Saturday, December 7, 2013

I wish I could tell you how I really feel...

As a kid we all want to get older because we believe that things will become easier and simpler.

As we all so abruptly find out, life doesn't get simpler with age, it gets more and more complicated.

Life doesn't become more black-and-white, it becomes every shade of grey imaginable.

We soon find out that the simplest and most straight-forward issues become layered in complication and difficulty.

Here's the tricky part as we age... we end up having to play 'games' and we end up having to become masters of manipulation, persuasion, and misdirection.

As youths, we are naive and we assume that everyone is honest and telling the truth at all times.

How far from the truth could we be...

Go back to the most recent conversation or interaction you've had with someone. This can be either someone in your personal life or someone in your professional life.

Were you able to tell them exactly how you felt and were you able to tell them exactly why it is that you felt that way? Were you able to be completely honest with this person?

Now, when we are talking about honesty, please know we aren't talking about a straight-up lie and the straight-up truth. The idea of pure honesty and pure deceit aren't as common as we think they are...

Think about the last time you told someone that you were going to be honest and frank with them... were you really completely honest and truthful with this person or were you still only partially honest about your feelings and thoughts?

Rewind for a moment and go back to when you were a kid.

Think about the pureness and open honesty that comes from the mouths of children...

We all laugh and chuckle about their honesty and simplicity in thinking, but why do we always stop at just laughing about it?

Life is complicated and how we approach life is even more complicated.

Let's all take a page from our younger-selves and bring a little pureness back into the picture.

Let's all do more than just laugh at the honesty of young kids...

Let's encourage young kids and help them not to lose their honesty and pureness as they get older...