Transcript for this weeks message

Shane

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey Podcast. I'm Shane Jacob your host, and I appreciate you taking your time to be with us today. Today we're talking about telling the truth. Telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So the question I have for you is, is have you ever not? Have you ever not? And the answer to that is yes. You, you've told some lies all right.

What I want to talk about today is being truthful to ourselves. Like Shakespeare said, "To thine own self be true." So a lot of times when we, as we go throughout life, if you take a look there's been times where probably you haven't been fully truthful with other people about yourself. Okay. So here's what I mean by that.

When we feel inadequate or we feel unworthy or we're not really sure how we feel about ourselves, and we rely on how other people feel about us, it's easy, it kind of compels us to tell mistruths about ourselves so that other people will have a certain perception of us that we want them to have. Because we're relying on that perception for us to believe a certain belief about ourselves. Whoa, that's kind of complicated, but here I go.

Here's a couple of examples. There's a little bit of shame wrapped up in this. We all get to experience shame in this life. There's a little bit of confidence. Confidence is a lifelong pursuit. We talk a lot about that. All these things impact. The reason is why, okay? So, what is the consequence of not telling? You're like, well, I did this thing and I told somebody something that wasn't exactly a hundred percent true, but really what did it really matter? Okay. So I'm going to, it matters and I'll tell you why.

Here's an example about me. Okay. When, when I was first beginning my career as a horse, as a farrier, one of my mentors, one of my, I apprenticed with the man named Mike Dawson. And when I first met Mike and I was just getting going, I hadn't only been out with him a couple of times to work on horses. And let me just tell you this, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought for some reason since that I'd grown up riding horses, and my family and my dad had horses. And they were sheep ranchers, and you know, we rode horses a lot. That I thought because of that, that I knew all this information about horses and it turns out I didn't know nothing. So particularly for sure, I could nail on a shoe, you know, I knew how to nail on a shoe. And, but I, but I was surely not a farrier, and I had no business taking other people's money for it.

Anyway, back to Mike Dawson and I. He asked me one day, he said, well, and I was new to town, he's like, well, have you ever worked in the fire? Okay, and in horseshoe and lingo and blacksmith lingo, that means in the forge. And these days we mostly use gas forges where it used to be coal. And I said, yeah, you know, a little bit. Well, the truth was, I'd never, I didn't even know. The answer was no, that was a flat out lie. Okay, so, and of course, so, later that day when it came time to show my blacksmith skills, my skills in the fire, well there was a lot to be desired. And it progressed and got worse, and then I felt worse. And I mean it was just, all of this was all happening inside of me. I don't think Mike really cared. He just observed and you know could see that I didn't know anything about anything and he proceeded .He was very kind and graceful. He gave me grace and he just taught me and we went on and then from there, he was a very kind and giving man. But the negative repercussion happened inside of me.

Here's another example of what I'm talking about. Mel Robbins tells a story about when before she was married. Okay, so she's in love with this guy, totally in love with this guy. And he's a expert fly fisherman. Okay, and he wants to take a fly fishing trip with his girlfriend, Mel Robbins, to Yellowstone, and go fly fishing. Okay. But it's a, but Mel Robbins grew up somewhere where she didn't know how to fly fish. She had never fly fish before. Okay. She had done fishing on the shore or fishing, you know, trolling or whatever, but she'd never been fly fishing. So before, so here's how it all went down. Mel's boyfriend says, hey, have you, you know... I'm telling you all, tells her all about how he loves to be a, you know, he loves to fly fish and that he's been doing it for a lot of years. And he's, you know, and it's really fun and so on and so forth. And then he asks her, he poses the question, have you ever, have you ever fly fish before? And she says, well, sure. Absolutely, blah blah blah, sure. And she goes on and tells a little story about her fly fishing. Well, the truth of the matter is she's never fly fished. Then it comes up, the next thing he says is, well good because I'm booking a, you know, a trip for us to Yellowstone and we're gonna go out with the guide and blah blah blah and we're gonna go fly fishing. Well, now what is she gonna do? She told the lie, now he's taking her fly fishing. So let's just see how that goes.

The question is why, okay? Why do we do stuff like that? Hopefully, we do stuff like that less and less, but let's just look at that a little bit further. What other examples? What about, you know, what if it wasn't just exactly the truth? You know, in the beginning I said, telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Okay. And what I'm talking about, you know, there's, there's lots of aspects, lots of layers of honesty. But what I'm talking about is how we talk about and tell other people about ourselves. And how we talk to ourselves about ourselves also, but mainly about how we talk to others.

