder it is to keep track, and the more necessary it is to keep lying out of fear of being found out.
10) Someone told you to do it. You may confide your dream, your perspective or sense of the truth to someone who cautions you who to share this with. The exercise of discipline is demanding insofar as it requires you to be flexible and insightful. To be free, you must be willing to take responsibility for yourself and also to develop the capacity to reject responsibility that is not your own. You determine what needs to be organized or feels right as spontaneous.
Reader Comments (24)
Oh, this, Liara, really is a powerful post. One that reminds me how we can let these excuses in if we're not careful. And for what? I'm finding that the more I open up to the truth (and break away from these 10 excuses you have listed) - the more liberated, the more free I feel. And yet that used to be the exact reason I didn't open up to the truth - because I felt it would not be freeing, not be liberating. So far from the truth that thinking was. It doesn't mean that sometiimes these still don't come into play - they do. And then, though, I try to catch them - and change...to not allow these excuses to rule...
Take Care.
D~
What's amazing is there's so much potential for growth and learning for all of us. While I'm much more aware of my own inner truth and therefore can spot a self manufactured lie more readily, I have much more work to do in terms of ironing the rest of them out of existence.
You'd be amazed what goes through my mind (or maybe not since you wrote this very compelling and thought provoking article) is when I want to talk to someone about something, I sometimes find my mind telling me "he won't be interested because......" I find myself making assumptions before they happen!
So that's one area where I need to improve on - stop making assumptions about how a person will react or say or do or think. If I'm led to say something to someone, I just need to do it and be okay with whatever happens. Deep down we all need and want approval but I'm learning that all I need is my own approval! Isn't that amazing or what?
I learned to lie to protect myself from my mother's anger as a child, then began making up things in an effort to try to impress folks in school. It's amazing what we learn to do to aviod punishment n unpleasantness.
I believe rejection and trivialization by others of presented truths is also a motovating factor for future deception.
Our societies encourage dishonesty, and reward us with less conflict to be so. Honesty is too often the more difficult path!
btw- I found you in Jannie comments
Great post - gonna stumble.
I love how you have listed all of the aspects that hold us back. I know why I refrain from saying things, but this post challenges me in terms of whether I want to actually continue with so much holding back...
Thank you
Juliet
Telling the truth - to myself AND to others has been a hard yet absolutely joyous lesson as I'm able and willing to do it more and more frequently.
I just makes life clearer, takes the confusion and drama away, and is so freeing. It makes my Soul feel clean.
Thank you for sharing this, Liara, and listing those specific reasons for with-holding. You were right about each of them stopping personal growth.
It is so wondeful to always keep learning :)
((HUGS)) and *light* to you,
Loving Annie
Of course, logically, that doesn't make sense. In order to be honest with other people, you have to be honest with yourself, by default.
However, I believe that people create their own version of the truth. It's a lot like what Obi Wan Kenobi said in Return of the Jedi. The truths that we cling to depend on our point of view. And when we refuse to look inside of ourselves and be true to ourselves, then we create an distorted sense of reality. It's a lot easier to be truthful to THAT reality, then it is to look inward and answer the tought questions.