A man admits his entire life is built on lies to his wife and himself. The speaker argues that truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy. Real freedom comes only when both are delivered together.
A gentleman called me earlier. He said, Tim, I'm a liar. My whole life is a lie. A lot of my wife about things that I do. I lie to myself about things that I do, about things I need to change. I live in this place of self-deception. And I said, I can relate. And the only thing that'll truly set you free is the truth. You can't lie to yourself and find freedom in that. The truth will set you free. And here's the thing about truth. I know you're afraid to tell her the truth, but here's the thing about truth. Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy. You can't tell your wife that you love her if you lie to her. And when you do tell the truth, you need to make sure that you tell it in love, or else it's just brutal. The truth about what you're doing, bro. The truth allows you to stand in a place of what is, allows you to accept what is in your life, because no amount of lies makes it go away. Yeah, it might sweep it out of your conscious awareness, but it doesn't alleviate the problem. It allows you to avoid the solution to dissolving it, and that's all it does. And sooner or later, we get caught up in our own lies where we don't even know what the truth is. We start to believe the lies, we start to believe the self-deception, and we start to engage in this mental manipulation, the bargaining. And think about that. You're bargaining, manipulating yourself. So what does that say about my relationship with myself when I can't even be honest with myself? That man in the mirror looking back at me, I can't even look that man in the eyes and tell him the brutal truth. That's why everybody in your life probably validates you and placates you and tells you what you want to hear, and you're probably surrounded by a bunch of yes-men, men that just validate your maladaptive behavior and co-sign areas in your life where you need to hear the truth. And if you got people in your life that are telling you truth, hold those people close. Because what is a man when his word comes back void? What is a man when he's too worried about what he needs to say instead of what people need to see? When people like what they see, they're more likely to listen to what you say. So you tell these lies because you're not in the stage of action. You're not in a stage of even contemplating wanting to change yet. So what's it going to take? What it's going to take is consequences. And here's the problem: you're not functional, bro. Oh, my life is still functioning. No, just because your life isn't falling around externally, isn't falling apart externally, doesn't mean it's not falling apart internally. And the lies and the self-deception and the bargaining and mental manipulation that you put yourself through is evidence of the relationship that you have with yourself that you deserve to change.
