False Choices-Your First Hurdle

My favorite blogger in the whole world, Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project blog (and book of the same name), is a genius. She is the most thought-provoking, stimulating and succinct "self-help" writer alive, in my very humble opinion. She has never yet failed to write something, no matter how brief, that resonates with me. I'm not talking "Hmm, good point" resonate, I'm talking someone-struck-a-gong-in-my-chest resonate, and the thing that resonates most with me about her Happiness Project works is their Honesty. Everything she writes is imbued with it. Honesty. Clarity. Sincerity. Truth. There is a simple, touching beauty in Honesty like hers that cannot fail to reach people, and reach people she does. At their hearts, all people love and crave Honesty.

Today she wrote a blog post entitled "Eight Tips for Maintaining Friendships," and in it she discussed something she calls "false choices." Today I want to explore the definition of a false choice. It's extremely important to me that you all understand what a false choice is, because false choices are what got you stuck where you are today, and they're what are going to KEEP you here until you learn to recognize them and overcome them. False choices are your first hurdle.


A false choice is an option you pretend you would choose, to make yourself feel better about not making the choice you really want to make. Some examples of false choices are:

• When you don't have many friends, and it bothers you, so you tell yourself something like, "Well, I'd rather have a few close friends than all those superficial ones."  
• When you see someone who has something you want, like good looks or a gorgeous figure, and you venomously tell yourself “Well, I’d rather have my brains than her body”-even though you have no idea how smart she may be. 
• When you’ve gone up yet another size in jeans, and you tell yourself, “I’d rather be a curvy size 16 than an anorexic size 0”-when you know full well there are a lot of sizes in between 0 and 16 that you’d prefer to be.

You know when you're lying to yourself. You know when you're making a false choice, to avoid facing the fact that you either can't, or won't, or don't know how, to make the HONEST choice. You know it, even as you try to justify your choice, because it *hurts*.

Personal honesty is soul food. Personal honesty makes you grow, inside. It helps the outer you match the inner you; it gives you peace of mind because you are following your morality. A moral life and a healthy life are one and the same. If you are emotionally unhealthy, you will be physically unhealthy. You must be able to trust yourself, above all. You cannot trust yourself to be good and honest and follow your diet and exercise plans if you lie to yourself about even less uncomfortable things. Lying is the unhealthiest thing you can do. If you are willing to lie to yourself about anything and everything that's uncomfortable to face; if you are willing to carve yourself up into little, worthless pieces just to avoid the temporary discomfort of admitting that you are not who you wish to be; if you are willing to destroy your own value to avoid the humiliation of comparing yourself to who you WANT to be and finding yourself falling short, then you are unwilling to change, and I can guarantee that you will fail at your halfhearted attempts to do so. You won't really be trying; you'll be pretending just long enough to fail so that you can justify your false choice that you like yourself better the way you are. We've been told all our lives to "Like yourself the way you are". It's OK not to like everything about who you are! It's growth-inspiring! Pretending you like who you are, when you don't, isn't self-love. It's self-DEFEAT, and it's a false choice, and a slow, soul-crushing death.

Change is HARD. Change is CHALLENGING. If you can't trust yourself to admit even to yourself that you're lonely and need to go out there and make some friends, how can you trust yourself to truly push yourself on that elliptical machine? How can you trust yourself to pick a weight to lift that's heavy enough to truly CHALLENGE you, and not wimp out and lie to yourself and choose a much easier weight, if you can’t admit to yourself that you’re staying at that job you hate because you don’t really think your skills are good enough to get a better one? How can you trust yourself to stop pouring salad dressing at a tablespoon instead of a quarter cup? How can you trust yourself not to grab a candy bar from the vending machine and then literally lie to your food diary and not write it down because you're ashamed? How can you commit to such a monumental effort, with hourly opportunities to cheat, when you won't even admit to yourself that the real reason your house is so clean is that you have no life OUTSIDE of it and you HATE it?

Lies are cumulative. The more you lie, the more you have to keep lying. The more you lie, the worse you feel, and so you lie more to tell yourself that really you feel ok. Oh what a tangled web we weave, but the only fly we ever catch is ourselves.

Please, for yourself. Listen for your false choices. Allow yourself to really feel and acknowledge that twinge of guilt and regret when you utter something to avoid anguish rather than say something uncomfortable that resonates. Recognize statements of bitterness and hurt for what they are, and refuse them. Force yourself to acknowledge that you wish for something more, something different, that you are unhappy and maybe don't know how to change that fact. Practice Honest Choices. If you can trust yourself, nothing and no one will ever be able to stop you.

Don't let false choices hinder you any longer. Be your true Self. Be Honest. Don't Think. Just Go.