The Courage to Live What You Know: When Truth Becomes Choice
- Dr. Kidi
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
SEGMENT 4: HONORING THE TRUTH
EPISODE 6
The Courage to Live What You Know
When truth Becomes Choice
"Once you know the truth, do you have the courage to live it?"
I cannot count how many times I have told a patient to eat better, exercise, or rest when they were exhausted.
"You cannot keep going like this."
"Your body needs better nutrition."
"You need to move."
And I meant every word.
Then I would leave the room, pick up a cookie from the nurses' station, and eat it while answering messages.
I would stay later than I intended.
Skip the gym.
Sit at my desk for hours until my body became stiff.
"I need to get up," I would tell myself.
But I would keep sitting.
Or I would reach for something to eat while thinking, "I don't need this."
And take a bite anyway.
I listened to my body.
I understood what it was telling me.
I even put it into words.
And still, sometimes, I chose against what I knew.
It is humbling to know something well enough to teach it to someone else while still struggling to live it yourself. Yet that struggle continues to teach me something important: knowing the truth is not the same as living in alignment with it.
And I know I am not alone.
Maybe you told a friend to leave a job that makes them unhappy while staying in one that makes you unhappy.
Maybe you told your children to put down their phones while reaching for yours.
Maybe you told your parents to slow down while pushing yourself through exhaustion.
Maybe you told someone they deserve better while accepting less for yourself.
Or maybe you told yourself:
I need to eat better.
I need to exercise.
I need to get more sleep.
I need to slow down.
I need to take a breath.
You know it.
You say it.
And still, sometimes, you do the opposite.
So why?
Why do we listen to what the body tells us and still choose differently?
Knowing Is Not the Same as Living
The body is constantly working to sustain the life it carries.
It receives information, responds to change, regulates its systems, protects, repairs, and communicates what it needs.
I call this capacity Original Intelligence. We experience some of its signals as hunger, fatigue, tension, pain, changes in breathing, restlessness, ease, or the need to move.
Sometimes we recognize the signal immediately. We even put it into words.
"I need to rest."
"I need to get up."
"I don't want to do this."
"I have had enough."
At that point, we know.
But knowing does not determine what happens next, because knowing and living ask different things of us.
Knowing requires awareness. Living requires awareness and action.
Awareness asks: What is my body telling me?
Living asks: What am I going to do with what I know?
That second question is harder, because eventually truth has to leave awareness and enter your life.
It has to reach the calendar.
The dinner table.
The phone in your hand.
The relationships you continue.
The boundaries you keep.
The promises you make to yourself.
The way you spend an ordinary Tuesday when no one is watching.
You can listen and still override.
You can understand and still postpone.
You can know and still choose what is familiar.
Knowing gives us information. Living requires a choice.
Why We Choose What Is Familiar
The body learns through repetition, so actions require less conscious attention over time. I explored this more deeply in Segment 3, Episode 1: Returning Is a Form of Love: How the Body Learns Through Repetition.
The question is: are we repeating the actions that support our well-being?
Because repetition works both ways.
When we repeat behaviors we want to change, those behaviors become more familiar too, and simply knowing we want to do something differently does not automatically interrupt the pattern. When we are tired, stressed, distracted, or overwhelmed, it can be even easier to return to what we know.
That is why you can feel the stiffness in your body and think, "I need to get up," yet remain in the chair. The signal arrived. You noticed it. You knew what you needed. But you still chose what was familiar.
We do this more often than we realize. And each time, a little more distance can grow between what we know and how we live.
The Cost of Living Against What You Know
Living in disagreement with yourself can be exhausting.
You know you need rest, but you keep going.
You know a friendship leaves you depleted, but you continue showing up the same way.
You know you need help, but keep telling yourself you should be able to handle everything alone.
You know you want to say no, but hear yourself saying yes again.
Repeatedly living against what you know can become a source of stress, and without enough recovery, chronic stress can affect sleep, digestion, muscle tension, blood pressure, immune function, and cardiovascular health.
