True & Truth: Managing Personal & Objective Truths (Part 2)

Summary

In Part 2 of identifying and managing personal and objective truth, I wanted to spend some time exploring the benefits and consequences associated with how you manage your truths. The purpose of diving into these outputs is to raise awareness of what you can expect to avoid any surprises when your actions affect your outcomes.

As a recap of Part 1, we operate within 2 main truth experiences:

• Personal truth: Your own subjective reality based on your beliefs, experiences, and perceptions of what you experience
• Objective truth: The reality that exists independently of your personal truth, based on facts

There can be times when your personal truth is completely aligned with the objective truth. There will be times when it doesn’t align. The key is to be open to understanding that your personal truth can be a factor or contributor to the objective truth, but might not fully align with, compliment, or support it.

In this blog, I’ll continue the topic of personal and objective truth, focusing on the benefits of managing your personal truth and its relationship with objective truth, including potential consequences of not managing them collectively.

Benefits of Managing Personal and Objective Truths Well

As outlined in Part 1, your ability to discern between each truth is key to your opportunity to manage both you and your circumstances. Once you know what truth you are navigating in, you will be in a stronger position to manage your own expectations thus leading to you choosing the next best step for you.

Effectively balancing information you have, being adaptable and open to taking on board new information, clearly communicating throughout the process, seeking out new information, and using your emotional intelligence throughout your truth management will position you to navigate your circumstance in a way that will serve you more appropriately. The following list provides an overview of benefits that can be expected if you manage your truths well:

• Improved decision-making: By employing a balanced perspective including integrating both personal insights and objective facts, considering multiple perspectives, identifying and accommodating potential risks, and incorporating known biases, you will be in a stronger position to make the best decision you can (at the time)
• Effective conflict resolution: If you are reducing the impacts of your known biases, constantly striving to consider truths outside of your personal truths, and searching for common ground within a larger construct, you are in a solid position to be communicating freely which will enhance the likelihood of resolving conflicts in a more efficient and amicable way
• Personal growth: In Part 1 I stated that acknowledging that your truth might be only a part of the story was a great start. This demonstrates self-awareness by allowing you to reflect on your own experiences, values, beliefs, and motivations, leading to increased adaptability for you to navigate through the truth journey. This is not insignificant – all of this is tremendous personal growth!
• Enhanced relationships: A key part of managing truths is acknowledging your own and others’ and balancing these with the objective truth (when known). Using clear communications throughout this process will foster trust, reduce potential misunderstanding(s), and allow empathy and understanding, thus strengthening relationships between those involved
• Mental and emotional freedom: Aligning personal and objective truths can reduce emotional disharmony and increase inner peace and psychological well-being. Following the management processes discussed in Part 1 and this blog provides you with a construct to balance perspectives and manage setbacks more efficiently
• Life success: Following a methodical process to establishing truth can enhance your credibility, build authenticity, and make you relatable and trustworthy. Who doesn’t want to be known as either of these things?

Quite the compelling list, isn’t it? There are clear intrinsic and extrinsic benefits when approaching personal and objective truth in a logical manner. Regularly debating (not debunking or engaging in any other form of negative self-talk) your reality and vantage point, seeking out other potential truths, and using this information to take the next best action will serve you and your community well.

Consequences of Not Managing Truths Well

It wouldn’t be a balanced conversation if we didn’t discuss what could go wrong if you mismanage your truth reality. Distorting your understanding of reality could, at best, lead to misinterpretation, misunderstanding, misperception, and conflict. Think about a time that you experienced any of these circumstances – how well did it work out for you? Likely not well, I reckon.

Essentially, we flip the benefits listed above to describe what you can expect should truths not be managed well:

• Poor decision-making: If you’re unwilling to gather all facts related to a circumstance or situation, your opportunity to make educated decisions will be impaired. Unless you are very lucky, this will lead to poorer decisions and outcomes
• Ineffective conflict resolution: Ignoring the benefits of having an open approach to information gathered and used during conflicts will worsen both the process of resolution and the outcomes
• Limited personal growth: I would suggest that if you ignore the information described in both Part 1 and this blog, you already have an unhealthy approach to your own personal growth. This would be even more strange as all content I create is for the purpose of personal growth, so if you consume it just to ignore it, we should chat…
• Damaged relationships: Being closed to following a clear process to the truth will damage trust, increase misunderstanding(s), reduce empathy and understanding, and harm relationships
• Mental and emotional strain: Having a rigid mindset when it comes to your personal truth and objective truth can create emotional discord, leading to disharmony, reduced inner peace, and psychological challenges
• Reduced life success: If you’re not following a path to objective truth, your credibility, authenticity, relatability, and trustworthiness will be adversely affected, leading to you leading a less successful life than you deserve

Reputational damage will be a key by-product if you approach your truth management in a closed-minded manner. There may be times when circumstance dictates that you’re not afforded the opportunity to manage your truths in an expansive and thoughtful way. Having the experience and knowledge of when this is the case will allow you to manage expectations (your own and others’), communicate clearly with all key stakeholders, and anticipate potential outcomes. You’ll still be in a much better position.

Coach Gaz Challenge: Knowing the benefits and consequences of truth management, what is one change that you plan to make to give yourself the best opportunity for success in the future? Please do let me know by clicking ‘Let’s Connect’ on the top right hand of the screen and filling in the form.

I’m always open to a conversation on your thoughts, opinions, and experiences on this or any topic in the library. Get in touch by subscribing below, or by using the form on the Book Gary of the site.