And so maybe it can be just like, you know, mine in my example was, you know, well, I have a little bit. Well, you know, maybe it's not a blatant flat lie that's, you know, super obvious. But maybe we're just kind of skirting around the edge a little bit of not quite telling the truth because we just kind of want to be perceived in just a kind of a certain way. And we hope you'll kind of, but you know kind of go with it and believe it and not ask any further because we just want you to believe a certain way. Well, why are we going through all this stuff in our heads and not just saying what the deal is? Because, right, the reason that we do stuff like that is because we are, like I said in the beginning, worried about how we're gonna be perceived.

Well, why? Ok, maybe we feel vulnerable. Maybe it is vulnerable, right? To say certain things about ourselves is kind of uncomfortable, right? But here's the deal with that. Let's just say, let's go back to my example or Mel's example. The fact that we told them a lie, okay? We did not tell the truth about ourselves because we wanted to be perceived about a certain way. Because we weren't, neither one of us in these examples felt okay with our status in that thing, or our status inside of ourselves really is what it comes down to. And so what that does, okay, let's just keep the other people out of it. Eventually, her husband became her husband, so they settled the thing and they made it well, and he forgave her for the lie or whatever. I told you the same thing happened with Mike, and so we kind of get through these things with people, but they end up backfiring and they make us look worse in the end. And then even inside of us, we know it's wrong to lie. Right, and so there's this stuff going on inside of us that's not helping us.

The reason that we're doing it in the beginning is because we don't feel good about ourselves. Then we tell a lie. We know that it's wrong to lie. So then we feel worse about ourselves. Then other people find out, and it's just a bad cycle. Okay, so what's so hard about just saying what the deal is about ourselves and opening up and having a little bit of vulnerability about who we are, and why isn't that okay?

Vulnerability, having the courage to say, no Mike, I've never put myself out there, kind of, right? It's kind of hard, it takes a little bit of courage. No, I've never done anything like this. Now, what's he gonna think about me now? Because I haven't done this, and I think I should have done it for some reason. Maybe that'll make me a more valuable person if I have worked in a forge before. Same thing with Mel Robbins. Well, it's not cool if you don't fly fish. I mean, cool people fly fish and kind of losers are, you know, on the bank fishing. So when we have the courage to exercise a little bit of vulnerability with people where it's appropriate, right? We don't want to show up and like Brene Brown says, show up and say, hello, my name's Shane, and here's my deepest, darkest secret. You know, that's kind of weird. where it's appropriate to be honest and open and vulnerable with people.

Because here's the deal, when we exercise vulnerability, we are able to connect with people. There's a few things that happen in this. We're able to make connections and Brene Brown also said that human beings are hardwired for connection. I mean, it's like the purpose of life, some define to develop loving relationships. And so if that's true and if you can relate to that, and that's something that sounds pretty good, then being open and honest with people who... And being vulnerable about who you really are inside will help you to have this better connection.

Because in my examples, we alienated, I alienated the relationship for a while. I was able to repair it and come back and it was okay. Like I said, Mike gave me grace. In Mel's it still worked out also, but a lot of times it doesn't work out that way, right? And so, you gain the connectivity by being open and honest and vulnerable. That's one thing.

The second thing is, I think this is as much or more important than that, is it determines, it changes how you feel about you. So, if you choose, if it's okay to be you, and you choose to be open and fully honest. Okay, the whole truth, all the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth about you to the world. To yourself and to the world, okay. You are gonna feel better about you. Okay, this is a big thing. This isn't just a good idea. It's not just because it makes you feel better. But when you feel good about you, here's the consequence to that. You have the capacity, where you did not have the capacity before, to give to others,

So when you feel good about you, when you're your best friend, when you're okay to be you, when you're worthy, when it's okay with whatever you've done or haven't done or the shame that you're dealing with and going through shame is not an easy thing, right? And we're all gonna deal with it. We're all gonna have shame, and that's okay. It's part of the humanlife. So having that be okay, right? Separating, talked about this before separating what we've done with who we are.

Okay, or not done, right? What we've done or what we haven't done. Having that be okay. Having that be okay, and having that be okay to the world. And being open and honest with people to get the connectivity. And to have it be okay inside of our own heart and our own soul gives us the capacity as we increase the value that we place on ourselves. It helps us be able to give value and help other people to know their value. And so that's why because it's extremely important to the contribution you can make to the people you love.

So that's the deal. And you know what? Hey, I love you, man. Thank you so much for taking your time to be with us today. Remember, whatever happens, Don't Ever Stop Chasing It.

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