And What Else?

Why Self-Trust Requires Self-Honesty

• Wendy O'Beirne (The Completion Coach)

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We've become obsessed with external data, outsourcing our self-awareness to technology and social media while ignoring our internal wisdom about what we truly need.

• Tracking sleep, recovery, heart rate and social media metrics has replaced our connection to how we actually feel
• The wellness industry thrives on polarizing, black-and-white viewpoints that provide simple answers to complex questions
• Self-honesty isn't glamorous but it's necessary—we all know when we're making excuses or avoiding what matters
• You can't truly trust yourself while simultaneously knowing you're "full of shit" in certain areas of your life
• Stop investigating why you can't do something and start figuring out how you can
• Break cycles of self-deception by asking: "Am I being honest or giving myself permission to fail quietly?"
• Navigate your internal landscape with curiosity rather than judgment
• Acknowledge your capacity to change and take small, gentle steps forward


If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and subscribe! And if you want to learn more from me, come and say hello on Instagram @thecompletioncoach or via email at wendy@thecompletioncoach.co.uk or find out more about working with me on my website, thecompletioncoach.co.uk.

Speaker 1:

what if I said you're not tired, you're not bored and you're not any of the things that you think you are that are getting in your way? What if everything is slightly different to the way that you have logged it? I'm going to relate this in to even the gadgets that we're trusting for all of this data. We're looking at tracking everything. We track everything that we're trusting for all of this data. We're looking at tracking everything. We track everything and we track nothing at all at the same time. Welcome to and what Else?

Speaker 1:

I'm Wendy O'Byrne, also known as the Completion Coach, and today we're going to be diving into this data, this tracking, this idea of honesty, of transparency, and the very quiet ways we lie to ourselves in the name of productivity, burnout, peace, self-care all of the above. We do live in a world obsessed with data. If we're not looking at how many likes we've got, how many shares we've got, how many views we've got. We're looking at how well we slept, what our recovery rate is, what our heart rate is and what our stress levels are. We're looking all of the time at some kind of data statistic how much time did we spend online? And all of this information and the metrics. We are judging ourselves by lots of of it. Lots of it is external data and this external data creates stories, creates beliefs, creates ideas, creates behaviors, creates challenges. It's creating a lot inside of you, whether, whether you want to acknowledge it or but so many of us have tuned out of our internal data, with outsourced self-awareness, with outsourced opinions of ourselves. We use quotes from instagram, recovery scores from apps and posts and reactions to posts, together with people's comments on posts, to really start to judge ourselves, our opinions, whether we're right, whether we're wrong. And, my goodness, the coaching world is just a huge example of it. I say coaching. I'll expand it to wellness. You know my way's right, this way's wrong. I'm the right somatic healer. All other somatic healers are wrong. I do it the right way. They do it the's wrong. I'm the right somatic healer. All other somatic healers are wrong. I do it the right way. They do it the wrong way. I'm right, you're wrong. This breath's right, that breath's wrong. Mindset's wrong. You've got to get somatic Somatic's wrong. You've got to do mindset With every camp.

Speaker 1:

Whichever way you look, everybody is trying to contradict other people and, in fact, one of the biggest hooks that are used online that people are taught to use online is a hook right, something to grab your attention. What grabs our attention are clickbait, and what grabs our attention and what loads of people start posts with are controversial opinions, which aren't actually that controversial, it's just an opinion. So it's really interesting to see how the data is using us and then how we use data, because the statistics, the polarizing, the dramatic, the set in stone my way or the highway, the more extreme, the more clicks it seems to get and the more likely we are to therefore see it, because the more attention something gets, the more it gets flooded out. And so I'm asking you to stop for a minute today and ask yourself how much do I know? My own data and your data is how much attention you are paying to how you actually feel. What am I avoiding? What am I telling myself about that? What is my body asking for? What is something that I need to really look at myself for the data on, instead of this constant distraction of external data?

