The Working Mums Podcast

Ep #49 - Embracing Honesty for Personal Growth and Freedom

• Nicky Bevan

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What if embracing honesty and integrity could be the key to unlocking personal growth and freedom? Join me as I share my personal story of implementing "Simple Sundays," a day I chose not to cook, and the journey of challenging societal expectations to prioritize my own desires. 

We'll explore the internal struggle of people-pleasing and how acting from a place of love and truth can lead to profound personal and familial development. 

By weaving in my own experiences, I aim to show you that embracing cognitive dissonance can lead to self-compassion and honest communication, even when it feels uncomfortable.

Together, let's uncover the transformative power of honest communication and how it can provide a liberating sense of freedom. I'll discuss the delicate art of balancing truthfulness with managing emotions, especially in the context of everyday commitments like cooking. By starting with small, honest steps, you'll discover the immense rewards and liberation genuine honesty brings. 

This conversation is filled with love and encouragement, inviting you to explore the richly rewarding path of living authentically. Join me in this transformative journey and discover the amazing potential that honest communication holds.

You can also watch this episode on YouTube with Captions - https://www.youtube.com/@TheWorkingMumsLifeCoach

If you'd like to have a chat about how I can help you further, please don't hesitate to click here & book a time with me, I'd love to meet you.

You can also follow me on IG @NickyBevan_LifeCoach

Speaker 1:

hello and welcome to this week's podcast where I want to talk to you about being honest. Now I am going to, as some of my examples um, they're going to be quite explicit and personal in nature, so before you carry on listening to the podcast, please make sure that younger ears can't hear this podcast, because it may not be appropriate for that kind of under 18s uh, generation. Oh, are you curious about what I'm going to talk about, about being honest? So this, this podcast episode, is really going to complement on from last week's um, last week's episode, where I talked about who you are, or who are you, and being honest is the kind of next step in um evolution, I feel, because I don't know about you, but I find that I people please quite often. So what I mean by that is I do things that I don't want to do in order to make sure that they're happy, but then what happens is I do it feeling obligated and resentful, and that can't feel good for either party. So I've got a couple of examples about where where being honest is actually as long as we're being honest from a real place of love, and it's a real integrity thing for me, and this isn't just being honest with other people. This is being honest with yourself. This is really being honest with the type of person that you want to be. So I've got three examples sex, cooking and cats. They are completely separate topics. Let's not put those three together.

Speaker 1:

But let's start off with the cooking. This was really interesting. I experienced this at the weekend, so I decided a couple of months ago that I wasn't going to cook on a Sunday. My son then called it Simple Sunday. It's going to be Simple Sunday. I don't cook on a Sunday, and that has been okay until this weekend when I kind of started beating myself up for not wanting to cook and I had this kind of voice in my head. I mean, it was that that time of month when you know we're a bit bitchy to ourselves and everybody else anyway, but I had this voice in my head that was like, yeah, but Nikki, you're the mum and you're responsible for your children's health and your husband's been at work all day and you've been doing nothing. So really you should, you should be cooking, and not only should you be cooking, you should want to cook, you should want to do this for your family. And I think that's the bit that's really quite painful is the that you should want to do this. So where honesty came into, that was the taking a deep breath and going right, okay, let's just be honest. What that voice is telling me. That's not true. That's society's conditioning.

Speaker 1:

But also acknowledging that there was a part of me that what I do want to look after my children. So there's a conflict here, isn't there? There's a conflict between wanting to look after my children and my husband and not wanting to cook. So I still chose well, I still chose not to cook. What I actually did was had something in the freezer that I just stuck in the oven, which I don't really see as cooking.

Speaker 1:

But but in that process of allowing my boys and releasing them to do what they wanted, I felt really antsy, I felt really uncomfortable. I felt antsy, I felt agitated and I was watching myself with just fascination going. Isn't this really interesting? Like what do I want more here? Do I want more to overcome myself and Kirk, or do I want to overcome myself and allow my boys the freedom to learn how to look after themselves? And part of that process is that discomfort.

Speaker 1:

Whilst you change, whilst you're kind of sitting, you've got this belief that you should be looking after people, on one hand, and then this belief that actually, if you release that, they could grow and learn. That's lovely. Which would I want more? One's going to keep me stuck if I stay cooking and not teaching them and going with conditioning. I'm going to stay stuck there and that might be okay, or which would be uncomfortable as well, because it's not part of me doesn't want to do that. Or do I want the growth of letting my boys learn, giving them the opportunity to be independent, giving myself a break. That's going to, and overcoming the conditioning is going to grow me and up my family. So either choice is uncomfortable. One keeps you stuck and one grows you. But it was just fascinating.

