In Deborah Adele’s book - The Yama and Niyamas under the section on truthfulness or Satya, she writes under a subheading titled, Do It Right the First Time. This initially brings up memories of being told not to do things half way, which then makes me think of the super sad and cute Rona commercial with the half-donkey. (You can google if you don’t know what I’m talking about).
Anyway, after my brain has done that little side trip, I come back to the book and how doing the right thing relates to truthfulness, and what she writes is the truth, “it s worth the effort to do the task right the first time, because the cleanup takes so much time.” Deborah uses examples like how much time do we spend having to go back and apologize because we were short with someone, or the time to go back and tell someone that we can’t really do what we said we could.
So, in this part of the chapter on truthfulness Deborah is trying to get us to see that if we speak and act so correctly that we never have to go back and apologize or make a new agreement then we are being true to ourselves and others. I know for myself in my effort to please others, or not disappoint them I would agree to many things, that either gets me run down doing them all and then be over tired and end up being short with someone, usually a family member, and needing to apologize, or realize that I over commit myself and need to go back and break engagements. I’m not saying this doesn’t still happen, but I am more aware of it and make efforts to notice when I might be doing this.
Avoidance can also be an act of cheating truth, which can cause more trouble later than just doing the task and not procrastinating. I am sure we have all done this :).
Deborah writes that we not only lie to others, but we lie to ourselves. We lie to ourselves when we make promises about all the things we are going to do, or lofty goals that we are not able to accomplish in the time we say. We may not realize it but we are hurting ourselves and become someone that we cannot trust. Deborah writes, “Being truthful with ourselves makes us trustworthy and frees up all the time we normally spend in guilt and regret from our dishonesty.”
I encourage you to take some time to explore areas in your life where you could improve being truthful. Deborah lists some helpful questions like:
- Can you trust yourself?
- Can you risk telling yourself the truth?
- Can you keep the promises you make to yourself and to others?
Take the risk of telling yourself the truth! You never know where this exploration will lead.
Peace,
Pam
