As a part of my Gratitude journey I learned that no matter how much I sometimes feel the need to check my honesty I feel empowered to be at peace with my authentic self. But let me frank, it was not always easy to tell my truth. I feared rejection and discontent from others if I was pushed to make my voice, my truth, my being speak my truth.
I am grateful for the honesty I have learned to speak—you never have to guess what I live each day. I stare into the mirror and I smile, asking, where is that girl of yesterday? I giggle as I wink—what a beautiful spirit she’s become.
What a miracle it is to be able to grow into your true self. With the entire world tugging you in different directions, sometimes your fragmented soul never can feel quite at ease. It’s like you’re a puzzle piece with changing colors and moving parts that muffle your voice and confused your emotions. The more you try to understand how to fit yourself together, the more it frustrates you. All the while, you can never show the world the true colors of your beautiful self.
Part of personal growth is being able to pull yourself into wholeness. When you give too much or toxins in your life are tripping you into unbalanced waves, the self falls out of order. Once you have the ducks of your life in a row, the time to sing loud, and sing unapologetically proud.
It’s not easy to get those ducks in a row and unearth your of honesty as I did. In fact, it took me a long time and many trials and tribulations to get to the point of unadulterated truthfulness. And these truths meant being honest with myself as well as my surrounding world.
Finding your honest voice is a caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis. It involves cutting the toxins from your life, as the bad tries its best to muffle the good into submission. Once claws of darkness are snipped, you’ll realize how much easier it is to breathe. Looking back on your former self, you appreciate the obstacles that have allowed you to grow as you laugh and skip into your day. And in that gratitude for your past, oh boy does it feel good to be emotionally free.
We are expressive creatures. Our sorrows, pains, joys, and laugher are meant to reverberate outward, not inward. When we close ourselves off to the world, sorrow becomes a poison, and laughter is never heard. Instead, we must be transparent. When we are sad, we need to show it. It will invite in comfort and solace. When we’re happy, scream it. Happiness is a magnet for even more joy, continuing to spiral into a circle of bliss and big smiles. When we’re angry, display our rage. A free self angered is a self that has experienced mistreatment—whether by our own doing or others’. And anger is a healthy emotion to have—after all, it’s part of what makes us human.
In order to get to this point, we have to understand that it’s ok to share. It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to laugh and smile and be fully honest in all of our emotions. And it’s always ok to be 100 percent you. Because there is no other you in the world—and you’re true self is beautiful.
Coach Cai 