Speaker 1:

Now, don't get me wrong Self-honesty is not very thick baitable, it's not very trendy, it's usually awkward, it's usually a little bit messy and it's certainly not the thing that we're putting out there. Self-honesty is not that glamorous, but you know. You know that you're staying up too late. You don't need a watch or a ring to tell you that. You know when you're scrolling and getting yourself in a hole. You know when you're avoiding something because it feels like shit because of all the thoughts and beliefs and reactions you're having in your head about something rather than I'm tired. You know when you're giving yourselves excuses. You know when you're pretending but you don't always want to admit it. In fact, I'd say most of the time we're blagging ourselves. We are, believe it or not, on the whole full of shit, especially with ourselves.

Speaker 1:

I will throw myself under this bus today as well, but I am currently still sat in my gym kit lying to myself all day about working out. I've told myself I'm too busy. I told myself I was too tired. I told myself I was too stressed, too hot, didn't sleep enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1:

The reality, if I'm going to be completely honest with myself, is that I am in a funk. I am in that moment of really rejecting my body. I'm in a moment of what's the point? What's the point why bother? Ugh, can't be asked. Don't want to Too hard. It's not working for me. All of that is what's really going on underneath that. So in that I'm just rejecting it. But I'm trying to tell myself it's because I'm too hot, I'm too tired and I haven't got time. I'm stressed, I'm busy. I'll tell you what. I haven't been too stressed or busy for Scrolling. I scrolled for a good 20 minutes this morning in that funk which added to my funk. But I do still have a choice. I still do have a choice. I can keep running with that today or I can get on with it and do something today, which I'm going to do straight after this recording, because you can't call yourself out and ignore it.

Speaker 1:

And people do DM me quotes, really polarizing quotes, quite often, and ask me what my take on them are, and a recent one someone sent me was let me dig it out people think they're healing, but they're just isolating themselves with no one to trigger them. Real healing happens in emotionally corrective relationships and I was like you know what there's truth in that? There are times when solitude is also completely necessary. There is also times when cutting people off is completely necessary. But there is a time when we step away from what we are calling triggers, because we are avoiding conflict because we don't know how to handle it. There are times when we withdraw because we don't know how to voice an opinion. We don't know how to be an equal in that relationship. We don't think we will be heard, we think we'll be misunderstood.

Speaker 1:

There's so many areas where we need to be in challenge, to be in triggers if that's the word we're going to use for them, and we need to be in that situation. We need to because we need to get through it, we need to get over it, we need to grow, we need to change the way that we behave with those situations. And there are times where it's abusive and it's absolutely not the right thing to say there and expect it to change. And there are times where it's inappropriate because of the relationship dynamics, the power dynamics, and the reality is we're not going to get to the point we want to. So we do need to move away, to change something. All of it's true. So it's not a statement of fact. It is just one part of the lens, a really polarizing part of the lens lens, a really polarizing part of the lens. But if we wanted to make it true, if we wanted that to be the thing that we needed to be true in that moment, then we would take that as fact.

Speaker 1:

As humans, we want clarity. We want this is right, this is wrong. We want this is black, this is white, absolutely no grey areas. We crave those simple boxing of things. You're like me you're not, you're good, you're bad. We want to just box things off, quite simply, and it's never, ever that easy, that easy. Most things are both right and wrong, depending on the lens, the situation, the whole host of other things that have to go on it. Some things are really helpful and equally as harmful. It depends. What really matters. What really matters is this self-honesty, this internal data and self-trust, because the most dramatic, divisive quotes and spaces and places on the internet might feel validating, but usually, usually only to people who are feeling vulnerable in that area or confused about that situation. That will play into some kind of confirmation bias. That will play into some kind of confirmation bias and I want you to know that our thoughts and our beliefs and our feelings are what will then drive our behavior. And nervous system enters the chat when we're talking about our capacity.

Speaker 1:

So, in any situation like mine today, instead of just going oh, it's hot and I'm tired and taking it and running with it. I know, I know I am lying to myself. I do, even if I want to deny it because I don't want to do it. I know I am lying to myself. I can't kid myself that I don't know I do. And anybody that contacts me and asks these questions and goes when do I know if I need to rest or if it's me avoiding something, I'm like I can't answer that. Only you can. You know when you are kidding yourself. But you are going to have to get honest. What do you believe about the action you're avoiding? What is the story? Because that's really important, because self-trust and self-honesty need each other and I've probably spoke about self-trust way more than I've talked about self-honesty.