Speaker 1:

Being honest with myself in that moment. Which part do I actually really want to work on? Because if I'm going to manage my mind either way, which one do I actually want to manage my mind over? So I chose compassion for myself. I chose to feel antsy and agitated, knowing that this is because I'm going against what I have been raised to believe, what I have been conditioned as a woman, and it's called cognitive dissonance. It's the actual change in the neurons in our brain and the brain's like what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck. But the more we go through that, the calmer it gets and new neuro pathways are connected. So this is again science. This is actually a thing. Um. So that's one? Um example of where being honest. And with other people, I was kind of like I said to my husband look, I'm just bored, I'm tired of constantly cooking and I, you know, I just want a day where I don't have to think about it. Um, being honest with my boys it's like you are more than capable of cooking for yourself now I will help you learn, but you are more than capable and empowering them to be independent boys. And then being honest with myself, with compassion when that like agitated feeling comes up, and letting myself feel that agitation and next time it won't be as bad, and then the time after it won't be as bad and time after it won't be as bad and it reduces. So that's one example of where how to be honest. Um.

Speaker 1:

Another example is around sex. So I love my husband. He's amazing. I love having sex with him. Um, I always enjoy it, but it's I don't have a massive sex drive, and he said to me the other day he's like, like Nikki, I'd really like some sexy time. I was like, yeah, let's, let's, let's, let's plan it in. But I will warn you that my period is due and sure enough, we have the house to ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Today would have been the perfect time. But my period started and I just don't feel sexy. I just don't. But this is the explicit bit, I hope I'm not oversharing too much. But I was willing to do something. So I said to him. I said Johnny, I said I'm really not feeling sexy. My period started. I'm not feeling sexy. I said, but I am willing to get my tits out and give you a jelly job. Now I'm not going to go into what jelly job is, that's a whole other podcast.

Speaker 1:

But it made us both laugh and I was being honest. I'm like I really don't want full bloom sex. I'm just not in that space today to engage in that way. But here's what I'm happy to do. Or if I wasn't happy to do anything, I could have just left the conversation. I'm really sorry. Can we do it another time? Um, but that was being honest and I could have made up an excuse, I could have made up a, a reason, but it wouldn't have been. I wouldn't have been genuine, I wouldn't have been authentic, and that doesn't feel good to me. It feels out of line and it takes courage to say the truth.

Speaker 1:

Um, another example is the cat. So I don't have cats, I don't even like cats. I'm definitely a dog person and and our dog's getting old, she's very low maintenance. I don't really want to look at after anything other than my business and my family. So no pets after she goes initially anyway. But my neighbor opposite has got a cat who she adores and she will ask me to look after this cat. And I don't like cats, I don't want to look after a cat, but I do want to be a good neighbor. So this is one of those times where I'm like I choose to do something I wouldn't would be my ideal, my like ideal thing to do, because that's the type of person I want to be, that's the type of neighbor I want to be. I want to be able to ask for her to ask me anytime, and if it's not convenient then I would say no. But that's being honest with myself. It's like, no, I don't really want to do that, but I do want to be a good neighbor. So I'm choosing to do something I wouldn't normally choose to do. That's being honest.

Speaker 1:

And I had a conversation with my sister-in-law earlier and I love this so much. She was able to say to me Nikki, I know that you'll say no to this if you don't want to. And the fact that she knows I'll say no means that when I do say yes, I'm not doing it out of obligation, I'm not doing it out of resentfulness. So it was two things she was asking me about. One I said yes to, the other I said no to. And because I say no, she knows that when I say yes, I mean it. And you might have relationships in your life, you might know people at work or in your family or in the wider community that you feel like they're just saying yes because they have to, not because they really want to. So it feels shit on both parties when we're not honest.

Speaker 1:

But because I've been honest and because I have said no to things very lovingly, it means that when I do say yes to something, they know I mean it, they know I really want to do it. I've said this to them about their dog. They've got a gorgeous dog. It's big, it's not my choice of dog. And because, and I said to them look, if it was an emergency, obviously I would. I would willingly look after your dog, but I'm not going to look after it for a holiday because I don't want that big dog in my house. I don't want to spend time walking it, looking after it, doing all the things. I don't want to do that. So if it's an emergency, of course I would help you out, but if it's a holiday, no. And because I'm honest, a place, huge place of love. They then know that when they ask me something and I say yes, it's because I want to do it. I'm not doing it out of resentful obligation.

Speaker 1:

And being honest takes courage. It takes courage, it's uncomfortable, but the more you do it, the better it feels for you and the better you get at doing it. So just try small and realize it doesn't kill you, even if that so. Also, I should add a note to this. Actually, when you do start saying no to things that you would normally have said yes to, or when you stop people pleasing the people around you might be a bit like what's going on. Are you, you know what's happening with you. You're not your normal self. That's okay too. That's okay, there's an adjustment on both parts.

Speaker 1:

But this, there's a real freedom in honesty, as long as that honesty is done from love, which is why sometimes I don't follow through on my honesty, because if it's coming from a place of agitation and irritation, it's not going to land well and with the cooking. But going back to the cooking on a Sunday, I have actually had to allow myself to say no, agitatedly or annoyingly, because that is kind of part of the process, because in that moment I am a bit agitated and that's okay. It's kind of like a process that we have to go through. But there's a freedom, there's a huge freedom on the other side of being honest and it's available to you should you want to learn how to do it and, as always, let's have a chat if you want to know more. Sending you so much love, so much encouragement. Just start small, and the other side is incredible. Have an amazing week. Bye.