Category: Facing the Challenge

One of the interesting and special things about humans is that they can keep secrets. It comes from our unique ability to tell lies. Your dog doesn’t lie to you, neither does your fish. If you leave your dog and they don’t like that, they are sure to find a way to let you know. When you come home they are sure to tell you if they love you or not. Now, they aren’t that consistent with their emotions, loving you one minute and then getting revenge on you by ripping up the pillows when you leave them alone, but they, at least, aren’t being dishonest with their feelings.

But people lie to each other all the time. Babies will fake a cry. 1 year olds know to conceal. 2 years olds can bluff. 5 year olds will use flattery. 9 year olds have mastered covering up. On any given day we may get 10-200 lies in one day. Strangers within a few minutes will lie to each other 10 times. Most of them are white lies. But, we will do it to keep secrets, for social dignity, to cover our butts, and most of them are good or harmless. Sometime is is very, very harmful. For example when there are spies, insider trading, the mortgage crisis, and such. However, we’re not here to solve the worlds problems. Rather, we want to look at ourselves and the lies that we tell ourselves. These lies can be the most destructive.

We lie to ourselves all the time. Usually it is caused by intense (or not) real or perceived social pressure. Trying to maintain dignity, trying to keep up with the Jones, trying to keep up with appearances. These can be a destructive way to live your life. So what do we do? We pull out the Truth Box. Basically, you write down what everyone thinks, which identifies the social pressure. Then you write down what the truth actually is. It can be a freeing moment just to identify the deceptions that we live with. It’s amazing that some people will live with their lies their whole life.

If you’re ready to take the first baby step here’s a truth box for you to use. All submissions are, of course, anonymous.

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This challenge is simple. It is simply to scream. At the top of your lungs. As loud as you can. I’m not expecting you to go to a crowded place. Do it alone in your car. I find that in today’s society, we don’t scream a lot. In fact, many people who are shy or introverted are very quite people and will have difficulty trying to do this. But go ahead, do it. If you can’t try it again and think about how it was difficult to you. Did that surprise you? It did me.

Another part of this challenge it to find a song that you like and sing it as loud as you can. I noticed when I was younger I would sing alone in my car, but if another car approached, I would stop singing. I didn’t want to look like a fool and it made me feel like an idiot to be ‘caught’ singing alone in my car. But when I got older and began to appreciate people’s vocal talents I realized that being able to sing is a gift that few people have. So I started to sing in my car regardless of what everyone else was thinking around me. If they want to be shy or feel weird, it’s on them. Even so, I didn’t sing at the top of my voice. That was until I crossed over my comfort line and joined a choir. Then I had to work on projecting my voice. I could have counted the number of times I’d done that on one hand in the previous five years. So now in my car, I sing as loud and proud as I would in a choir.

Don’t let fear of random strangers keep you from exercising your vocal talents. Try screaming and singing at the top of your lungs and let your voice out.

Was it hard for you to scream at the top of your lungs? Surprisingly it seems harder for men than women to do this.