When to Share Your Personal Thoughts

When is it appropriate to share your deeper thoughts and feelings with others and to let them know who you are as a person?

Knowing who to share ourselves with at a more personal level can be a bit risky because we don't know how others will respond, as Josh discovers.

Josh: You can tell me your dream.

Mia: When I was a little girl I wanted to be a princes, you know, with a white dress, gold slippers, a big ballroom... But I guess that's kind of silly.

Josh: Not at all. It's beautiful.

Mia: What was your childhood dream, Josh?

Josh: It's a secret. I've never told anyone this, but I wanted to be known as "Crazy Legs."

Mia: Crazy Legs?

Josh: Yeah, "Crazy Legs" was the nickname of a great football player who could run very fast, but he had skinny legs like mine.

Mia: Crazy Legs! Ha Ha Ha Ha! Wait 'til I tell the girls.

Josh: Oh no!

Okay, Mia can't keep secrets. Maybe you too have been burned trying to express your deeper feelings. So how do we know when it's appropriate to share what's important to us?

I find these questions help me know when it's suitable to share my more personal self.

· Is the person trustworthy?

· Has the person been truthful with me?

· Have I listened adequately to the person?

· Is the person asking for the information I could give?

· Will sharing my personal information strengthen the relationship?

If you answered "No" to any of these questions, it would be better to stay at a safer disclosure level. But consider this-if we assume too quickly that friends cannot be trusted, we close off an important part of ourselves. We even fail to discover the more interesting inner recesses of our own minds and hearts as well as that of others.

Author C. S. Lewis suggests in The Great Divorce that hell can be represented as people moving farther and farther away from each other until there is left only a vast wasteland.Building strong friendships guards against feeling divorced from other people. Let's not lose the benefits of sharing ourselves with trustworthy friends.

What will you do today to let other people know the real you?

Have a happy day!

Paul

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