Make your mind a safe space

I have a personal rule which mitigates some of my self-bullshiting: when I realize that I’m doing a bad thing, I don’t immediately force myself to stop doing the bad thing.

For example: when I realize I’m being a coward, I don’t force myself to do the thing I’m afraid of doing. I don’t even let myself feel bad for it.

I make it clear to my subconscious that it’s safe to surface such self-knowledge to consciousness.

An example:

Let’s say there’s a girl I run into regularly. I feel like maybe she’s sending positive signals my way. “No way,” I might think to myself, “She’s just friendly to everyone.” And later: “I can’t tell when girls are flirting with me, I’m so clueless haha!”

But if I make it safe for myself to admit cowardice—I won’t force myself to approach her either way—then suddenly the feeling emerges: yeah, I’m scared. And obviously I can’t tell with certainty what she wants, but that’s not the real reason I’m not trying to talk to her.

I still won’t approach her, but at least I’m not wading through my own bullshit.

Another example: let’s say I got into a stupid fight with someone. Maybe I should text them and sort this out. I might find a million excuses: they would do this or that, it would end up like this, I didn’t like them that much anyway.

Again, I make it clear to myself that no matter what, I don’t have to text them. And then the fear comes up. I allow myself to feel it.

Another example: if I admit to myself that I’m addicted to a substance, that doesn’t mean I have to start taking steps to quit. And so on.

As long as the self-knowledge is tied to some painful action, you will find a way to push the self-knowedge below the surface. You must disconnect the two.

As an analogy, if a child does a bad thing, and if they know that mom would just make them take painful steps to undo the bad thing, even if the child knows that that would be the right thing to do, then they’re just not going to tell mom. And that’s not good.

Make your mind a safe space for admitting vices, so that you don’t have to bullshit yourself.