Welcome to The Honesty Box
Fortnightly tales of life's ups, downs and everything in between
Hello, and thank you for reading the first issue of my newsletter, The Honesty Box.
I want to explain why I called this newsletter The Honesty Box.
Honesty boxes remind me of childhood holidays in Cornwall, where countryside carparks on green coastal slopes had wooden boxes for drivers to drop in a few coins, a donation that might go to the local church or village hall, or the side-of-the-road vegetable stands asking 20p for a courgette - which I still often see.
Honesty boxes are not fancy or shiny: they simply represent human trust and generosity.
There’s a lot of ‘stuff’ in the world that we’re supposed to aspire to that is fancy or shiny, whether that is getting the top job, buying the ‘forever home’ or having the ‘ideal’ partner. I’m in my forties and it’s taken me a while to start accepting and celebrating myself exactly as I am. But while I know a key part of contentment is acceptance, it doesn’t stop me from making comparisons, desiring those trainers, thinking I ought to have more Instagram followers, or feeling a pang of envy at someone’s achievement.
My truth was that I’d arrived at 9.03am with wet hair and a hangover
I’ve learnt that acceptance isn’t about giving up, or giving in, it’s going, wow, here’s all that I am right now, here is my family, my friends and look at all the love that’s in my life. That can be hard to do, as that annoying FOMO (fear of missing out) ‘gene’ I have sometimes gets in the way of what I really want to do - or even, of who I really am.
But back to the shiny stuff.
Some of those fancy goals don’t feel relatable to me. I’m not saying I don’t have ambitions (I definitely do), but I actually find some of the ‘female empowerment’ narrative alienating, for example. I’ve sat in the audience at corporate events where there’s a casual panel discussion with three CEOs and a Hollywood star turned entrepreneur about ‘something-something-portfolio-career-best-life,’ surrounded by beautiful blow dries and applause and people speaking their ‘truths’ - and I’ve felt pretty miserable. At one event, my truth was that I’d arrived at 9.03am with wet hair and a hangover. Maybe those panels are more about the event organiser showing off about who they can get to participate, rather than creating content that is genuinely inspiring.
When I told a friend I planned to start writing this newsletter, she got it immediately. This isn’t about letting it all hang out in an over-confessional way for the amusement of others (though there are some funny stories on the horizon), it’s more about going hey, here’s some stuff that’s happening for me, and maybe some of it is relatable.
With this newsletter, instead of putting coins into a box, I’m dropping my thoughts here and finding my own voice, and in doing so, I hope others will feel heard too. Thanks for reading this far, and if you liked it, please subscribe here. New post every fortnight.
Things I like
Making habits stick
I came across the website Stickk while writing a piece about how to get people to do something by using behavioural nudges. It’s a ‘commitment contract’ site, where you publicly pledge to stick to a goal, such as exercising regularly or losing a certain amount of weight and you can choose to put down money too. You also say where that money will go if you don’t stick to your objective – a cause you don’t support, for example.
How to love yourself more
A friend forwarded me this article from PositivePsychology.com about how to improve your self-esteem. It’s aimed at helping therapists find ways to help their clients, but I found the ‘self-love sentence stems’ exercise really good - just over halfway down the article. You have to fill in the blanks, such as: ‘I’ve been told I have great ….’ (I wrote HAIR, because I have a lot of vol up there), and there are 20 to complete. It left me smiling.