You can’t make a difference or an impact on your friends’ lives by agreeing with them, providing sympathy or compassion. If you want to support your friends, try sticking your finger in their deepest emotional wound and wiggle it around a bit. They’ll thank you for it later. It’s like ripping the bandage off your skin versus living with it hoping it will eventually just fall off on its own.

You are doing a disservice and injustice to people around you by allowing them to be out of integrity with themselves. To lie to themselves. You have to ask yourself if you want to continue being a sounding board for people to talk themselves into feeling better and avoiding dealing with their suffering—or if you want to help them.

This was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn. I saw it, and I didn’t know how to tell people what I saw, and I wasn’t prepared for the potential backlash.

You have to ask yourself if it’s worth spending the rest of your life being someone who watches everyone crash and burn to be loved by all; or if you want to be the person who provides nudges and course corrections simply because the opportunity is there and you’d rather be true to yourself.

You can’t rip the skin off a snake, but you can rip the bandage off your skin. And if you want to Wake Up, that’s exactly what you have to do.

If people only love what you have to say, that’s a sign you’re not helping them. If you really want to help someone, try telling them the truth with no filter. Piss them off and force them to look in the mirror. It might take them a decade or two, but eventually, if they look, they’ll thank you – eventually.

We’re all psychopaths, some of us are just better at hiding it than others. Nobody gives a shit about other people, really. The human race is driven by selfish motivation at every turn.

We use soft language to get out of taking a stand and speaking our truth. How many decades have we spent telling people, “maybe,” “I’ll think about it,” “it depends” “it’s possible” “perhaps” etc. instead of just saying, “nope, not interested, thanks but no thanks, I don’t want to.”

That’s the biggest one. Avoiding the words “I don’t want to.”

We say we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but that’s a lie, too.

We don’t give a shit about other people’s feelings—we’re avoiding being honest to avoid feeling bad.

We lie because we don’t want to feel bad about being honest. It’s never about the other person.

Think about it. If you didn’t feel bad for making someone else feel bad, you wouldn’t have any reason not to tell the truth. If you had no attachment to someone feeling bad because you don’t want to go to their cat’s birthday party, you’d have no problem saying no.

But you don’t tell the truth. You use that soft, ambiguous language of “I’ll think about it.” You don’t mean it, and yet you say it constantly. You say it throughout your whole life. To your friends, partners, parents, teachers, bosses, and co-workers.

And the more reasons you come up with the more they try to talk you into it. But you never had any intention of thinking about it, so you come up with excuse after excuse until finally you have to go to a funeral for a relative you don’t even have.

It’s a silly game we all play, and everyone knows it’s a game, yet we still play along.

I don’t feel like it
Why not? It will be fun
I have a business meeting that day
We can reschedule to Tuesday
That wont work either
Why not
I have to clean the house
Ok then lets do it right now
I’m too tired
How about Saturday?
I have to go to my Aunt JebediahJoseRosieSamanthaBob’s funeral and it’s going to last a whole month.

Inauthentic reasons just give people the urge to counter it. As if it can be countered. You don’t think people are stupid enough to believe your reasons? They don’t. You know YOU don’t. But you both still play along.

When was the last time you told someone you didn’t want to go see a movie because you aren’t interested in the movie?

Oh, I had a hard time with this one. I would find myself seeing movies I had no interest in. What a waste of money. And then one day I started telling people I just don’t watch movies. I have no interest, but I’ll happily stuff my face with popcorn and wait for them. Which is exactly what I’ve done, on numerous occasions.

I’ve even had people offer to pay for my ticket thinking funds were the issue. I politely declined and thanked them for their generous offer and still stuck to my truth—that I am not interested. And wouldn’t you know, it only took that one time for them to get that they don’t need to invite me to the movies when they go… and now I have less people to disappoint with myriad reasons and justifications.