The Thing You Want Most In Life (and you may not even know it yet)
I counsel men and women everyday who feel stuck in life for many different reasons. All of those people sit across from me in my office wanting something. Sometimes, that “something” is better finances. Other times, it’s a less stressful job or to just stop stressing out in general.
I don’t incorporate this into every single session, but at some point with my clients, I do address what I believe to be the thing a person wants most in life: To Know and Be Known.
People will ask me, “Why do I have to talk about my issues with others? I don’t want to seem like a complainer.” They will tell me, “I just keep things bottled up inside of me.”
And here’s the problem with that statement and mentality to life...
By refusing to “let others in” on your life, you are disqualifying yourself from experiencing one of your deepest desires as a human being. By not being completely honest with the other person sitting in front of you, you will never allow yourself to be completely known. Consequently, you will never get what you want most in life.
“What if they think I’m the weirdest person in the world and run as fast as they can in the other direction, leaving me heartbroken once again?” And I say to that....
”Good on em’! TheIr loss!”
I would choose to be heartbroken and known rather than my heart remain “safe and secure” but never really be known by someone else. You see, living by this mentality is not subjective to someone else’s response to our honest, real expression of ourselves in the moment. Yes, it’s nice when someone can respond to us in love. However, my happiness is not a result from someone else’s response to me. My happiness is contingent on my ability to express ME- the REAL me to those in my daily life (And so help me God, social media does not count. I’m talking about person-to-person interaction).
An important point to make, however, is this; Just because I'm real with someone does not mean that whatever I'm “real” about is accurate and truthful. There have been many times in my life when I have shared real feelings and beliefs, but that didn't mean what I shared was accurate. Nonetheless, in order to get to that place of truth and understanding, I had to express my real and actual thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.
SIDE NOTE: This is not an excuse to be a jerk while you’re “being honest.” There are a lot of people in the world who pride themselves on their “honesty,” but ultimately they don’t give a crap about truly being known by others. They especially don’t give a crap about actually knowing others around them. They are usually just jerks with some type of agenda. Not only that, I find that those jerks don’t even know who they are as a person themselves, outside of something that they might associate themselves with, whether that happens to be a certain belief, occupation, hobby, or even church. While they might be “honest,” they don’t have clue who they are personally, and their words are like someone banging their hands on a piano. They're making noise, but there is no melody being played. You’ll do anything for that person to take his or her hands off and step back from the instrument.
A large house would be awesome. Your kids making straight A’s would be pretty sweet. No personal debt wouldn’t be bad either. A President who doesn’t use Twitter would be nice as well. However, I assure you this is not what you want most in life. What you and I want most in life is to truly know and be known.