Humbling Honesty

I think that everyone needs to have at least 1 friend who is willing to be brutally honest with you. I am lucky enough to have 2 of those. While it can be an intense friendship, you know that they aren't going to tolerate your BS and they'll call you on things. I find it a rare occurrence these days to find someone willing to be that honest with you. It takes a lot of courage on their part, even if it's part of their nature.

I bring this up because today 1 of my friends took a hard stance with me about a choice I made. I don't want to go into specifics but my friend pointed out 2 very important things to me. One, that the action I took was not fair to them, and two, that I was using my anxiety as an excuse. I will tell you that my immediate gut reaction was to be defensive. Here I was feeling crappy and this friend of mine was not being the supportive person I knew. But I took a deep breath and read the lines again, and again until I could get through my knee jerk defensiveness and listen.

My friend was 100% correct.
My action and choice was not fair to them AND I did use my anxiety as an excuse, even if it wasn't intentional. I was humbled. I was sad knowing that I had upset them. I took advantage of a precious friendship and used an excuse, rather than be honest. I needed my friend this morning and I wasn't honest with them about that, but they responded with honesty. I am still humbled by them.

I could be angry, I could be upset, I could be a million different things, but I'm choosing to use this as a lesson in humility and how to approach this situation in the future. As was pointed out to me it's how we think, view and react in the situations that define us. I can chose to have anxiety define me, or I can chose to live my life and have something else define me.  I'm choosing to not allow anxiety to define me. I am me. I am not anxiety. I am an extremely grateful, thankful and humbled friend tonight.