The mind generates a long list of reasons not to be honest, but most of those reasons are short-term: someone will be upset right now. Joe’s clarifying move is to set the short-term cost beside the long-term cost of staying silent—and the right choice becomes obvious.
He works the example of wanting to say something to your mom. The short-term consequence is that she’s upset. The long-term consequences compound: a mom who keeps thinking you should be different, a relationship saturated with resentment, and finally a mother who can’t even love you because the real you was never there.
“She can’t even love me because there’s no me there to love. There’s just this thing that I’m pretending to be in front of her.”
Once both columns are visible, the math stops favoring the comfortable silence.
“If you think about the short-term consequence of her being upset and the long-term consequences of all those things, it becomes really apparent what the right move to make is. And you’ll make the move, and maybe it’ll be upsetting, but I guarantee even afterwards, the anxiety will be relieved a little bit because you have been authentic.”
The authentic move may be uncomfortable now, but it relieves the standing anxiety that hiding generates.
Related Concepts
- Not being yourself creates a constant, everlasting anxiety
- Sacrificing authenticity now for future safety is a trap
- Being yourself designs a life that fits you
- Owning the trigger as yours dissolves the fight
- Fear of consequences is really fear of emotional states
- Every trigger in your partner is a projection of your own pattern
- The pressure-resist cycle is a game to avoid feeling sadness
- Surrender into love prevents self-betrayal