What is the TRUTH?

The truth can be very subjective and dependent on your own perspective. Two people can look at the same object, for instance, and one person may see red, while the other sees green. In this example, what each person sees is true to them. 

You may be wondering, “can’t such a thing be proven by science, and isn’t science the real truth?” Well, yes. When something can be proven and replicated over and over again, oftentimes that answer would be the truth. And yet, a person who disagrees with such a conclusion because of how they view the world will still have their own truth that they hold in their own reality.

To go deeper into the truth, I’d like to share with you an acronym that came to me several years ago:

Total

Reality

Uncovered

Through

Honesty

Let’s break that down. Total means sum, all-encompassing, and complete. Reality is your experience of the world and everything you perceive within it. It can flow and change—what may have been real to you 10 or 20 years ago may not be your current reality. (Certain things will still be consistent, but your subjective reality in general can and will shift over time.) Uncovered means that your total reality is underneath something—perception, belief, point-of-view, etc. So, your Total Reality is Uncovered Through Honesty. When you are being honest with both yourself and others, you will uncover your total reality, and therein lies the truth.

So, what happens once you uncover your reality and get to the truth? I have 3 things I’d like to share with you on that, which I call:

The 3 Effects of the Truth

(1) “The Truth Hurts”

The truth hurts because it breaks up denial—what is covering it. As we uncover this, we break through our defenses, and we’re faced with the raw reality of our situation. Breaking through our defense mechanisms is painful—after all, they were protecting us from something that we were avoiding out of fear. And confronting the things that we fear is no easy task.

(2) “The Truth Will Set You Free”

Once you’ve broken through the denial covering the truth, you can now be free. Once you stop hiding, running, convincing, defending, and practicing any other form of denial, you have an opportunity to release the burden of suppressing what is real. You may experience guilt, shame, resistance, upset, anger, sadness, or any multitude of emotions. The opportunity here is that once we work through these emotions, we are truly set free. We no longer have to shuck and jive and avoid people or scenarios that can be upsetting. We are free to be ourselves whether others approve or agree or not. 

(3) “You Can’t Handle the Truth”

As Jack Nicholson said to Tom Cruise in the movie “A Few Good Men,” this phrase comes into play when the reality of a situation is simply too much to bear, and we are unable to walk through the negative emotions accompanying the truth. In such a case, we are sent back to the first “effect,” and we go back into denial, creating defense mechanisms to cover the truth back up. This gives us another opportunity to work through these defenses and to get honest with ourselves.

Uncovering Your Truth

As you’ve likely gathered from this blog so far, the truth is not always an easy thing. It can be so intense and unpleasant or painful at times that we naturally make adaptations in our perception in order to keep moving forward and surviving. Sometimes we need to be in denial, at least for a little while—it can be a protective survival mechanism.

And if you’ve gone through periods of time when you couldn’t “handle the truth,” that is ok. We have all gone through those times. The important thing is to realize that no matter what the situation, no matter how difficult the reality may be underneath all of the denial, and no matter how painful it may feel to get near the truth, it can and will ultimately set you free. This can and will lead you away from surviving and into thriving in life. 

I encourage you to discover your truth one day at a time, and sometimes one moment at a time, by allowing yourself to sit with uncomfortable emotions and begin to walk through them. Become aware when you are deflecting, avoiding, and otherwise denying yourself from feeling what you need to feel, and seeing what you need to see. As you practice this with intention, you will become more and more honest with yourself, and you will uncover your truth and set yourself free.