The body needs periods of activation and recovery. It needs movement and rest, nourishment, sleep, connection, time to return to balance.
The challenge is often not knowing what we need.
The challenge is moving from knowing to doing.
From Knowing to Choosing: The Tinfash Healing Time
Here is the good news. Between your urge and the action you take, there is a moment when you can pause and choose what happens next. I call that moment the Tinfash Healing Time. Tinfash means "breath" in Amharic. It is a fragment of a second where you can pause, breathe, listen, and choose intentionally instead of responding on impulse.
This is not something I invented. It is the Original Intelligence that already exists in the body. I simply slowed it down and gave it a name, so it could be practiced and become familiar.
Tinfash Healing Time does not make the decision for you. What it does is interrupt the familiar response, so you can listen to what your body is communicating and decide what you want to do with that information.
This is where knowing begins to become living.
The Tinfash 5 Cs: A Knowing-to-Living Practice
Here is a simple way to practice it. When you feel the urge to do something you know you shouldn't , pause.
1. Count to Three
Slowly: one, two, three. Those few seconds interrupt the automatic response and create space for a choice.
2. Close Your Eyes
Gently close your eyes. For a moment, turn your attention away from the screens, expectations, and reactions around you, and return to yourself.
3. Calm Your Breath
Breathe in for four, pause for four, breathe out for six. Give yourself enough time to settle before you act.
4. Create Distance
Create some distance from the choice you are being urged to make against your well-being. Use the Walk away, Float away, Throw away trick:
Walk away from the habit.
Float away the negative thoughts. Literally imagine them on a cloud, drifting off.
Throw away what tempts you, in a real or imagined trash can.
Then ask: What is my body telling me right now?
Listen carefully, and the answer will come as a signal from the body.
5. Choose Differently and Act
Now choose from that knowing, and let the choice leave the pause and enter your life.
If your lips tighten around certain people, that's the signal. Walk away.
If a recurring thought keeps you from sleep, that's the signal. Float it away.
If the cookies are sitting on the counter and you know you shouldn't, that's the signal. Throw them away, or don't bring them into the house in the first place.
Choosing differently doesn't mean making a dramatic change every time. It means making a conscious choice instead of automatically repeating the familiar one, and then acting on it.
This is how the body's truth begins to become direction. Not through one perfect decision, but through small moments when what you know and what you do begin to agree.
Body's Signal → Urge → Pause → Breathe → Listen → Choose → Act
One signal. One pause. One breath. One choice.
And then you begin again.
That is what the courage to live what you know looks like.
Speaking truth gives it a voice.
Living truth gives it direction.
The question is no longer: Do I know?
It is: Will I live what I know?
And when we do, one final question remains: can we let our truth be enough, without controlling what comes next?
That is where we will go in the final episode of Honoring Truth:
Episode 7: Let Your Truth Be Enough.
A Mantra to Carry
I know. I choose. I live it.
Repeat this mantra during your Tinfash Healing Time whenever you feel the urge to explain, defend, or abandon your truth
Journal Invitation
write by hand
Think of one thing your body has been telling you that you already know, but haven't yet lived.
What is the signal? (A feeling in your body, a repeated thought, a sentence you keep saying to yourself or others.)
When did you first notice it?
What is the automatic action you usually take instead of listening to it?
If you gave yourself one Tinfash Healing Time today, right now, what would you choose to do differently?
What is one small, specific action, not a dramatic overhaul, that would let this truth leave awareness and enter your life this week?
Write it down. Then ask yourself the question this episode keeps returning to: Do I know, or am I ready to live it?
Meditation
With that, we begin our healing connection.
Embrace the journey. Keep listening. Healing knows the way.
Love and more love,
Dr. Kidi
More reflections at drkidi.com · Follow @drkidi.healing · Guided meditations on YouTube @drkidi Short stories on Substack @drkidi
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