By Sometimes you need to have an honest conversation with yourself about what you want, what you’re willing to tolerate, and who you want to be – quiet your heart, silence your mind, and let your soul speak about what she desires. So grab a glass of wine, put your big girl panties on, and get comfortable.
There’s questions to be answered, relationships to be evaluated, and a life to start living the way you want it to be lived.
Your morals. What do you consider right and wrong in relationships and in life? Where do you stand on sex? What is your opinion about drug and alcohol use? How do you feel about lying, cheating, stealing? What are the standards to which you hold yourself? What are the standards to which you hold others? These are important questions. Sometimes the answers come from experience, sometimes from your past or the way you were raised. And sometimes the answers don’t come until you’re presented with a moment where you have to decide. However you come across the answers, know and be committed to holding them – for these answers become the standard in your life that help define who you are.
Your values. What’s important to you? Maybe it’s your friends or your family. Maybe you value education and work. Maybe it’s church or your faith-community. You could value a hobby or a past time pleasure. Whatever you value is where you spend a majority of your time, energy, and effort. Not knowing what you value results in valuing what other people value. I’ve learned from personal experience, when your values are based on another person’s, you won’t be truly happy. It is when you know what is important to you, and invest in those things, that your life becomes truly joyful.
Your dreams and desires. You can’t press toward your dreams or fulfill any of your desires until you know what they are. Similar to your values, if you don’t know your dreams, your actions will begin to fulfill other people’s desires. This leads to an unfulfilling life.
It wasn’t until I identified my dreams and desires for my life, and became committed to seeing them flourish, that I became passionate about who I am, who I am becoming, and what my life is going to hold.
Your boundaries. What is acceptable in your relationships? What is your standard for how you want to be treated? If you don’t know, you may find yourself being treated poorly – or in situations where you’re compromising your morals or standards. Boundaries help you maintain healthy relationships because they are different than walls. Walls keep people out. Boundaries allow people in, but they also keep you protected. Too many times I put up walls and shut people out of my life because I didn’t have boundaries to help manage my relationships. But as long as I know my boundaries, and other people know and respect them, I can have positive relationships and minimize the negative.
Your health. I’m not saying you have to be all gung-ho about going to the gym or be on a strict diet of chia seeds and kale. But taking an honest look at your lifestyle, and making the appropriate changes, will benefit your overall health and wellbeing, which actually results in you being happier, having more energy, and loving life a little more. When it comes to a healthy lifestyle, even the smallest changes can have a big impact. Personally, I could spend a little less time binge watching Friends and up my squat game.
Your future. You don’t want to become too futuristic minded that you start neglecting the here and now because then you would miss out on a ton of great experiences. However, if the guy you’re with wants a steady, stable life and your dream is to travel the world, you may want to reevaluate if your plans for the future will work well together. Everything you do today should be in line with your values, should be pushing you closer to your dreams, and should be a catalyst for your future.
Honesty hour is actually the easy part. Once you know where you stand with yourself and what you want your life to look like, then you have to take action. This may mean weeding out some of the people and things in your life that don’t fall in line with how you want to live. But it also means you get to start overwhelming yourself with everything that does – and start experiencing true fulfillment, happiness, and excitement for the life you are creating.
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