A new kind of empowerment
Hey, gang. Tony Cuseo here.
My dad is a huge fan of the Blues, so that’s the music I grew up listening to. At first, what I liked most about the Blues was the names of the different artists. Five-year-old me got a kick out of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, and Howlin’ Wolf. “His first name is Howlin and his last name is Wolf!” little me thought. “What are the chances?!”
As I grew older, I began to appreciate the Blues as an art form and fell in love with its simplicity and its raw, gritty sound. I also liked that the lyrics seemed to be “real.” They weren’t fluffy love songs. They were often angry, sad, and heartbreaking.
I really liked a song by Albert King called “Born Under A Bad Sign” and the lyric:
Born under a bad sign. I’ve been down since I began to crawl.
If it wasn’t for bad luck, you know I wouldn’t have no luck at all.
That line was clever and also gut-wrenching. And what’s more, I related to it somehow.
Similarly, one of my favorite Blues artists, Junior Kimbrough, wrote a song called, “Most Things Haven’t Worked Out.” That title still cracks me up. Again, it’s humorous, but it also seems to me to share a deep truth.
My guess is, if you look back on your life, you’ll come to the same conclusion Junior Kimbrough did, and realize that most things haven’t worked out — at least not the way you planned. Especially when other human beings are involved.
If you want to throw a wrench in your plans, just involve another person or two. That’s sure to fuck everything up.
And this is the rub, ain’t it? When other people are around, all bets are off. Sometimes they do what we want them to do. Other times they don’t. We might get along great, or we might hate each other’s guts. We might turn each other on, or we might disgust one another. We might get sad, or angry, or scared or even worse, we might fall in love.
What a fucking mess, eh? And, what an opportunity.
The first workshop I ever attended was an 8-Day Intensive with Brad Blanton. A couple of hours into our first session and I found myself scared shitless and wondering what the hell I’d signed up for. As I was debating whether or not to bolt for the door, Brad said something like:
“True power comes from being able to get over people and situations without needing them to change for you at all.”
I heard those words, took a deep breath, and decided I’d stick around for at least another hour or two.
This philosophy of what being truly empowered might look like still excites me. It’s why I’ve stuck around this community for the past five years. It’s why I want to become a trainer.
Can you imagine a life where people being just as they are is good enough for you? I can hardly imagine it, to be blunt. It sounds too good to be true. And, it is in a certain sense.
Our method for getting to this place of self-empowerment isn’t for the faint of heart. The cost of this type of freedom, according to those of us practicing Radical Honesty, is telling the truth.
Other methods talk about “letting go” or “choosing compassion” and so on. And maybe these things work for you. For those of us in the RH community, we’ve found that telling ourselves to “just get over it” hasn’t helped us to actually get over much of anything.
So instead, when things don’t work out how we would like or people aren’t being how we want them to be, we tell them that we’re mad, or sad, or hurt, out loud. And then we pay attention to our bodies and our sensations, and stick with the full depth of the mad/sad/hurt feeling until it eventually goes away.
Once we’ve done that, what tends to happen more often than not is that we aren’t so bothered anymore. We may still prefer that the other person didn’t do that thing they did, but we aren’t all that attached to the idea anymore.
It may not sound like much, but I’d argue that this is quite a powerful way of moving through life.
If you’d like to give it a shot, I propose you join Mak and me for our Radical Honesty Weekend Workshop in New York City this August 25-27th:
I can assure you that there will be other human beings there who aren’t behaving exactly the way you want them to.
We’ll invite you to tell them so, out loud, and we’ll support you through whatever fear or discomfort might arise in doing so.
By the end, we’ll see if you end up feeling more powerful and free for having taken the risk of telling the truth.
Love,
Tony
Tony Cuseo is a Radical Honesty Trainer Candidate who co-leads workshops and practice groups. He also holds certifications in Embodied Counseling and Sexological Bodywork. Tony is passionate about creating art, music, and love.
Upcoming Workshops Co-led by Tony: