Free to be Honest

A show that helps men live more honest and healthy lives.

Intro [00:00:00]

Picture yourself walking down the sidewalk. You’re heading home for dinner and you don’t want to be late, so you take out your phone to check the time. And in that split second, your foot catches on a break in the sidewalk. Your whole world starts to flip and by instinct you catch yourself before smashing your face on the ground. You get up, but your hands are pretty scraped up. You’re flustered and your heart is racing.

How would you feel in that moment? What would you do? What would be the very next thing you would do? Of course, everyone is different, but I believe you would respond in one of two ways: one which is a healthy response and one which is not.

Today, we’re going to explore two roads. One is the road of shame and the other is the road of change. And I want you to ask yourself which one you tend to take. The first step to walking a better road is recognizing the options available to you. So let’s jump in. You’re listening to the Free To Be Honest Podcast.

“The Uneven Path” [00:01:42]

I want to share a poem I wrote several months ago that helped me discover and think through these two roads, these two ways to interpret and process a moment where you look like a fool. I call it “The Uneven Path”.

Every day, I put my best face on. Take courage, try to look professional. Like, “Look at me, look how I’ve made it!” But I haven’t. You see, I don’t have it all together. Please, don’t be confused by the confusion I create.

Why is it so humiliating to stumble in public? Stumbling reveals the uneven ground, the obstacles so many trips over, but I’m worried that my stumbling through life won’t show that life is hard, but rather that I am hopeless, weak, incapable. Like the uneven ground isn’t to blame, but rather my lack of foresight. Like how could I have been so foolish?

But we’re all blind until we see. We are all trying until we succeed. I am not to blame. I am not to blame for moving with purpose through the shadows. And it is that very stumbling that unites the two of us in spirit and purpose.

When my balance is shaken and my hands scraped concrete like emergency landings, and I look around to see who’s watching, I have a choice.

My eyes swell with tears as they fixate on faces, looking for the laugh of my third grade bully to pour out of their open mouths. But my words wait. They wait for the me that sits on the bench beside the wildflowers. The me with eyes closed, feeling the breeze on my face and gently through my hair. The me that holds my third grade class photo in his hand rather than his heart, rather than his gnashed and broken teeth.

I have grown. From a boy with a forced smile posing for a photo, to a man in his thirties, smiling naturally, posing for no one, to a scuffed mess on the ground with a decision to make, a decision as to which me I will be in this moment.

And so I stand and say words that are simple, but not easy.

“Someone should really take care of that and even ground. And that someone should be me and you, for we are all susceptible to fall.”

The Road of Shame [00:05:07]

There’s two responses you can have after tripping on an uneven sidewalk, two directions to take: the road of shame and the road of change.

The road of shame looks like this. Immediately after tripping, you look around for anyone who might have seen you trip. It doesn’t matter who they are. A complete stranger who you’ve never seen before and will likely never see again. But you care what they think. You are afraid that they’ll laugh at you and you consider yourself a fool for tripping in the first place. You shouldn’t have been looking at your phone, you tell yourself. You feel like such an idiot.

Why do you respond like this? Why do you care what a complete stranger thinks or how they react? Why do you feel ashamed? It’s because this moment of tripping is a mirror moment. What do I mean by a mirror moment?

A mirror moment is what I call a situation that looks or feels very similar to a painful memory from your past and that elicits the same reaction in you that the original did because of its similarity. For me, tripping on the sidewalk and looking around to see if anyone laughs feels just like times in elementary school when kids would laugh at me after I made a mistake.

I think of the numerous times I played softball in PE class. I was not athletic and didn’t intend to be, I hated softball. So when it was my turn to go to bat, I inevitably struck out. But I didn’t stop trying. To be sure, there were kids that did, but I wasn’t one of them. Every time I went up to bat, I honestly tried to hit the ball. I wanted to succeed, but I still failed. And every time I did, I heard laughter behind me from kids mocking me about how ridiculous I looked trying to hit the ball. And from the kids who actually cared about the game, I got groans and sighs after each failure. Similar to walking down the street as an adult and tripping on the sidewalk. I look just as ridiculous trying to catch myself and keep my balance as I did swinging that bat. I should’ve seen the uneven sidewalk and avoided it, I tell myself, just as I should’ve been more capable at playing softball. If I was, I could have avoided this humiliation. I look around to see if anyone is laughing at me just like those kids were decades ago.

