3 Steps To Become Radically Transparent

There is nothing better than to be on a shared mission with extraordinary people who can be radically truthful and radically transparent with each other.Ray Dalio

I remember the words I once said to a great friend of mine: I am a very good actor, but a very bad liar.

Not that being deplorable at it has stopped me from doing it in the past — and not that it stops any of us from doing so either — most people lie. We do it unconsciously, or consciously, and then find a way to justify it.

We do it, largely, because our society knows too much about judgment and too little about empathy and compassion. We also do it because that same society that we have built, and the way it is structured — through the illusion of power, rules, separation, and stereotyping — encourages us to deny ourselves if we want to fit in.

The caveat is that, by agreeing to society’s rules, we become a worse kind of liar: We save face with others, by pretending, and by telling them what they want to hear, and we do it at the expense of ourselves.

Becoming radically transparent is not only about being completely honest with others. It is, also, about being completely honest with ourselves, in a way that we stop using our protection mechanisms — chasing the next shiny object, looking for the most-coveted approval, etc — so that we dare to live from within.

If we want to effectively change the way we appear to others, first, we need to change ourselves. And then we will realise that the way that we appear to others doesn’t matter, at all, because what we were chasing all along — love, acceptance — we can provide for ourselves, unconditionally, and this liberates us from any negative attachments.

Here are three steps that we can take to free ourselves, from someone who wishes he had learn these truths way earlier in life. There is, however, as the popular adage says, no time like the present.

Before anything, pause.

We can sense it in our bodies, that we need to be able to pause when we encounter these moments — whether it’s death or birth or stress or beauty or moments with each other in a certain way — we can sense that it is in the moments of pausing that we really touch into a natural luminosity, presence, intelligence, creativity. The pause actually creates a space for the light to come through.
Tara Brach

We live in the age of anxiety and instant gratification. Smartphones, and their myriad swift-response applications — WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage — thrive as much in resolving our sense of urgency for pressing situations as they boom by preying on our worst fears — being unloved, unaccepted — and bringing up that long-buried belief that we did something wrong. I wrote about that when I shared my experience of not having a phone. I have been this way for over four months now, and it is liberating. I no longer need to respond on the hoof to anything. When somebody messages me needing an urgent response, I no longer panic or go to long extents to appease them.

I understand that not everyone can afford to be without a phone, given the extremely valuable tool it can be for our work and for our ways to make a living. But something that we can all afford to do before responding to anything is pausing. Pausing breaks the chain of thoughts; it also stops our hardwired default settings from running the show.

Dr. Joe Dispenza illustrates it in Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself:

When anything goes wrong or is awry in your life, you automatically assume that you’re the guilty party. But that seems normal to you now. You don’t even have to think about feeling guilty — you just are that way. Not only is your mind not conscious of how you express your guilty state by way of the things you say and do, but your body wants to feel its accustomed level of guilt, because that’s what you have trained it to do. You have become unconsciously guilty most of the time — your body has become the mind of guilt.

Only when, say, a friend points out that you needn’t have apologized to the store clerk for giving you the wrong change do you realize how pervasive this aspect of your personality has become. Let’s say that this triggers one of those moments of enlightenment — an epiphany — and you think, She’s right. Why do I apologize all the time? Why do I take responsibility for everyone else’s missteps? After you reflect on your history of constantly ‘pleading guilty’, you say to yourself, Today I’m going to stop blaming myself and making excuses for other people’s bad behavior. I’m going to change.

Because of your decision, you’re no longer going to think the same thoughts that produce the same feelings, and vice versa. And if you falter, you’ve made a deal with yourself that you’re going to stop and remember your intention. Two hours go by and you feel really good about yourself. You think, Wow, this is actually working.

Just as we can be our worst enemy, we can become our best friend. Pausing brings the autopilot to a sudden halt. Pausing breaks our default settings, it can help us get in touch with our heart. We do not need to respond instantly. By pausing, we create that much-needed space to respond from that higher knowing, from our intuition, from the place from where we can make the right choice — the place from where we can be transparent and don’t feel the need to lie.

How to pause? The first step in pausing is to come back to our breath. That, by itself, will allow us to get to a better internal space, and will reduce any tension or anxiety that we might be feeling. To create an even stronger impact, we can implement a practice I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh, which guides our breath:

Breathing in love and compassion,

Breathing out fear and pain.

This will aid in dissolving the fears that might be triggered by our autopilot, and as we are filled with the golden light of love, we can respond to the situation from a different space.

Questioning your intentions

You cannot find your soul with your mind, you must use your heart. You must know what you’re feeling. If you don’t know what you’re feeling, you will create unconsciously.
Gary Zukav

Many times, we will be tempted to get out of a situation through a petty, insignificant white lie. The problem is that those little, kind, loving lies — if you want to call them that way — compound over time. Many times, we will doubt, and we will say yes when we truly don’t want to. And those moments of self-betrayal, as trivial as they may seem, also compound over time. In the end, they hurt our self-love, our confidence, and take away our power.

This is why it is critical that we question our intention before taking any action. We can do so by answering the following questions: What am I feeling? What am I hoping to accomplish? How do I want to feel? Is this action the only road to feeling the way I want to feel? Why? What are the core needs that I want to meet?

If our intention is to not hurt somebody, then let us remind ourselves that by agreeing to something against our will, we are hurting ourselves, and that hurt people hurt people, and that therefore, by trying to avoid hurting someone, we will most likely hurt them in the future. Truth is the best kindness, even if we have been taught all the opposite.

