I Think You're Fat

Honesty is the best policy it’s been said.

But if honesty is the best policy, it would seem there is a right time to be brutally honest and a right time to just keep your mouth shut.

The word for it is couth.

“I’ve slept with more than five hundred women and about a half dozen men,” says sixty-six-year-old psychotherapist Brad Blanton in the July 2007 Escquire magazine article I Think You’re Fat.

“I’ve had a whole bunch of threesomes one of which involved a hermaphrodite prostitute equipped with dual organs.”

What about animals?

“I let my dog lick my dick once.”

No topic is off-limits in this movement called Radical Honesty.

Founded by Brad Blanton, Radical Honesty aims to get people to give up their addiction to lying.

In their 8-day workshops they train people to shift out of their typical socially acceptable ways of lying into more truthful relationships with themselves and others.

They challenge people to separate objective obvservation from subjective judgement allowing for a higher level of consciousness as to which is which.

“I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie.”

But for the most part, Blanton says that everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying and told the truth, all the time, removing any filters between our brains and our mouths.

If you think it, say it. It is the only path to authentic relationships, he says.

In his book Radical Honesty, he advocates starting sentences with “I resent you for” or “I appreciate you for.”

I can think of some instances in my life that would have benefitted from using this.

While I’m pretty much past subscribing wholeheartedly to any life-altering schemes and philosophies, there’s certainly something to be learned here.

I think it’s possible to live this way if you wanted to, including having any type of relationship you so choose, with as much honesty as you want.

I’ve advocated honesty in the past (Do Something Awesome For Yourself: Stop Lying). Just going there can be extremely liberating.

It is a selfish and beautiful thing, refusing to change any part of yourself for another person. Refusing to tell lies has brought me closer to people.

Part of the caveat for me was that I dont’ always say whatever comes to mind or even always answer a person’s questions if I don’t want to answer.

But perhaps speaking up with the truth sooner and more often is a good way to go.

It shows bravery, honesty and confidence.

And there’s nothing quite so sexy as confidence.

But speaking whatever comes to mind whenever it comes to mind?

Hmmm…

Maybe it’s all just different levels of the devil’s company.

How often and quickly you speak the truth can make the biggest difference where it’s most important: how you feel about yourself.

And thus radically allow you to connect with others in a much deeper way than you ever thought possible.

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posted in Rapport Skills