It’s a mirror moment. I’ve been laughed at in situations like this before, and so I’ve been conditioned to look for it now.

Ultimately I’m struggling with shame. In some sense, I feel like I deserve to be laughed at. I should’ve seen it coming, but I didn’t, so the laughter is warranted. I feel like I made a mistake. It’s my fault. I’m incapable. And I’m worth being laughed at despite how unpleasant it feels.

The Road of Change [00:08:41]

But what if it wasn’t a mistake on my part? What if I’m not to blame for my tripping? What if I’m not at fault because there’s no fault to be given? What if I’m just as likely as anyone to trip on this sidewalk? What if I tripped not because of a mistake I made or some deeply-rooted inability to handle life, but rather because something is wrong with the world around me?

If I saw it that way, then I may not feel any shame at all. I wouldn’t be focused on myself and my perceived flaws or emotional pain. And that would free up my focus for other things. I would be free to question the existence of this break in the sidewalk; question why it’s here, what caused it, why it hasn’t been fixed and what can be done about it now so that no one else trips on it like I just did.

This is the road of change. It’s a generative approach to the problem, one based on the truth of the current moment. It examines the world with curiosity and empathy. It creates new ideas. It’s a position of strength and potential. It’s a way of being that leads to change and a better world.

On the road of change, I don’t assume the problem is internal. I don’t assume that things are my fault. I don’t consciously or unconsciously pull up past hurts or a cruel view of myself to explain what happened. I look with clear eyes and try to see the situation for what it really is. The sidewalk is broken. It’s a hazard. Distracted or not, I’m not solely to blame for my tripping. There is an external problem in the world that contributed to my situation.

Now, should I have been paying more attention instead of looking at my phone? Perhaps. But on the road of change, my moment of distractedness is just that. It’s a moment. Nothing more. It’s not an indication of my incapability or worthlessness.

And because I’m not drowning in my shame, I can more easily access reserves of power within myself to affect the world around me. Maybe I can go buy some orange spray paint and mark the sidewalk so other people don’t trip, too. Maybe I can contact someone within the city government that manages the sidewalks and bring it to their attention.

But this strength to change the world is lost when shame gets involved. When we’re drowning in shame, there’s no strength to affect our environment and there’s no strength to find healing. There’s only pain, felt and refelt, over and over again. So not only do I suffer the same pain again, but the world misses out on the positive change I could bring about.

You may be thinking, “Okay, Andrew. I, I know I’m on the road of shame and I have been for a long time. How do I get off this road?” I’ve found that the fork in the road between shame and change splits at the junction of my perceived identity; what I believe about myself.

Do I believe that I’m strong and capable, as I truly am? Or do I see myself as those mean-spirited kids did on the softball field? Do I believe their laughter was warranted? Do I believe I deserve to be laughed at? Do I believe my identity is defined by my inability to play a sport or to walk down the sidewalk without tripping?

Or do I believe that I am here now in this moment with family that loved me and values that matter to me, with abilities that push me forward and a mind to discern truth, with memories of joyful moments and dreams of hard-won accomplishments?

You are not your mistakes. You are not what their laughter claims.

You walk on clouds above it all, driven by a heart fully alive, like a locomotive barreling and raging forward. It pulls both the weight of your failures and the far-heavier weight of your dreams upward through life. It’s destination? That wondrous place where you will see your dreams come to fruition and your failures sent out to pasture.

I wish I could tell you that choosing the better road of change is as simple as just choosing it, but that’s not what I’ve found. For me, it feels like a tall ridge runs between those two paths. It’s far easier to stay on the road of shame, for when you try to leave it, gravity pulls you back down toward that familiar pain.

But I can tell you that walking the road of change and leaving your shame behind is worth all the work in the world. It’s worth continuing to push against that ridge, to climb it’s steep slope. And the more you embrace who you really are, the more you’ll see that you were built to scale that wall.

Outro [00:15:44]

Thanks for tuning in! I hope you found this discussion helpful. If you’d like to be notified about new episodes when they release, you can sign up for the Free To Be Honest newsletter at FreeToBeHonest.com. In each of those, you’ll also get a behind-the-scenes look at how I create the podcast and an early look at an episode that I’m still working on.

You can also connect with me on Instagram at Andrew Pethoud. That’s P-E-T-H-O-U-D. Feel free to DM me. I would love to meet you and hear what you think of the show.