Practice Radical Self-Honesty

The third key to being awesome

How to Be Awesome, continued…

In keeping with this month’s inner growth theme of “How to Be Awesome,” I’m writing a primer for anarchists on, well…how to be awesome. Check out the previous installments:

Key 1: Be a Work in Progress.
Key 2: Choose Your Own Curriculum in the School of Life

This is the third segment in the How to Be Awesome series.

Key 3: Practice radical self-honesty.

Throughout my life, I’ve often been accused of being overly argumentative. I’ve been told by family members, partners, friends, and online acquaintances that I “just need to be right.”

For many years, I thought this was an unfair criticism. Sure, I enjoyed a good debate. Sure, I was pretty good at proving my points (or proving the other person wrong.) But there was nothing malicious behind it. In a philosophical or political debate, I felt I was willing to change my mind if the other person brought forth convincing evidence. I was just committed to truth, that was all.

A few years ago I befriended someone who altered my perception about all this. Let’s call her Anita.

I really like Anita. She’s smart, talented, thoughtful, generous, and fun. But there was one thing that rubbed me the wrong way about her. Any time anyone disagreed with her, she would come down on them, hard. She completely dominated every argument with her quick wit and memorized talking points. She did not hesitate to call the intelligence or honesty of her debate partners into question. And this was not only apparent in debates of a political or philosophical nature. I noticed that she employed the same tactics with friends and loved ones during interpersonal disagreements. She came across as mentally controlling, superior-minded, and, well, kind of coldhearted.

I, personally, never took the brunt of Anita’s argumentation prowess. Perhaps because we subconsciously recognized in each other a potentially unbeatable opponent, we never really got into many debates. It was purely from observation of her arguments with others (both online and in person) that I started to become annoyed with her communication tactics.

Not just annoyed; but mad. I sometimes found myself boiling in internal anger about this fault of Anita’s, even though it wasn’t directed toward me. The emotion I felt about it was out of all proportion. I was triggered.

That’s when I realized I was looking in a mirror. Anita was showing me that the criticisms others had lodged against me all my life, the criticisms I had blithely waved away, were true. The way I felt on behalf of Anita’s defeated opponents was the way other people—my loved ones, in particular—felt when I did the same exact thing. It made them feel disrespected and diminished. It made them feel trapped in the conversation—unable to freely express themselves without being subjected to undue judgment and/or heavy-handed persuasion. At times, with those closest to me, there was even a danger of my dominating communication tactics crossing the line into the realm of manipulation. That was not how I wanted people to feel in conversation with me.

This self-honesty did two things for me. First, it motivated me to work on myself. I had to figure out where this tendency came from.

• What insecurity or need was I unconsciously trying to fulfill through these behaviors?

• Where did that insecurity stem from?

• What would be a healthier way of addressing that need?

• Was I capable of expressing my opinions, thoughts, and feelings, while respecting the inherent freedom of others to disagree?

• Was it possible that in my fervor to persuade others of “the truth,” I was closing myself off to other valid perspectives?

• Could I simply state my best case once and leave it at that, without making it my sole mission in life for the next hour to prove to the other person how wrong they were?

• Could I allow others to disagree without making them feel I’d lowered my opinion of them?

• Could I allow others to be wrong, even, without withdrawing my respect and compassion for them?

Second, I automatically felt at peace with Anita’s shortcoming. Because I had identified the same shortcoming in myself, and knew that it came from a place of brokenness, I was able to extend compassion to her. Instead of feeling annoyed or angry when I saw her employing those tactics, I felt empathy for her.

I used to think that when others criticized me for my “argumentativeness,” they were really just reacting negatively to my confidence in my opinions. I thought that this confidence—basically a good thing—was too much for less confident people to bear, and that they were triggered by it. And that may even have been true in some cases. But for the most part, what I experienced wasn’t true confidence. Even if I was actually correct and confident in my correctness, I was lacking confidence in myself at a deeper level. I couldn’t stop at knowing and understanding a truth, I had to also have others agree that I was right. That’s not confidence, but insecurity.

I’ve been working on this fault of mine for a few years now. The urge to dominate in communication is not completely gone, but I am much, much better at catching myself before I start now. And I’ve gained a much deeper confidence: the kind of self-assuredness that conveys itself effortlessly to others without me having to beat them over the head with it. Moreover, I am much more aware of my inner workings and, therefore, more compassionate toward myself because of this realization—a realization that I was never able to experience until I began to practice radical self-honesty.

A big part of being awesome is having the ability to say, “Here is where I am not as awesome as I could be, and I am working on it.”

We can often be blind to our own faults. It’s much easier to see the shortcomings of others than it is to see our own. Often, the faults that most annoy us in others are faults that we ourselves possess—though maybe in a less severe or slightly different way. Sometimes we magnify others’ flaws in our minds in order to overshadow our own flaws, in a subconscious attempt to avoid having to face them. Or we project our own shortcomings onto others: since we know deep down that we have this flaw, we subconsciously assume everyone else is that way, too.

This is not a good look.

Sometimes, because of our tendency toward self-blindness, we can benefit from adopting a wider perspective to see what changes need to be made in ourselves. I try to be open to criticism from others, while limiting and moderating the criticism I hand out. I also keep a running list of my own faults and shortcomings, on paper, in black and white. It keeps me humble and reminds me of what I need to be working on.

The only person you can change is yourself, so be mindful that you’re not wasting your time and energy trying to change others or make them see the light, when that time and energy would be better spent working on yourself. Always be on the lookout for positive changes you can make, even—and perhaps especially—if they come into your awareness by way of your worst critics.

It’s only from the foundation of radical self-honesty that we can be accountable for our own advancement toward ever-increasing awesomeness.

This is true at the individual level as well as at the societal level, which is why it’s such an important key for extremists. The individual, with all her divergent desires and conflicting personality traits, is a microcosm of society. If we hope to bring about societal change, we must first change ourselves. We must be honest about what factors in ourselves prevent the changes we desire from taking hold in a sustainable way. And we must then work our inner soil to create a fertile place for that change to take root.

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Thank you for reading!

If you want to join a guild of anarchists, voluntaryists, and other “extremists” devoted to inner growth and getting shit done, Extremists Being Awesome is accepting new members. Learn more about EBA here.

Now through September 30, if you join on an annual membership, you’ll get 10% off the already discounted price. Ready to be awesome? Join here.

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