Honesty is one of the most important qualities we can have as people. Honesty is key in interpersonal relationships, forming the basis for trust, loyalty, and love. But more important than honesty with other people is honesty with yourself. Dishonesty with yourself can lead to a whole host of problems and issues, and the only way to address them is by coming clean. Self-honesty is also the only path toward a meaningful life. If your path isn’t genuine, it will lack meaning. Honesty can be challenging, but it just takes practice, like any habit.
One of my great joys in life is the anticipation of an approaching storm. I love everything about it—the dramatic change in light and atmosphere, the violence of it, the excitement. It’s almost like watching a great movie, except it’s more impactful because it’s real. During a summer storm, it can go from terribly hot, humid, and still to windy and much cooler in just a few moments. It’s a feast for the senses, as you may notice it’s coming in various ways. Of course, storms can be damaging, but they can also be renewing—wiping clean the conditions and the mood of the day.
How many friends do you have? Are they all created equal? The levels of connection that you have with people matter. How you behave around them, what you confide in them, and how much you ask of them matters. What you get from them also matters—how they make you feel, your experiences with them, and what you learn from them.
A moment can last a lifetime. When you live in the moment, each moment that passes is a world to itself and can be explored as such. Many people lead very surface lives. They are aware of only what they must be to exist or to pass the time. Through mindfulness, you can learn to find depths to life hidden under the surface. As you dig deeper, you develop an intuitive sense of existence and everything in it. You know and understand patterns of everything you experience and can retain and enhance that intuitive awareness as you go deeper and deeper into your life.
The world, even your little slice of it, contains significantly more than you could possibly fathom. As you move through your life, you notice things that your brain has been trained to bring to your conscious level of awareness. Your brain can process an unbelievable 11 million bits of information every second, but our conscious mind can only handle 40 to 50 bits of information a second. The big question is, what gets past the filter and why? You notice things you must so that you stay away from danger and navigate your life, but there are whole worlds that don’t make it into your awareness, and there are elements of those worlds that you would definitely be interested in exploring if you could. So, how can you decide what makes it to the front row of your mind?