honesty is...

I just started a new series in one of my educational groups at a local rehab. I had started down this road several years ago -- integrating action into the recovery process. It never ceases to amaze me how many people there are that look for wellness in passivity. Addicts, of course, looking for an easier, softer way are no exception.

Anyway, the jist of the series is to take recovery "tools" and give them legs and arms (specifically the clients legs and arms) to do something. This week I started with honesty. Not the honesty that is about telling the truth, but the honesty that makes you sweat - rigorous honesty. Honesty that demands action, and action that demands work and more work to even get a peak at what honesty really means.

I like to think of it this way -- honesty is ... the action of integrity. It is that part of us that works to maintain our values as we know them and want them to be. So many people's integrity is like a used coupon book - full of holes where all the most significant and important deals of a lifetime have been clipped. Short-term compromises lead to long term denials about who and what we are about. Many people spend the rest of their life trying to reconcile themselves with what they've become instead of just being honest.

I don't want to make it sound too easy. It's not -- and if done correctly it will cause you to sweat. That's the good part - sweating the compromise out and plugging those integrity holes with honest words and honest actions that support those words. You'll be surprised at how quickly priortizing your own integrity will move you to wellness.

SWEATING Honesty

One of the schticks that I use frequently when teaching is what I call a candid discussion on what rigorous honesty is. If you have heard any of that and your mind is not already reeling then shame on you. Rigorous honesty is .... (all together now) honesty to the point of SWEAT!

Have you noticed in your own life the physiological correlates of honesty. I mean really - how many other things cause your stomach to churn, you palms to sweat, and your mind to race in so many directions at one time than owning up to who and what we are and what we have done. Probably the greatest cause for celebration is that you are not alone. Honesty may be the best policy, but the path of honesty is often not the easiest one. We spend more time supporting our positions of why its okay to have said this or done that than just acknowledging one important fact - the truth is the truth even if I don't like it.

"Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program...They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty." (Alcoholics Anonymous,"How It Works"). The fundamental challenge for well rounded healthy people inside recovery (and everywhere else) is to work on honesty to the point that it makes us SWEAT. You know what I'm saying - taking the hard road; the one that nauseates you a little and causes you so much discomfort that you perspire. The one that makes you stop a story or a sentence right in the middle and tell the person next to you to "disregard that - it wasn't true".

Addicts have an uncanny ability to justify and rationalize. Be careful and remember -at the end of every sentence, day, year, and lifetime there is truth. Define yourself by sweating it out of you even when it looks hard at the moment.