*If you’d rather listen, I posted a video on Instagram

What’s worse? Causing someone pain or lying to keep from causing someone pain? Lying to not only them, but lying to yourself — denying and betraying the truth in your heart.

Do you lie because you don’t want the truth known?
— embarrassed by your own feelings, afraid you won’t be understood.
Do you lie to avoid an uncomfortable conversation?
— because you don’t want to incite pain, emotions, or tears.
Do you lie to make it more comfortable for everyone?
— including for yourself, best to avoid confrontation, conflict and discomfort.
Do you lie because telling the truth will be a whole thing?
— questions will arise and it will take too much time or energy to answer.

To be authentic is to live a life that honors the truth in your heart, as well as the truth within others — unapologetic authenticity does not avoid truth, neither yours nor theirs. To be authentic is to explore anything you find yourself lying about — like your own inner mama bear moves in to the house and doesn’t let you get away with anything. To be authentic is to take time to become more aware of yourself in order to become yourself from the inside out — rather than develop a sense of self based on the world around you.

It’s understandable why you wouldn’t want to cause another person pain. We hurt ourselves when we hurt others. But pain cannot be separated from growth. Growing pains your soul when a shift is needed to bring alignment between your head and heart — your heart whispers, sings and cries out to make you aware of the truth in your heart. Your heart aches for you to see the depths of yourself and to live according to your soul’s desires.

Growing pains your body in many ways. Thoughts and emotions penetrate your peaceful equilibrium unsettling your body. Unintentional neglect of different elements of your life that affect your body can cause a slow-growing illness or create a weakened state that enables an injury to occur. Pain from injury, pain from illness, and pain from emotions are capable of all carrying the same amount of discomfort. Pain is your body’s way of communicating to you about something you aren’t fully aware of yet.

Growing pains your mind. Acknowledge the way a thought can make you sick. As long as there is conflict, stress and tension between what your heart is asking of you and the way you are actually living your life moment by moment, you will experience pain and discomfort in your mind.

Growth requires you to go through your pain and to learn from it. What do you do when you feel pain? If you’re ever going to heal your own pain, you must become aware of it. Can you make it a habit to face it despite your fear of it? Watch yourself the way you’d get into a movie. See when you try and fail to separate yourself from pain — to separate yourself from the pain that is inside you, the pain that IS you, inseparable from you. Facing pain owns it, acts upon it, and ultimately overcomes it by allowing it to pass each and every time is arises slowly becoming less and less painful as each flow passes.

Growth, and therefore healing, are easily stunted by simply choosing to oppose or to deny pain when it arises. By turning away from pain, you succumb to it. By ignoring it, numbing it, or just hoping it will go away it has already overcome you.

Realize though, that both growth and pain arise when you take the path that leads towards deeper and deeper alignment between your head and your heart.

Every situation in your life provides infinite moments to practice thinking, speaking, and acting in alignment with your heart. No one is all the way there,— otherwise, you couldn’t be called a human as we are flawed by design.

Every single human — YOU, in each and every moment of your life, are somewhere in the practice of looking for ways to align with your heart to express your authenticity and to empower your own sovereignty.

Every single human — YOU are also cowering away from the fear of pain that comes from your own betrayal, from the pain of growth, and the pain that must be endured to heal.

This is why we must go looking for all of the ways we lie. Lying is a pain deterrent. Lying is an authenticity destroyer. Lying is driven by fear. Lying is not living, it is dying, cowardly.

You are not a victim of circumstance unless you choose that point of view to contain yourself in. You are not in control of your life unless you choose that point of view opening yourself up to infinite potential.

You don’t have to be what others have asked you to. You don’t have to think how others insist you think. You don’t have to do what others expect you to do. You don’t have to ANYTHING — you GET to do it all. You GET to act like a fool assuming the whole world is against you because you’re choosing to see it from a narrow point of view. You GET to go wild and crazy in life and test your limitations despite the pain that arises with each fall.

You get to have the experience you choose to have. You get to be what you ask of yourself. You get to think how you insist yourself to think. You get to do what your heart expects from you.

You get to everything in this life from within yourself. Your mind, body, and heart are the vessel sailing you forward from moment to moment. You sail through heaven and hell, you sail through fear and pain, you get to sail into possibility and pleasure upon your choosing.

The journey is the destination — let your heart be your guide through the ecstasy that this life provides.