Have you ever had a hard conversation with someone? That conversation where you confront or have been confronted by someone who typically has a vested interest in the other. You have struggled with something that truly needs to be addressed and you just can’t shake it anymore. You can’t dance around it, avoid it, dismiss it, pretend as if it isn’t as big as you think…it’s just right about that time when it can’t be allowed to go any further. The introduction of a hard conversation usually is provoked by you or the person whom you wish to address is completely fed up with business as usual. You are tired and just want to see that negative behavior disappear.

I have been there, so many times in my life. I am looking at the person with whom I have an issue with and I am so eager to see the issue that I have with them just go away, yet I am so apprehensive about approaching the situation. I am afraid. I am prematurely discouraged about what I think is going to happen with us, post our conversation. I want the problem to go and yet and I am not so eager to go straight to the source of where it is most likely coming from. Does this sound familiar to you at all? Have you ever struggled with the issue, even just the slightest? Of course, you have, you are human right…You know what you want, you are pretty clear about what the outcome could look like if you addressed the “pink elephant” in the room but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. You are typically afraid that at the end of it all you will be left with an issue on the table and an offended person sitting across from you refusing to own what’s on the table. That is slightly scary. Who wants to bring it all out only for there to be no resolve? No one. It feels like we are committing risky behavior when we step out on the limb to initiate a “hard conversation”. Though it may appeal to our senses as being most unfavorable; it is quite the opposite. Having a hard conversation is probably one of the most favorable experiences that one can have. The outcomes generally aren’t as bad as what we ruminated over for the length of time that it took for us to confront the dysfunction. We generally are uber relieved that we no longer must pretend that what was chaotic wasn’t. This keeps self-more honest than not and helps whomever you confront to be more authentic. It gets one closer to where they need to be within the relationship that they are currently seeking clarity; or allows for you to walk out the door of what may not be serving you well. These are just a few benefits to of having “courageous conversations” with others. It can really be a game changer in the relationships that we have with others. I’d like to raise the ante on this idea though and ask the thought provoking question…” Have you or are you willing to have Hard, Courageous conversations with yourself?”.

Yes, hard conversations with yourself. Have you ever really thought about the fact that we are so busy being consumed with nurturing relationships with others and forgetting about the relationship that we should have with ourselves. It is necessary. How is it that we are willing to be more vulnerable with others about our autonomy than with ourselves? It’s sick when you really think about it right…

Our self-governance being placed in the hand of a stranger. Not good. I am not stating that we should operate as a silo; that is a destructive way to live. I am however saying that no one should be able to touch you first, but you. Now, due to how a person lives out their life spiritually, this idea can be debatable. I am not here to debate that. Your creator should always have first access to your total being…mind, body, and spirit. That shall be your first governance. Outside of that realm, it’s you and you. I say all of this simply because we (individuals), I think… sometimes get lost in the idea of trying to get people straight or get them right, have these hard conversations with others, when actually sometimes (many times) should be initiating these conversations at home (with self). Argue with me if you will, but when you think about it, there’s some truth there.

Such as the clichés that say things like….” sweep around your own front door, before you sweeping around mine”, “don’t do me, do you”, “he was the one I compared all others to”, and so forth. There is something so real about looking inward and challenging self when you start slipping. It’s so much easier to see a fault in something, someone else, a situation, they may have truly served you wrong but we are typically last on the list when it time to do some confronting. I was about to interject that the reason for this is that we don’t see wrong within; but I beg to differ with my own first thought. I think that this may be quite the contrary. As hard as it is to confront a loved one about their indiscretions towards you; it’s probably harder to do with self. We innately protect ourselves from anything that we can see are here that we feel is intrusive from the exterior. But if it comes from within, we will find ourselves doing the same thing. That response is just as bad though, because we then turn inward, further, and look for ways to self soothe and pacify the issues within rather than to address them. This is so dangerous. No one, apart from our creator, truly knows what we struggle with from within. Self knows when we are goofing off miserably. No one but self knows when we are lying to world about our true abilities. We know, they don’t. It’s a game that we keep up with ourselves and it only brings about self-annihilation. Way to go, that’s not cool and I mean on any level.

It’s time, it is time to do some healthy confronting…. confronting self about those things that you know that you are doing wrong. It’s time to challenge self about those things that you have been procrastinating about. We like to let people know when they are falling about things that we feel they owe us with; yet we let ourselves off the hook every second. I am not saying that we shouldn’t extend grace to ourselves, but I am saying what I tell my teenage son everyday…” don’t hold others to a standard that you aren’t willing to keep yourself”. JS…. But really, it is time. I don’t care how perfect you think you are, or how well you find yourself doing in life, I don’t care if you have complete and executed all your short term and long term goals, you are human and you are missing the mark somewhere. And that’s okay too, I am not glorifying either side of the spectrum, yet I am saying…we all have a need to have a talk with self about who we really are.

When we make decision to do so, the benefits are endless and they won’t just bless you, they are going to bless anyone who crosses your path. Those in closer relationship with you will obviously be the direct beneficiaries of the hard work. Some of the benefits of self-avoidance, are the production of intimacy with yourself (you get to really know who you are), you develop a trust of your own voice ( many of us don’t trust ourselves as much as we trust the voice of others, typically due to the repeat failures or we just simply think that others are more right about us than we are), it truly helps us to stay more grounded and can help us see the reality in a thing ( that is if we aren’t too far into our heads – balance is key to this), and having hard conversations with self can aid in keeping our emotions in tact (we have to ask ourselves why we are doing what we are doing – and in doing so, many times we can see the irrationality of our decision making process before we are called out and embarrassed.

Hard conversations, whether with self, or others is key because we don’t want to fall into the practice of avoiding short-term discomfort for long term dysfunction in our lives. Hard conversations aren’t bad at all, it’s the undercurrent that it rides on or the platform that is used to uphold it. This will prove true with you and others and equally with yourself. If you come to yourself in a non-judgmental way only to try and discover the facts of why and how to fix; then you are only doing yourself a service of good. Make haste and began to audit the chaos that maybe surrounding or hovering over your life. Check out those relationships that your internal knowing keeps highlighting for you that something isn’t quite right these days. We may not have all the answers but we can sense when something is off. Just be real enough with yourself to do inventory before you become overzealous in your approach to go after those in your life and assert these “hard conversations”. Ensure that you reserve a meeting of the minds with self also. Keep growing, keep canvassing.