Practise Being True

First published on September 16, 2020

'What wants to emerge today?', is the question I often ask myself at some point on a Wednesday, before pressing go on the timer and starting to write.

I know what I'm looking for: it's a feeling of aliveness moving through me. A feeling of something happening which I can't describe but which is, in different words, flow, fulfillment, purpose, and more.

It happens in my coaching sessions, too. Not always, but sometimes. Mostly it comes when I can feel myself speaking the truth.

Not just any truth, but a deeper truth, a truth neither I or the client knew until that moment.

When a client is planning how to approach a difficult conversation, my response as their coach is often: 'How about telling the truth?' But sometimes they don't know the truth; they don't know it even though they have said it. And they always have said it: that is how I'm able to offer them the truth back as frame for their conversaiton.

This is one of the metacompetencies of coaching: listening for the truth. Not 'something that is true', but truth on a deeper level. These are the insights, the new things, emerging in the moment. These are the frames for a hard conversation with a boss, which once spoken feels so simple. These are the dots joined backwards into a life story, which suddenly means it makes total sense why someone is starting out on a new career.

Truth. Human beings love truth.

Truth is what the great artists offer: truth beyond the surface, beyond what words alone can conjure. Art can feel like home, like opening, like depth, like feelings. This is the feeling of something true being expressed. Something true about you, which you didn't know until it was expressed by the artist.

I have heard both Douglas Murray and Jordan Peterson talking, deeply touched and deeply touchingly, about people approaching them after speaking engagements and saying, 'I came here to hear someone speaking the truth. Thank you.' That doesn't always make these people popular, but even in trying to speak the truth, to get closer to truth, they are offering something which the world, and the people speaking to them, clearly need.

You can feel the truth when you're in person with someone, even over Zoom or the telephone it is possible. It is not so possible when faced with words on an electronic page. And it is particularly hard as we live in a world full of emperors with new clothes.

And when we know the truth, what do we do with it? We act with it. We, then, have a deeper grasp of reality. We are more able to take 'right action', to be our skilful, nimble, wise Higher Self.

When we know the truth about ourselves, what then do we do with it? We be it. Whenever we can, and more each day. The word authentic has become so well used it has become almost meaningless. How many people who say they want to be authentic practise finding the truth about themselves and then being it? How many companies do?

That is the value of a compass for truth. That is the value of holding our integrity. That is the value of being careful with our language. That is the value of committing and then recommitting. Of being someone who keeps their word, to themselves and others.

Because, as Peterson would say, if you don't even tell the truth to yourself, how can you hope to have a grip on reality?

If you believe in God, you can commit to doing God's work. If you don't, there are worse aims you could set for your life than being true. Than being more true today than you were yesterday.

If you want purpose in your life, or fulfillment, you could aim for those. But that's tricky. If you aim for truth, then that will take you to purpose and fulfillment.

And so, practise truth. In writing, in speech, in art.

But practise.