Humanity is a bit oblivious and delusional when it comes to life. As sad as it sounds, we avoid the truth to the point where we believe our own lies and the bullsh*t we tell ourselves. The line that separates reality and subjective consciousness has blurred to the point we don’t know where it ends or begins. Instead of facing the truth, we burrow ourselves in our own heads and hide from it.

This fear of truth has caused us to cower and dodge its presence, putting it off until later, because we’re too afraid to self-actualize and confront our own selves in the mirror.  The secret to life isn’t a mystical or abstract concept: it’s facing your fears.

It’s tackling your problems with brutal honesty, and understanding where you’ve gone wrong so that you might excel. Brutal honesty is raw and as uncut as it could be. Unfortunately, it’s quite rare to find someone who can confront his or her reflection with this unbridled honesty – especially without fighting, crying or becoming emotional — and thus we avoid it.

This is why humanity has become oblivious. We give sh*tty excuses, pretending we’re taking it a day at a time, but each day is exactly like the last – no change, no improvement. We are afraid to be criticized and can’t take any form of it – from others or ourselves – because we are too weak to handle it.

We need to man up and look at ourselves in the mirror. Face our reality, face our flaws and face the things we fear most. Because without doing so, we’ll never excel as a person or improve. We will remain stagnant and mediocre because we can’t handle the truth. Your fear of mediocrity and being miserable your whole life should outweigh your fear of brutal honesty.

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson

Encourage Brutal Honesty Within Your Life

Encourage it within yourself and encourage it within other people. You have to remember when you are honest with yourself, as well as honest with those around you; you are actually helping them see something that they might have missed. It is always good to have a different perception or insight.

Insight is missing today. None of us are perfect, and that is pure fact, but the more we keep hiding from our imperfections, the more delusional we become. We’ve shielded ourselves in the artifice of perfection and have removed ourselves from how shitty we really are in life.

We all have wants, needs and aspirations. We don’t want to settle for anything: whether it be a lover we hate being with or a job that we hate having, yet many settle for it because they see it as safe. It’s the low hanging fruit and quells insecurities and fears.

People come to me all the time and bitch about how unhappy they are with their life, job, lover and the direction they are going. They think there is some sort of magical potion to fix all their problems. I tell all of them the same thing.

I simply tell them, the reason you are unhappy is because you are afraid to face the truth in your life. You are afraid to step out of your comfort zone, you’re afraid to look at yourself in the mirror and admit your insecurities, you’re afraid to be honest with yourself because of judgments, and because you are weak.

Harsh criticism is far better than watered-down, flowery half-truths. We need honesty that cuts us to the core if we’re going to make the changes we should be making in our lives.

Don’t Be So Emotional

We have been blessed with the gift and the curse of having emotions. The problem is that we don’t know how to control our emotions — to the point where we let them run our lives in the way we don’t want them too.

Emotions have no place in business, in criticism or in decision-making. You need to learn how to become numb to your emotions, when they do have such a large effect on your life you stop being honest with yourself — because you are afraid of how you will react. Sure it sounds complicated but it’s the truth.  We need to leave our emotions out of the picture if we’re going to accept brutal honesty and the myriad of benefits that it brings with it.

In a nutshell it comes down to self-awareness. Your self-awareness is what drives your confidence. Only the most confident, and most self-aware people are able to handle real honesty. It’s being honest with yourself, knowing where you are going wrong in life and showing the world and yourself that you are strong enough. This is true confidence.

Trust Yourself Not Others

The biggest mistake that people make in life is letting other people make decisions for them. They don’t trust themselves enough, so they keep asking for sh*tty advice and then apply that sh*tty advice to themselves. What they don’t understand is that decisions based off their own intuition is the only way to feel secure — not what someone else perceives as right or wrong.

Everyone has his own perception, so why would you let it interfere with your perception? You shouldn’t. The only way to be okay with other’s honesty is to start with yourself. If we’re going to be good at anything in life, we need to hold ourselves accountable. Be responsible for your own actions, decisions and reality because you are the one that is making your own destiny. Stop blaming variables and start blaming yourself.

Life is a War.

We are at at battle daily with “the Resistance”: we’ll call it our lazy side. The Resistance is devious and cunning. It’s within us. We lie to ourselves, trick ourselves, and rationalize our laziness, procrastination and fear. We somehow make it okay to give up and stop working.

The only way we’re going to become better men is if we learn how to handle criticism. The more it hurts and cuts us to the core, the better. Self-improvement starts internally. If we can learn how to be brutally honest with ourselves, we’re going to be much better at taking criticism from others.

Preston Waters | Elite.