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If our intention is love, then, by pausing, and then questioning, we will get to the core of the right answer from a heart-driven space, and we will prevent ourselves from getting into situations that we will most likely regret in the near future. By lying, we might be able to delude ourselves that we are preserving something — approval, status, power — but none of that lasts in the grand scheme of things. And we will find ourselves at the same crossroads, over and over, until we learn the lesson.

I’ll share an example of my entrepreneurial endeavours, comparing those that have been successful with those that have not. When I built my first successful business, and I had the capital to built a startup-driven investment portfolio, those projects that lost money had one common denominator: I had agreed to invest from a fear-driven space. I had no interest in the business model, or in what they were hoping to accomplish. But since, back then, I cared a lot about my status, and about what people said about me, I agreed to invest based on all kinds of fears: What would people say if I don’t? God forbid that they think I have no money. Would I keep the friendship of those involved if I say no? What if this business turns me into a billionaire and I passed on the opportunity? The shared thread of all this example is that they are all questions based out of fear, self-doubt, and unhealthy attachments — to ideas, people, and ultimately, to illusions of control.

Another example, of my personal life. This has been a common scenario: a group of friends invites me to a certain gathering, which I don’t feel like attending. I don’t want to hurt them, and so I end up accepting their invitation. I show up, and because I never wanted to be there in the first place, I’m not present. For the next few hours, I ruminate, daydream, and sip a drink in silence hoping for the hours to pass. Then I go home and question if the same friends still like me, scolding myself for being so rude. Why do we have to start that negative circle in the first place, if it could have been so easily avoided?

When we lie, whether we lie to others or to ourselves, we get in the way of the inevitable flow of life — and we perpetuate our learning through suffering instead of through love and harmony.

We live in a world that functions largely through speed, anxiety, and ultimately, through coercion and the fear of missing out; of not being enough. But that is not the high road. That is not our true path. When we trust the timings of the Universe, there is no fear. And in order to trust, after pausing, we need to question. Questioning will lead us to discern those truths that come from within versus those fake truths that have been imposed onto us through fear and compulsion.

Even in the business world, author Jim Collins said it right, when he was writing about the success of the investment fund 3G Capital: Discipline and calm, not speed, are the key to success in a time of potential crisis. Understand how much time you have to make decisions, and use that time to make the best decision possible, and maintain a sense of calm.

If a decision requires that you give an immediate response, and your only reason for doing so is the fear of missing out, then most likely you are better off missing out on the deal, for the simple reason that the spiritual path — and therefore our highest road — is not about deals.

Remember that your worthiness is unconditional, and that no event can affect it.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright, and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.
Brené Brown

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Our society measures our worth based on results, which is a huge reason why we lie.

What did you get in the test?

What did the girl you asked out tell you?

What was your result in yesterday’s match? (As a competitive youth tennis player, I used to face this one a lot)

If we believe that the other person will respond negatively, we lie. In line with the previous example, whenever I would lose a match that I felt ashamed of losing, I would lie about having an injury, or would resort to blaming the court, or the opponent for cheating — there can be an endless list of excuses if we look for it.

But if we pause, and if we question our intention, and we decide to remember that our worthiness is intrinsic and not subject to any result — or answer — then we will realise that there is no need to lie or to hide anything. In my case, I wish I knew at that time that my value as a human was constant, regardless of the rollercoaster of my tennis — or any other — type of results.

By remembering that our worthiness is intrinsic, we can complete the process of becoming radically transparent, because there’s nothing to lose, and our deepest desire — to be seen, accepted, loved — is fulfiled no matter what happens.

Imagine the following scenario:

Somebody that you have in high regard and who had high expectations about an upcoming job move for you, asks you: So, how did the job interview go?

You’re battered, because the recruiter was, as you would say, a tough nut to crack, and three people who went to what you consider is a better school than you did were also in the waiting room, and therefore you don’t believe that you have much opportunity.

You can:

a) Pretend it was fantastic, because you’re afraid to disappoint the person who made the question, and because you don’t want to feel vulnerable, and part of your self-worth is tied to whether you get the job or not.

b) You can tell the truth, and express your confusion, and fear, and say that no matter what happens, you are at peace because you did your best with what you knew at the time.

A society-driven approach, driven by external approval, and impressions, would choose option A. But if we choose option B, we will give the other person a great gift, because we are showing ourselves to the world from a space of love, and compassion, and in doing so, we give permission to the other person to do the same. As Marianne Williamson would say, as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

An approach that I consider very valuable to remember this is The Work, by Byron Katie. It is essentially comprised by four questions.

Question 1: Is it true? (Is it true that my friend will not approve of me if I tell him/her that I don’t feel confident about my result in the interview?)

Question 2: Can you absolutely know it’s true? (Can I be completely certain of that belief that I won’t be approved of, or loved?)

Question 3: How do you react — what happens — when you believe that thought? (What fears do I have that are triggered by this?)

Question 4: Who would you be without the thought? (What part of my identity, and ultimately, of my worthiness is threatened by not getting the job?)

This will help us in our process of coming back to our centre, of remembering our unconditional worthiness, and of making better decisions from a wholehearted space. In doing so, we can become radically transparent — showing ourselves to the world as we are, with our gifts and talents. We can engage actively in our mission of what we came here to do, and when we are in that frequency, there is no fear that can bring us down.

Key Takeaways

Before anything, pause. Take a deep breath, and allow your body to shed fear and be filled with love, and empathy, and compassion.
Question your intentions. What are you feeling? What are you hoping to accomplish? How do you want to feel? What is it that you need?
Remember that your worthiness is unconditional, and that no event can change it. Your value as a person is intrinsic, and no result will alter the reality that you are worthy of love and acceptance. So, be yourself. As I said in one of my previous articles, life asks nothing of you except that you be who you are.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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