I was asked yesterday what emotional resilience has got to do with honesty. Try this…
You know when you have said something in the privacy of your own home about someone and the kids have overheard you? For example you say that Mrs. Goggins from No 43 is a mean old git or something similar.
Then when you are with your young child in the street and you meet Mrs. Goggins, What is the one thing you pray your child doesn’t do right now?
Yeah that’s right be honest! You may recognise the feeling of the moment your child pipes up “Hi mrs. Goggins my Mum / Dad thinks (as you leap for their mouth) you are a mean old git” and you lie by saying something like, “Oh no I think she/he must have got confused we were talking about another Mrs. Goggins.”
Then in all cringe making innocence daughter or son pipes up “No Mum/Dad you said it was her, you know, this Mrs. Goggins, from number 43, you said mum/dad, you said.” as you start to die inside, “Oh look at the time, must dash, lovely to see you Mrs. Goggins, as always.” and under your breath, just loud enough for you your son/daughter to hear, “Wait till I get you home. you really embarrassed me”.
Now we all have opinions of people that we don’t tell people. We often rationalise it as ‘Not wishing to be hurtful’ or ‘I don’t want to cause trouble’, or ‘better let sleeping dogs lye’. What we actually mean (because we are often not being honest with ourselves) is “I don’t like the feelings and don’t want the consequences of being that honest.”
Fear usually drives our lack of total honesty. It takes courage and emotional resilience to really say what we really think and face up to the fact that it is often our lack of courage (not the other excuses) that prevents us from voicing our opinions.
The other side of this coin is people being totally honest with us; being told something (feedback) about ourselves that we don’t like and we don’t want to hear, no matter how true it might be. Something that ‘hurts us’. Often we rationalise this by deflection by saying something like ‘Oh it’s ok they are just in a mood’ or something like that to shift the blame and the emotional consequences. It takes real emotional resilience to firstly hear what people are saying about us, often with their body language and then face up to it and truly and openly explore the feedback for what we can learn and change about our attitudes and behaviours.
Just a thought.
Dave
