Radical Honesty Isn't What You Think

Most of us were taught somewhere along the way that pushing through hard feelings is the responsible thing to do.

Get up. Do the thing. It doesn't matter how you feel.

It sounds practical. It costs more than most people realize.

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Like many people, I thought that getting through hard feelings meant setting them aside. I told myself countless times as a young single mother, “Jennifer, it doesn’t matter how you feel, get up.”

The problem with that strategy is that, as my daughter very wisely explained one day, saying that invalidates your experience. And if I have learned anything in the last 15 years, it’s how badly invalidating can damage people, yourself included. 

It seems very practical, doesn’t it? I mean, you wake up in the morning struggling with something, not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to do anything, and you say to yourself: 

“Come on, you don’t have time for this, get out of bed.” This is, of course, the kind version. 

The problem with this approach, as I learned the hard way, is that if you do it too much, too long for the wrong reasons, you really damage your sense of self, your sense of value, and begin to think that what you think and feel is not important. 

It’s a train wreck waiting to happen. 

Being radically honest with yourself is how you make sure it doesn’t happen. It’s the simple process of knowing when to compartmentalize and when to process. 

It’s about understanding the difference between allowing feelings to lead behavior and acknowledging they exist.

I believe firmly that to lead yourself well, you need to begin by learning your nervous system and providing yourself with stability. If you consistently ignore or avoid how you really feel about something - anything, you will not be stable. It can’t happen. 

And the less stable you are, the harder it is to think and make decisions. 

If you can’t make good choices, you won’t have good outcomes. It’s that simple.

And before you go there…I’m not saying you don’t have to do things you don’t want to do. 

This isn’t an either-or discussion. It’s about AND. 

You can feel like staying in bed, acknowledge you feel that way, and still get up.

You just stop trying to convince yourself that you really do want to get up and don’t talk badly to yourself because you don’t. 

Without it a couple of things happen; One, you aren’t being honest with yourself. Two, you aren’t treating yourself with empathy, which is means you aren’t treating yourself with respect either. And it doesn’t allow you to establish boundaries for yourself when you might need to. 

In essence, you aren’t showing up for yourself. 

When you tell yourself your feelings don't count — that they're irrelevant, that there's no time for them, that you just need to push through — you're not being strong. You're being dishonest with yourself about what's actually happening inside you.

I think a lot of us learned this somewhere along the way — that acknowledging how we feel is somehow in conflict with doing what needs to be done. Like, there's only room for one or the other.

But some of the healthiest, most capable people I know are the ones who can hold both. They can say "this is hard, I don't want to do it, and I'm going to do it anyway" — without one part canceling out the other.

This is wisdom. When you stop pretending how you feel doesn't exist, you stop spending energy fighting yourself. And that energy becomes available for the thing you actually need to do.

This applies everywhere — in your work, in your relationships, in the decisions you make every single day. It shows up often when work and home collide. 

You had an argument with your partner, and you need to smile for a client. 

Your mother is sick and the report needs to be done. 

You didn’t sleep well and you have a 9:15 call. 

The professionals I work with are constantly navigating moments where what they feel and what they need to do seem to be pulling in opposite directions. 

The instinct is often to choose. Either push the feeling down and perform, or let the feeling take over and avoid the work. Both of those are forms of dishonesty. Both of them cost you.

The third option — the one that's actually helpful — is to do both. Acknowledge what's true about how you feel. And acknowledge what's true about what needs to happen next. Neither one erases the other.

This acknowledgement becomes easier when we know our values and priorities. And when we have some discipline. 

If you are familiar with my I Got You program, you’ll know that empathy is defined as trusting the emotional experience someone is having and then asking, ‘what do you want to do about it?”

This process is empathy for yourself. 

I feel (fill in the blank). What do I want to do about it? 

From there, you give yourself permission to lead with your values and priorities. 

What matters to you most in this moment and why? What’s the second-order consequence you are moving toward? What do you need to give yourself to make it happen? 

That's radical honesty. Not the absence of feeling. Not performance despite feeling. The willingness to be honest about all of it, at the same time, and to keep moving anyway.