1: Professor Gay Hendricks was mad.
He sat in his car at a stoplight, replaying in his head the latest rant from the dean of his program at the University of Colorado, he writes in The Genius Zone.
His counseling department “locked horns repeatedly with the dean, who didn’t like some of the nontraditional things we did in our program.”
“I had left the meeting steamed up and found myself furiously replaying the conversation over and over,” he writes, “each time inventing new and more devastating responses that proved how right I was and how wrong he was.”
One example: At the beginning of each academic year, the professors took new students on a weekend camping retreat. Although Gay didn’t enjoy camping, he always participated because of the meaningful bonding that occurred with the new students.
“The dean hated this sort of unorthodox learning,” Gay writes, “but he couldn’t stop us, because the counseling program was by far the most popular one in the entire graduate school. Anytime he threatened us, we would respond with an equally dire threat to admit fewer students.
“Since the budget and his overinflated salary—three times what the other professors and I made—were dependent on the large number of students in the counseling program,” he explains, the dean “would huff and puff for a few days, then quiet down.”
2: Honk! Honk! Gay was so caught up replaying the conversation he hadn’t noticed that the light had turned green.
“The blaring noise startled me out of my trance and I accelerated jerkily, stalling my engine,” he recalls. “Another round of horns honking blatted behind me before I recovered and got underway.”
A half block later, however, he was once again rehashing the conversation. “There I was again,” he recalls, “back in the dean’s office in my mind, firing off all the devastatingly cutting remarks I hadn’t said in the actual meeting.”
Then, he had a flash of insight.
“First, I realized I was trying to control and change the past,” Gay notes, “which was not controllable by me or anybody else.”
Second, he thought about the source of his anger: Incompletion. “Much of our negative thinking comes from leaving situations incomplete,” he explains.
The conversation had ended without Gay being fully transparent about how he felt.
“When we leave a conversation without fully revealing what’s on our minds and in our hearts,” he writes, “a pressure begins to build inside us. The force of nature then propels us to seek completion.”
This realization led Gay to reflect further. “I was surprised to discover how often I walked away from conversations without completing them, leaving unsaid what was really on my mind or in my heart.”
Why was this? he wondered.
“I realized I’d been running a con on myself since childhood,” he writes. “The lie I’d been telling myself went like this: ‘I hide the truth from people because they’ll feel bad if I tell them. I want them to feel good, so it’s okay to lie to them. If I lie to people, it’s for their own good.'”
What was underneath this habit?
“I hide the truth from people because I don’t want to have to deal with their reactions,” he explains. “I don’t want to deal with their anger or hurt or punishment or whatever other feelings they might have.”
He decided to change this behavior. Later that day, Gay wrote in his journal: “I vow from here on out to reveal instead of conceal. I have no control over how people are going to react to the truth. The only thing I can control is whether or not I speak honestly. It’s ultimately not my business to manage anybody else’s emotions.”
He captured his new approach with two Life Lessons.
Life lesson #1: When I hide the truth, I hurt. Telling the truth makes me feel better.
Life lesson #2: People don’t always jump for joy and thank me when I reveal the truth to them.
3: Here’s a question Gay has asked audiences all over the world: “Do I prefer to have people tell me the truth, or do I want them to lie to me so my feelings don’t get hurt?”
“Whether they’re in Beijing or Brooklyn, they always tell me the same thing,” he writes: “I want to hear the unvarnished truth. I don’t want anybody to lie to me to protect my feelings.”
Yet, there’s a sudden silence when he turns the question around: “Do you speak the truth scrupulously to people you care about, or do you sometimes lie to them to spare their feelings?”
“Overwhelmingly, no matter if the audience is speaking English, Spanish, or Chinese,” Gay notes, “they admit they habitually conceal the truth so as not to push the emotional buttons of others.”
The conclusion? “We don’t want to be lied to ourselves, but we assume other people want us to lie to them.”
He encourages us to get a piece of paper and a pen.
“Consider this commitment,” Gay writes: “I commit to speaking honestly and listening mindfully.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Am I leaving important truths unspoken in my relationships, and how might speaking honestly bring me greater relief and connection?
Action: Identify one conversation where I’ve held back and take a step to share my true feelings, focusing on honesty and mindful listening.
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