Tell Your Truth

As a teacher, I tell myself (and others) that I love learning. And I do. It's not one of my top 6 values (I can only get my values list down to 6) but still, I cherish it. Growth and vision--2 of my top 6 values--combine to essentially create learning, so I think I get pretty close. And since you asked, I won't hold back. My other top 4 values include: integrity, courage, spirituality, and wholeheartedness.

And so, being a person who highly, highly values growth, you might think I am always open and ready for a challenge or that I'm always open and ready to be pushed. Spoiler alert: I am not. I am a Capricorn. I like structure. Especially when it comes to lessons I thought I already learned. Reteach me a core life lesson that I think I've already mastered? Sounds like torture to this former high ability student. Which is precisely why I think life, at times, lets us take another at-bat at those "mastered" lessons--so we can learn more deeply and more completely as we grow in our lives as leaders.

So as I reflect on this past year of learning for me, there's this very clear phrase--this clear lesson--that comes to mind immediately. It's simple. It's common. And it can often be as downright painful as it is liberating:

Tell the truth.

Friends, I am an honest person. When I tell you I have not been able to lie or cover a lie or even think I am lying since I was maybe 3--I am not exaggerating. I have always been a person who what you see is what you get. Yes, I can hold back the facial expressions when I really need to. I can turn on the more stoic, patient, nodding face when required (though I do not prefer it). But I am very, very uncomfortable omitting facts and details, and I am very, very uncomfortable avoiding reality and truth. Perhaps this is why I am good with data conversations, psychoanalyzing my friends, and brainstorming plans for how we can collectively get better.

I seem to tell myself that I like--dare I say--prefer--the truth. At all times. Or least I claimed to.

I know this about me--my proclivity towards truth. I've known this about me for years and years. So it really came as a great surprise to me that Tell the Truth was a deeper lesson I needed to learn.

Because--what was left to learn? What was I missing? Where was the more truth in truth? And why hadn't I found this sooner?

First off, I was pushed to examine the word the in this phrase and really question it. Often in any situation that involves more than 1 person--there is more than 1 truth. There is your experienced truth/reality, filled with your experienced context--and there are others' experienced truth/reality of the exact same situations, plans, events, outcomes. While a common moment in time may be shared--there are always multiple individual truths living among us.

And I think I used to be a little more afraid of this "multiple truths" concept before this past year. I used to view truth as such a rigid, one-size-is-right concept that I wouldn't always save that needed, necessary space for completely different interpretations and view points and experiences.

I am a person who, in a quest to learn and know and seek and find--am sometimes narrowly learning and knowing and seeking and finding. I can get tunnel vision. I can think I am not only right--but the most right. And most of the time. Ugh.

That's not easy to admit and write. And it's not easy to always connect with. It's not always easy to live with. And being right is not a most-lovable trait. I am ridiculously grateful to the people in my life who stand by me, who meet me where I am, and choose to love my know-it-all-when-I-really-don't nature. It's a lifelong process of letting go of the need to know--and trusting that things really do work out okay.

My deeper lessons about truth this year have transformed from Tell THE Truth to Tell YOUR Truth. And friends, this is a total gamechanger. A total freaking gamechanger. When we can each get quiet enough, first as humans with hearts and second as leaders with souls--we can find our actual truths. We can name our real core values--along with anything that might be misaligned in our lives.

Misalignment is felt. We know it's there whether we want to face it and name it or not. Misalignment feels like it's causing pain--because it is. But that pain doesn't have to be "bad." It's actually not worth a judgment. It just is. This is what I mean by Tell Your Truth. It's true whether you name it or not. The tension, the misalignment--it's there whether you put words to it or bury it inside. But the more you bury it, try to manage it, control it--the more it eats you alive.

So don't do that. Don't bury your truth/pain/misalignment. Let it out. Tell yourself how you are feeling. Tell someone else how you are feeling. We all feel the tensions; we all feel the misalignments; we all experience life differently. It's good to be human--and it's good to be human with others.

As a leader, what does this mean? It means you choose, each day, to listen to your true feelings and to honor them. You also listen to the true feelings of your colleagues and loved ones--and you honor those too.

I know a lot of really nice people who are dying inside because they haven't figured out how to talk about their truths (especially the truths that involve pain). I know a lot of really previously vivacious teachers and leaders who are burnt out, overwhelmed, and buried in unspoken truths. They experience physical pain, migraines (me!) anxiety, depression, neck and back ache, weakened immune systems, irritable stomachs, heart disease, and heartache.

These same folks are some of the nicest, most agreeable, people we'll ever meet. And they are trapped inside their buried emotions--barricaded truths--walled away from love.

• We don't need to live and lead this way.

  
  

• It really is okay to tell people what's going on inside of us.

  
  

• It really is okay to make time for others to share their joys and sorrows.

  
  

• It really is okay to listen to someone else and realize that though you shared the same time and space--your experiences and interpretations could be completely different.

  
  

• It really is okay to let feelings come up and pass through.

  
  

• It really is okay to be messy and confusing.

  
  

• It really is okay to let others down sometimes.

  
  

• It really is okay to let go of structure and certainty and direction sometimes.

  
  

• It really is okay to choose to exist with others--right where they are--without moving or prompting or pushing or pulling.

  
  

• It really is okay to be human.

  
  

• There really is no better option.

I don't think Tell Your Truth is about pointing at others and telling them what is happening in their lives. I think it's all about looking inside ourselves as leaders and then vulnerably, and appropriately, discerning how to share our worlds with those around us. Leaders who are known can be leaders who are loved. And in return, we can love our people back with whole hearts and arms open wide.

But you can't love people who won't let you know them. And leaders--we cannot know others if we don't first know and love ourselves.

Love is a core component of leadership. It simply is. At least in my experienced truth of these words. Choosing to love yourself, dear leader, for exactly who you are and who you are becoming--is quite possibly the most important and influential act of service there is. You give to others better when you can give from a place of grounded love.

So, dear leaders, I leave you with this: tell your truths. Let others see you. Let yourself breathe and let yourself love. Let others find you and connect with you and celebrate you. You are worth it. They are worth it. We are all worth it.