Consistency With Oneself Is The Best Signature Of Honesty

Surely many times you have heard of congruence and what it means to be someone congruent. Or perhaps you have heard the typical comment of “It’s incongruous! He does one thing and says another, there is no one who understands him! “

Well … it seems that being congruent is linked to a certain transparency both internal (of a person with himself) and external  (in which what one reflects is what one IS). One shows nothing but his truth, without camouflages or masks.

Instead, people who act incongruously are those who create certain headaches for both themselves and others. They move away from who they ARE, they behave in a different way than how they feel or how they think.

Congruence is the correspondence between what one feels and expresses

Therefore, we can define congruence as  that balance that exists between one’s most visceral state (what one feels in his “guts”) and the externalization that one makes of it in his behavior, both verbal and non-verbal. That is, when one is congruent there is no lack of harmony between what one feels and what one expresses.

For example, if I feel betrayed by my friend, I will not camouflage it or pretend nothing has happened. I will reflect how I feel, since I have received a lot of pain and I would like her to see how it has made me feel. I will be consistent with my pain and my feelings.

Congruent people build trust towards others

Congruent people tend to generate trust in others, since they do not show another face different from the one they feel, nor do they make an effort to pretend or hide their internal state. They know how to listen to what they feel inside and are able to accept it, without deceiving themselves or others.

They are shown as they are, without giving other nuances different from how they feel. They are brave people, since we live in a society in which we have not been taught precisely to show what we feel. Rather, on many occasions we have been encouraged since childhood to hide our true emotions, to mask them, or even to cover them with others that are better tolerated in this society.

Sometimes we cover sadness with an inordinate joy … or we use sadness to achieve what we long for and that we are not given. Surely you can know someone who was very happy shortly after having suffered some loss (for example, love). She does not allow herself to suffer the loss because she “has to be strong” and because “no man deserves her tears.”

And when he needs to cry, he will laugh. And each time you will be accumulating more weight on your true emotion. Covering it until there are no shreds of it. In this way, one ends up becoming an expert in pretending and inexperienced in letting oneself be and feeling as one is.

Congruence speaks of the correspondence between thoughts and actions

We also speak of congruence when we refer to that harmony that exists between our actions or behaviors and our way of thinking. Many times, we have probably found ourselves acting in a way that is contrary to our thoughts and values. This produces a mixture of strangeness and shame.

If I presume how tolerant and patient I am with others, but then, at the first change, I am incapable of assuming other points of view different from mine; if I get angry and twitchy… I probably have to rethink this idea about myself. Since believing that one is in a way, but then actually being in a way contrary to what is believed produces an unpleasant sensation. Therefore, this incongruity tends to be eliminated: in favor of one side or the other.

The problem of being incongruous lies above all in the mistrust that we end up generating in other people. It is difficult to trust someone who acts differently than you think, and it is very difficult to trust someone who shows the opposite of how you really feel.

Intuition shows us who is being congruent with us and who is not

There are very intuitive people who are able to perceive these dissonances and at the same time they are able to perceive when someone is being congruent. And this is something that is worthy of being grateful, since it is easier and less reckless to be yourself in the company of people who are being themselves -without any mask-, than to be in the company of people who give the feeling of being in a masquerade.

For all this, it is very important to continue knowing ourselves, without fear or hesitation in observing what is inside us. If we accept who we are, we will have no need to hide or deny it.  He thinks that living with a mask on is exhausting and does not create any authentic relationship with the other.

Finding the balance between what one feels, thinks and does is an achievement that will make our relationships more true and authentic; starting with the relationship we have with ourselves since we are our only life companions from birth until we die, whether we want it to or not.