Once upon a time…
One spectacular summers day, you decide to go to the beach. You put on your favourite outfit which has in big letters, across the front, ‘TRUTH’. You are feeling particularly amazing! Arriving at the beach, you find a secluded spot, take off your TRUTH outfit, and dive into the water.
Another swimmer arrives shortly after. They take off their clothes and jump in the water too. It really is a most glorious day! A short while later you notice the other swimmer gets out of the water, puts their outfit back on and leaves.
You love the ocean. You lay on your back, bobbing about in the water, making shapes out of clouds. Soon, you decide it’s probably time to get going. As you arrive back at your spot, you notice that your TRUTH outfit is missing! You frantically look around to see another pile of clothing which must belong to the other swimmer, so you race over to put on some clothes. As you pick them up, you realise that this person has an outfit that reads ‘LIAR’.
You look down at the outfit, and then down at yourself. You take a deep breath and decide, you simply have to do what you have to do…
Soon you are proudly strutting through the neighbourhood. To say you are turning heads is an understatement. People are shocked! Horrified, they exclaim, “OMG!!! OMG what are you doing?”
So you explain, “Well, I went down to the beach and someone stole my TRUTH outfit. The only outfit that was left was LIAR. But, because I am the TRUTH, I am not going to put on a LIAR outfit, so you might as well get used to seeing me as the Naked Truth”.
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain
Moral of the Story:
It is better to be unapologetically who you truly are than to try and be somebody else just for the sake of appeasing others. When you trade in your reality for a role, when you trade your truth for an act, you give up your ability to feel and in exchange, you put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It must happen inside first. The truth is that you are happier when you don’t do what everyone else does, just for the sake of fitting in. Just for the sake of people not talking about you. Just for the sake of staying within the status quo. It’s time to take it all off and be who you are naturally – raw and real – rather than to put on someone else’s armour, someone else’s job, someone else’s belief system. Resolve to put on your own truth, and if it’s not the truth? You aren’t wearing it!
Be decerning about who you believe because they just might be a liar dressed up in a TRUTH outfit. Never surrender your hopes and dreams to the limitations other people have placed on their own lives. The vision of your true destiny does not reside within the blinkered outlook of the naysayers and the gloomy doom prophets. Friends and family who suffer a lack of abundance, joy, love, fulfilment and prosperity in their own lives really have no business imposing their self-limiting beliefs on your reality experience. When someone steals your truth – that you can do it, that you can succeed, that you can be all you can be – do not put on their lies. Walk in your own truth.
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky
Affirmation: I freely express who I truly am
I am indeed blessed. There are wonderful opportunities for me to be myself, to express who I truly am. I am the beauty and joy of the universe, expressing and receiving. I surround myself with Divine Truth, Honesty and Justice. I know that Divine right action is taking place, and what ever the outcome is, it is perfect for me and everyone concerned. I am one with the very power that created me. I am special and unique, with my own set of talents and abilities. No one can do things exactly the way I can do them. I rejoice in the truth of my being. I am worthy of my own love and my own self-acceptance. I am free.
“Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission. Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because you’ve made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.”
— Brené Brown
