Here are the three steps to building yourself a brand new container, which will promote your growth no matter what you’re going through: This leads to the second half of practicing transparency: accepting your story. Most people want to rip out chapters. They spend their days regretting and wishing things didn’t happen the way they did. But this keeps you stuck in what could have been instead of what can be. The more you accept your story, the more transparent you will be. And the more you practice transparency, the richer your growth. So let’s do a quick experiment. Take out a piece of paper. Make columns for each part of your life: Friends, work, family, and your romantic relationship or your last romantic relationship. In the columns, write down all the things you have been negotiating. Really think about this. Your standards? Your passions? Your truth? Your voice? Your worth? And what were the consequences? How did these sacrifices impact the quality of your life and beliefs you have about yourself? Sometimes, I think that growth is about “a reunion with your true self” more than anything else. You must reconnect with that part of you that you stuffed into a hope-chest and locked up when life happened. By “life,” I mean death, divorce, a breakup, transition, anything that forced you to grow up fast, to put yourself aside to take care of someone else. These kinds of experiences can lead you to disconnect from your true self and never really get to know them. The action step here is to re-connect with yourself and allow this new relationship to guide your thinking and behavior. Meet him here and connect with him on Facebook.
