Make Sure to Save Energy to Be Honest With Yourself Each Day

Being honest with yourself is draining, exhausting even. It can feel like an impossibly difficult task if you need to “get ready” to be honest with yourself for the first time in a long time.

But you don’t have to get ready if you stay ready.

It’s easy to fall into the routine of your life, your commute, answering your daily emails, experiencing mostly the same emotions at the same times each day, every day: you’re tired in the morning, bored at work, mentally checked out in the late afternoon, happy in the evening (if you’re fortunate), exhausted at night. Repeat.

But after weeks or months of this, of not “checking in” with yourself, it can be hard to get yourself to do that. Being honest with yourself takes energy. It takes courage, because it’s scary — you may discover that you want to break up with your partner, or that you can’t stand your job because it’s complicated and scary, or that you’ve really let the ball drop by not being more intentional with a friend. And once you have those realizations, you will experience pain until you take the hard and often difficult actions to change things.

Being honest with yourself “each day” probably sounds even more scary and unnecessary. It’s like cleaning your whole house each day. If your house (your mind, your…