About Those Secrets You’ve Been Keeping… This Will Help.

~ by Tera Warner

I’ve never met anyone who comes up to me and says, “Tera, I gotta tell you the truth. I’m a lying, cheating, snake of a person. Set me straight.” And it’s not because I’ve never met a lying, cheating, snake of a person, either. I have. It’s that most people, by far, want to put their best self forward. They want to make a good impression, be liked by others and are totally terrified of being wrong, rejected or getting in trouble.

So we commit little human errors (and sometimes very big ones) and rather than “get it off our chests” and say the truth and set things straight, we stuff secrets, hide our shortcomings, deny our confusions and get our spiritual knickers into an almighty knot!

I’m not buying your halo, so don’t try and sell it to me! EVERYONE is guilty of little white lies, broken commitments and hidden secrets. And while you may be able to twist truth and hide things from other people…you’ll never be able to keep them from yourself. But those little white lies can make a big mess of your life and this article will help you release them safely so you can move forward in your life, love and relationships!

Step 1: Get honest with yourself.

Nobody likes causing harm or making mistakes, but everybody does it. Even unintentionally. Which isn’t an excuse, by the way. It’s just a fact. Before you decide to come clean with someone else, you may have some work to do to get clean and honest with yourself.

If there’s a particular relationships or situation in your life that’s causing you trouble, sit down with a paper and pen and take inventory on what you did (or failed to do) that may have caused a problem. Emotions make things muddy and cloud our view. If you’ve got something to come clean about, then keep your emotions off the table and stick to the facts.

The more precisely you are willing to look at the details of what happened the better:

When did it happen? It doesn’t have to be the exact hour, but roughly? How old were you? What season was it, etc.?
Where did it happen? At someone’s house, a creepy motel? Where were you exactly?
What was the situation at the time? (Careful when you sit down and look at this not to include a whole bunch of the details about what was being done to you. You’re really looking to get your crap off. Let other people be responsible for clearing their own windshields.
What exactly did you do? Kick a cat? Steal $20? Some “harmless” flirting? (p.s. if you’re thinking about it still, it wasn’t that harmless!) Whatever it was sit down and face it yourself–write it down. Look at it! For yourself–you don’t need to show anyone. What did you do, exactly? Face it. Once you’ve done that, you can take on the next step.

2. Do not look for “reasons” why it was okay.

Since nobody likes to be wrong, we get very good at making ourselves right for the things that we do to cause harm:

“Well, she did it to me!”
“He had it coming to him, he’s such a jerk to everyone in the office.”
“They don’t need it anyway, they have so much money, they’ll never notice”
“No one cares about my opinion anyway, so no point talking.”

If you did something to create a problem, forget about your need to find a whole bunch of reasons why it was ok. It was NOT ok and you know it, otherwise it wouldn’t still be bothering you and taking up your attention. The more you look for “reasons” to justify your harmful or neglectful acts, the less you’re owning up, the smaller you’ll feel, the more likely you will twist and misrepresent the facts to make you look less “bad.“

“Dude, I ate your last chocolate chip cookie. It was me.”

If you spill a big fat mess of something on the floor, it will never come clean by thinking about it, worrying about it, hiding it, denying it, painting it or spritzing it with “room freshener”! But the crap we come up with to hide our transgressions is UNBELIEVABLE! The only way to get rid of the “mess” we make is to come clean–look at it and be willing to do what it takes to clean it up and make things feel good again.

Which, I might add, doesn’t mean just say, “Sorry.”

3. Of course it’s gonna hurt. Do it anyway.

It might hurt to say the truth. You may even risk losing the trust and respect of some people close to you by coming clean about something you’ve been keeping to yourself. But while it might not be comfortable or easy, eventually things change. Emotions calm, feelings flatten out and mellow.

But it’s not the same when you keep secrets. [tweet_dis]What you hide, deny, evade, avoid, etc. only festers[/tweet_dis]. And like an infected wound over time, little white lies can tear people and relationships apart. The only way out is through. So spit it out. Get it over with and set yourself free. If there’s something you’ve done that you’re not taking responsibility for, roll up your sleeves, stick your teeth into it and make it go right.

You need the secret password.

There’s a great old book called The Land of Far Beyond by Enid Blyton. We read it as family reading recently to the kids and they LOVED it. It’s not easy to find anymore, but it’s a classic story about some children who travel with a few adults who all have big “burdens” on their backs--the weight of the things they’ve done to hurt or neglect other people, animals, and life itself.

In order to release their heavy burdens, they have to travel with them from the City of Turmoil to the City of Happiness. The travelers have to face all kinds of obstacles, barriers, threats and temptations of one kind and another to reach the city. Finally, only a very few actually make it, and once there, they arrive at the gates and are required to answer a question correctly before they are able to pass into the City of Happiness where their burdens are released.

They are given three passwords and at the gates are required to say which of them are most important. The three words are “Faith,” “Hope” and “Love.”

Now think about it for a minute… in a world where everyone is carrying burdens and little white lies..

If you stop and think of your own burdens for a moment–the little white lies, the more harmful acts you may have caused (intentionally or unintentionally)… When you think of the courage it takes to be honest, tell the truth (even though you’re afraid of loss), be yourself (even when you’re afraid of rejection)…

…which of these three words do YOU think is the most important to pass into the “City of Happiness?”

Go ahead and let us know by posting in the comments below. If you get it right and you leave us your email address, we will send you a little Happiness Gift! 😉

Love, 😉

Tera

p.s.

It doesn’t really matter if other people forgive you for the things you’ve done. Unless you honestly forgive yourself, Life seems to have a very hard time getting better. That’s the kinda stuff we help people clean up and get rid off on the Virtual Lifestyle Design Retreat. Which is why we get so many stories like these ones!