Speaker 1:

But you can't say that you trust yourself and then completely break your own trust on repeat and everybody sits in front of me and says I don't think I have a self-trust issue, like I do trust myself and I'm like I get. It's nice to say that and there might be areas that you trust yourself. But these areas where there's no change, these areas where you're not doing, saying, being who you said, you there is either a lack of trust or, in most cases, there's both the trust and the honesty. Don't believe in each other. So if I'm honest, I don't trust you to do something with it. I don't trust you with my honesty and that's us with us, the same as we are with other people.

Speaker 1:

If we're slightly doubtful of how much we trust somebody, we're rarely truly honest with them because we worry what they will do with our honesty. It's the same with you, on you. If you don't truly trust yourself because you know that you let yourself down, you know that you lie to yourself, you know that you lie to other people about the things that you're lying to yourself about, you know that you don't do completely what you tell people you're doing, then the reality is that honesty has a few issues with you, because honesty doesn't trust you to handle it. You don't trust you because you can't say I trust myself whilst internally screaming I'm full of shit. And I'm saying that with a smile on my face because there's been loads of times that I've caught myself doing that going. No, I've really built self-trust, I'm really doing well at this. And internally I'm screaming like oh my god, you're full of shit, you're not doing that, you're ignoring that, you're completely skirting around this issue and I'm like, oh yeah, oh, I've built some good self-trust in areas. So if you want to be able to work on your trust and honesty with yourself, and effectively, the more you work on this with yourself, the better it becomes externally with other people on this with yourself, the better it becomes externally with other people.

Speaker 1:

Ask yourself am I being honest or am I giving myself permission to fail quietly? This helpful, or is this dragging me down, this helping me have a better day, or is this making things worse? Is this truly what's going on, or am I giving myself excuses? Because it's really easy to get in a funk like I did this morning, get into a little bit of an internal strop, do something that absolutely tripped myself up, fall down a scroll hole, find a load of stuff that added to how I was feeling and then created more of a funk. Yeah, it just created more of a funk more permission, more excuses, more woe is me, more oh. Why can't it just work for me? Why can't this? I tell you why I don't do what I should be doing and I've got so many excuses, so many excuses in my bag about it, because it's the most frustrating area for me.

Speaker 1:

So it's very easy for me to be too busy, too stressed to this, that or the other, to go and do something that I find easier to go and get in my own way. So when I'm really honest with myself, when I really sit down and go, do you know what Wend? You are doing everything here to make this situation worse for yourself. You are doing everything to make yourself feel worse, to reinforce a story about yourself. That isn't true. It isn't true. To reinforce the idea of this self-rejection, to make yourself feel worse about several things that this just stirs the pot on, and you can either continue with that or you can shake it off, actually stand up and shake it off. I 10 out of 10 recommend that action. I can laugh about it because it's not that serious and I can get on and do something different. I can do the action I'm avoiding. I can just crack on. I can ask for help. I can look at what's going to help encourage me and I can be more honest about it everywhere. And then I tend to myself and I tend to what I need to be able to do that as gently as possible, rather than forced, rather than pressurized, rather than go hard or go home, which we've all been taught. I can actually find a gentle, slow, progressive way to deal with that, whilst acknowledging that I can. I can I get to and I can, can I get to and I can.

Speaker 1:

There will be some area in your life where you're giving yourself excuses. There will be some areas of your life where you will pretend it is out of your hands, and there are some areas of your life that you're kidding yourself while scrolling for some quote to back you up, whilst you're looking for somebody to reassure you that you don't need to, that it's fine. Stay where you are. You're trying, but it's not your fault. There will be something convincing you that you don't have capacity and it's not your fault.

Speaker 1:

And I want to say actually this time that you're spending investigating why you can't. That's part of your problem. Decide you're going to start investigating how you can Give as much time to how you can as to diagnosing your root cause, to diagnosing why you can't, and instead just figure out how. Figure out how you're going to rely on your own self-honesty, self-trust and real-life internal data to start making some really good, positive changes in your life, because it's yours and if you're the thing and the internal stuff is getting in the way. Then navigate it, figure it out, go for it with a smile on your face, with curiosity, with a little bit less seriousness, and start to enjoy that part of your life more, sending you all of my love. As always. You can DM me on Instagram, at thecompletioncoach, or pop me an email.