Honesty
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Honesty
Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.
--Gretel Ehrlich
We owe our brothers and sisters in this program our honest feedback. And we need the same honesty from them. There are times in meetings when it would be easiest to give someone sympathy and privately mutter to ourselves, "He isn't facing the bitter truth." That sympathy avoids a confrontation, but it doesn't give the healing medicine of honesty. In the same way, we may long, at times, for someone to give us warm strokes, and what they give instead is a bitter pill.
The most important thing we have to give one another is the truth of what we see and hear. We don't have to tell them what to do. We don't have to have all the right answers. But we do have the obligation to speak up about how things look to us. And we need to listen without defensiveness when others are honest with us.
Today, I will say what I see and hear. I will listen to other people's honesty with me.
--Gretel Ehrlich
We owe our brothers and sisters in this program our honest feedback. And we need the same honesty from them. There are times in meetings when it would be easiest to give someone sympathy and privately mutter to ourselves, "He isn't facing the bitter truth." That sympathy avoids a confrontation, but it doesn't give the healing medicine of honesty. In the same way, we may long, at times, for someone to give us warm strokes, and what they give instead is a bitter pill.
The most important thing we have to give one another is the truth of what we see and hear. We don't have to tell them what to do. We don't have to have all the right answers. But we do have the obligation to speak up about how things look to us. And we need to listen without defensiveness when others are honest with us.
Today, I will say what I see and hear. I will listen to other people's honesty with me.
we're all mad here!
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: a padded room with bars
Posts: 1,681
"I can't fix my own thinking with my own thinking."
The most important thing we have to give one another is the truth of what we see and hear
Member
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Charleston S.C.
Posts: 1,461
Thanks Everyone, I still, at times, find my nose out of joint when someone tells me what I know but, don't want the hear. I'd let one statement decide how my relationship with someone would proceed. I don't know about you but, resentment and revenge soon followed and consumed me. Don W
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