Let’s talk a bit about passivity – one of the most misunderstood modes of being in our modern day. Passivity is often misunderstood as kindness. People intending to be polite often keep their mouths shut about their needs in order to ‘not rock the boat’.
While there are benefits to keeping up with the status quo, it is our authentic self that suffers at the expense of pleasing others.
The name of our company, True Participation, is more than just “fully” participating. “Truly” Participating means that we are honoring how we feel at our core. If we are being true to ourselves, it means that we have our own backs, and that we can trust ourselves to act (or refrain) in a way that we will feel good about in the future.
Here are four simple reminders of how you may honor yourself by speaking your truth:
1) Identify your needs and state them
By identifying and then by voicing our needs, we find that we increase our ability to be true to ourselves and to help ourselves feel good. By taking cues from others about our needs being unwelcome, we are abandoning ourselves for fear of being abandoned by them if we ask for what we want.
If you’re not familiar with identifying your needs or don’t know where to begin, the system of Non-Violent/Compassionate Communication suggests stating how you feel, and what you need in order to improve communication with your loved ones, co-workers, friends. NVC even offers participants a list of needs, all of which humans have at one time or another.
2) Honesty is [Usually] the best Medicine
Many times, our well-intentioned course of not sharing, turns out to be a slippery slope, because when we fail to voice our needs, we fail to be honest and transparent. Dishonesty tends to make others angry. Essentially, disallowing our real desires to be known can be called a fear of intimacy. True Participation means creating intimacy with every moment, every person, and every situation. It means moving into discomfort when it feels beneficial for our future happiness. It is also worth mentioning that honesty is not ALWAYS the best choice, such as in the case of a murderer looking for their victim who happens to be hiding in your house, or when we are considering telling someone how much we hate them – which is really only superficially honest as it would disregard the nature of our essential goodness.
3) There’s no such thing as a dumb question, but there are great questions
By creating more transparency within ourselves, we are giving others permission to be transparent as well. By warmly asking meaningful and conscious questions – and by encouraging others – we are making it clear that it’s important for everybody to have their needs met.
4) Creativity> Reactivity
Passivity may feel like “nothing”, but it is in fact usually a reaction. Reactivity is the opposite of creativity. When we truly create, we focus on what we want. When we are passive, we are letting that which we want slip through our hands because we are identifying with our brain’s fear instructions to either fight, flee, or in the case of passivity: freeze. We always have the option to take the less comfortable and more productive route, thereby moving through the passivity as opposed to punishing ourselves for our in-action later. This can be challenging at first, and yet will reap a lifetime of rewards.
Always remember that you play the lead role in your life- you’re not the sidekick in this movie! We hope these reminders will help you move through your truth more gracefully and bring about simple changes in your everyday life. Keep rockin’ the boat!
On How this relates to Cannabis Users:
Cannabis releases testosterone in big bursts. This stuff is powerful, and is meant to be used. Testosterone goes perfectly with intention. Pure masculine energy, being held by the feminine cannabis provides. If we just sit back and enjoy it without a goal, we aren’t giving back to ‘her’ as she needs us too, and as we need ourselves to. The whole point of THC is to fill in our energetic gaps with love instead of numbness. Even if our goal is to ‘relax’, doing this in the warrior-way means going the extra mile: breaking out the candles, getting out the epsom salts, and creating an extremely relaxing situation (in the bath or otherwise). Alternatively, of course, we could dive deep into meditation work, an artistic endeavor, exercise, or anything else that stretches our sense of self beyond what we normally do.
