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Here’s an important question: How do you react when someone tells you facts that you don’t want to hear?
Do you immediately get angry? Do you get defensive? Do you start making excuses, play victim, and throw a tantrum because you were hurt by what they said even if it might be true?
If that’s how you react, then you might end up sad and miserable. Furthermore, it will all be YOUR fault no matter how much you make excuses and deny it.
I got the idea for this article from one of the comments in an interesting video (at 24:35) that a friend of mine sent in a Facebook group chat. One comment in particular had a huge impact: “You can tell a person’s character by how much truth they can tolerate”.
(That idea, by the way, came from Nietzche. Here’s the full quote:)
The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
That one line really got me thinking. How many of us can actually tolerate truths that we don’t like? How many of us actually listen when people tell us our mistakes and flaws WITHOUT getting emotional, making excuses, or acting like a victim? How many of us rise up and take responsibility?
Note: If you will ever take a leadership position (and you most likely will someday), then this is a lesson that you NEED to learn.
How do you react to honesty?
Going back to the video my friend sent, one lesson in particular stuck with me: “In abusive households, honesty is punished.”
If you think about it, it’s true. How would an alcoholic father or mother who regularly beats their children react when their kid tells them that they failed their exams? How would an abusive and overly controlling mother react when she finds out that her teenage daughter has a boyfriend?
They won’t react positively, that’s for sure.
What does a kid learn in that kind of environment? They learn to lie. “School is ok.” “I’m just going out with friends to study.” “I’m ok.” In that kind of environment, honesty is punished. Honesty means getting beaten. Honesty means getting imprisoned at home and prevented from having friends and living a normal life. Honesty means stress and drama.
(The worst part of it all is that the kid subconsciously learns those toxic habits and they don’t even know that they’re doing it.)
This isn’t limited to family problems either. What would happen if you tell an abusive and power-hungry boss that they’re screwing up at work and they are causing problems for your team? What would happen if you tell an overly sensitive boyfriend or girlfriend that you feel like they’re taking you for granted, and you don’t feel like they’re putting in the same amount of effort in your relationship?
Yeah, don’t expect a positive response.
Are you heading for a cliff?
Here’s another thought experiment. Imagine someone going for a checkup and the medical tests say that they’re prediabetic. The doctor tells them that they need to stop eating unhealthy food and start exercising or else they’ll suffer some extremely serious health problems later on. The doctor warned them that if they continue their unhealthy habits, they can develop diabetes which leads to things like wounds that won’t heal, nerve damage, organ failure, blindness, and more.
Now, imagine if that person hated hearing that piece of truth. They want to think that there’s nothing wrong with them so they throw a tantrum, harass all the doctors who give the same fact-based diagnoses, and continue overeating. Then later on when they DO get diabetes, they cry and complain and blame everyone else for not fixing their health problems.
The fact of the matter is, they COULD have prevented it… if only they listened to the truth and took responsibility.
Are YOU like that person?
Do you ask for advice, compliments, and validation, but then get all angry and defensive and start some drama if people tell you facts (and I mean facts, not just opinions) that you don’t want to hear?
Beware. People will eventually get tired of dealing with your drama.
Just like the kid who grew up in an abusive household, the people around you will just sweeten their words, dilute, disguise, and falsify their feedback just to appease you. In other words, they’ll LIE just so you don’t throw a tantrum. Or they’ll just shut up and avoid you.
You will then unwittingly stick to your toxic habits and inevitably grow worse over time. Your mistakes and bad habits WILL add up, reach a breaking point, and make your life miserable. And you know what else? When your life turns sour, you’ll blame everything and everyone else but yourself. You likely won’t even have the self-awareness to realize that YOU are the cause of your problems.
“Don’t kill the messenger”
If people tell you facts you don’t want to hear and your first reaction is to throw a tantrum, make excuses, and play victim to justify whatever negative thing you have, then you absolutely need to unlearn that habit.
It will not be easy, especially if it’s a habit you learned since childhood, but you will need to take responsibility and start if you don’t want your life to get even worse.
Learn to listen to the truth, even if you don’t like it. If you want to turn your life around, you have to listen to facts and feedback, even if they hurt. ESPECIALLY if they hurt.
Your environment, circumstances, and people around you may be toxic and they may be things you cannot control, but you CAN control how you act and react to all the negatives in your life… and that makes all the difference.
If and when people tell you about your flaws and offer you solutions, don’t play victim and start making excuses. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone has negative traits, but those who listen to the facts instead of crying and denying them eventually learn to change and do better.
Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
— Ken Blanchard
Accept the facts, take responsibility for yourself
What happens if you start listening and accepting uncomfortable truths? (And I mean actually accept, not “acknowledge and be whiny and bitter about it”.) A lot of good things.
- You quickly learn about all kinds of potential problems from other people.
- You make less mistakes. People will talk to you and warn you when you’re about to make one.
- You get to fix your mistakes before they turn into a big problem. After all, if people don’t bother telling you that you’ve made a mistake because they know you’ll throw a tantrum, they’ll snowball and blow up in your face.
- People trust you more. They know that you listen and you can be trusted to do the right thing (as opposed to attacking people because the facts hurt your feelings).
- You become emotionally strong and mature. You become a better leader.
Remember: “Truth hurts”, but it’s always better than living a lie. The truth, if you handle it well, won’t suddenly blow up in your face and destroy your life. Learn to accept it with dignity, without being emotional and bitter.
I hope you were able to learn a lot from this article. Before we end, I’ll leave you with one last (somewhat amusing) idea I saw from some random part of the internet:
Being constantly offended doesn’t mean you’re right.
It just means you’re too narcissistic to tolerate opinions different than yours.
Source unknown
Thank you for reading!
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