Radical Honesty - by Brad Blanton
ISBN: 0970693842Date read: 2009-06-20
How strongly I recommend it: 1/10
(See my list of 360+ books, for more.)
Go to the Amazon page for details and reviews.
First read the great article in Esquire magazine: http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707 This book just elaborates on that philosophy.
my notes
The kind of lying that is most deadly is withholding, or keeping back information from someone we think would be affected by it.
Sigmund Freud once said that psychoanalysis was to help people get from intense suffering to common unhappiness.
We attribute all of our power to circumstances and say things like "It makes me...."
Nietzsche said, "Not doubt, certainty is what drives one insane."
Adult moralists are always angry people. The more the moralist is confronted with sloppy old experience, the more hysterical he or she becomes.
Depending on an external frame of reference for social orientation leads you to try to manipulate other people to get what you want rather than getting it on your own.
The person capable of telling the truth - still has roles to play, but is no longer trapped by them. The integrated person behind the role no longer has anything to hide, and can relate freely to the being he knows is hidden behind the roles others are playing. The person is then in charge, rather than the role.
Begin here the practice of admitting how you feel when you feel it, speaking your secret judgments of others out loud, and constantly revealing your own petty and condescending ways.
A successful life, in contrast, is one in which you can share with others openly, as your life happens, without all that rehearsal.
Manipulation never works to get the result desired, but it always seems like it's just about to work. When you get what you said you wanted by manipulation, it is never enough. When you tell the truth and get what you want, getting what you want is like gravy - it feels like you are getting more than you ever hoped for,
When I choose to be really honest and say what I experience and what I feel, I am showing that I can be trusted. This is the only kind of behavior that can bring about a response of trust. Trust is my response to a person that I know I can believe. Even if I dislike a person, I can trust him if he is honest with me,
If I calculate and put on phony behavior in order to please you, you may love my behavior, but you cannot love me, because I have hidden my real existence behind this artificial behavior.
Even when you love in response to my phony behavior, I cannot really receive your love. It is poisoned by my knowledge that the love is for the image I have created, not for me. I also have to be continually on guard to be surethat I maintain my image so that your love does not disappear. Since I have shut myself off from your love in this way, I will feel more lonely and unloved, and try even more desperately to manipulate myself and you in order to get this love.
"I can't take it anymore," "It's not worth the struggle," and "I've got to get out of this place," are products of incomplete disclosure of feelings toward, and thoughts about, others.
Admit that who you are is not who you have been pretending to be.
Praise yourself openly rather than manipulate to suck praise.
Admit what a worm and a liar you are and go through the feelings that come up when you tell the truth about all of this. If you have never truly embarrassed yourself by what you had to say about yourself, you don't know shit from shinola about transformation.
Who you are becomes more a description centered in the here and now, and less of a story about your life.
Admit your ignorance. You confess that you developed your act in order not to appear lost and in hopes of finding your way by faking it. Then you admit that you are lost and faking it most of the time
Before you acted smart; now you acknowledge ignorance like it is gold.
This ego-attachment to having heroically survived the unfairness of the world that has to be given up
Your hard-earned humility is quickly followed by pride in your humility.
When we reveal more, we have less to hide. When we have less to hide, we are less worried about being found out. When we are less worried about being found out, we can pay better attention to someone else.
Who you were before this second is already dead.
When you tell the truth, you are free simply by virtue of describing what is so.
Honest people speak simply, using language more to describe than to evaluate. Liars evaluate almost exclusively, only using enough description to make the story believable.
History is full of pitiful, wonderful, dumb-assed heroes who sacrificed their lives to save those they loved from some bullshit threat that seemed real at the time but turned out to be imaginary.
Anger is not a grenade.
People resent being withheld from
When people don't get good results from the direct expression of anger, the odds are the anger wasn't completely expressed. Probably one or both people were mad, but trying to be decent and fair at the same time.
We must be willing to be angry rather than decent and fair, because angry, rather than decent and fair, is what we presently are.
It seems unfair to resent people for things over which they have no control.
Our decision not to express our resentment is based on a deeply held belief that our anger has to be justified.
Speak in the present tense. Just because you are talking about something he did in the past, don't say, "I resented you." You still resent that person, right now, for what he did or said in the past, so state it in the present tense.
Eventually, get specific. Even though it doesn't always feel this way, you probably resent the person for what he specifically did or said.
Focus as much as you can on what did happen instead of what didn't happen. When you resent someone for what he didn't do - that is, violating your expectations - look back to what he said or did to create that expectation. Express your resentment to him for what he said or did.
The unfair blaming is being done out loud. It is in the public domain where it can get cleared up, not in your secretive mind.
What you want is the feeling of completion and wholeness that comes when you have told the truth about your petty, selfish mind and raised hell out loud like a fool.