Say What's Not Being Said

Being Real is not just telling the truth…but as Reid puts it, “Saying what’s not being said.” Which means that you’re willing to speak about the very thing that you are most afraid of saying. When you take whatever is going on for you and just lay it out on the open, it gives it less power than when it’s running around in your head.

Often times when we say what’s on our mind we give space for it to shift. Just by speaking it sometimes it’s cleared. By speaking the thing you are most afraid of, you are able to see it more objectively. REiD likens this process to sitting on a movie set. If you pull the focus back enough you see the guy with the boom mike and the smoke machines, then you realize that none of it is real. Eventually you can pull back from the feelings and the circumstances and get present to what’s real. And that’s a good life skill to have, but it takes practice. At some point you may get advanced enough that you can talk in your own head and calm it down but usually it takes voicing it to realize that it’s not as bad as you thought.

It all starts by telling the truth. Even if you don’t know the whole truth, tell the truth as you see it. Be who you are and not what other people think you are, and then the exchange becomes more real. When you are expressing you truth, to the best of your ability at all times you are exuding an ease and it is an attractive quality. You are at ease, nobody is going to find you out. You are not an imposter, hypocrite or worried about being found out. Once you figure out who you are and allow yourself to just be real, there’s a rooted ness and strength that shows up. You become more fixed and steady rather than trying to change to suite everyone. People start relating to you as they are. It’s like you give them permission to be themselves. Being real up-levels the quality of all your connections. And it liberates you from what other people think.