You know, lately I keep hearing a phrase pop up everywhere.
- “I’m just living my truth.”
- “That’s my truth.”
- “You can’t question someone’s truth.”
On the surface, it sounds healthy. Empowering, even. It feels like a pushback against being silenced or dismissed, and in many cases, that’s exactly where it came from.
People were finally finding language for their lived experience. Naming how things actually felt for them, not how they were told they should have felt.
That part matters. A lot.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted. Quietly. Subtly.
“My truth” stopped being a way of describing personal experience and started becoming a kind of force field. A phrase that shuts down conversation, blocks questioning, and sometimes even overrides reality itself.
That’s the moment I start leaning forward in my chair, because language shapes how we think, and this particular phrase is doing more work than we might realise.
So let’s slow it down and look at what’s really going on here.
Now, when most people say “my truth,” what they usually mean is this is how I experienced something. This is the story I carry. It might include pain, insight, growth, regret, relief, or all of the above.
And that is completely valid because your experience is real. Your feelings are real. The impact something had on you is real.
But experience and interpretation are not the same thing as reality itself and this is where the trouble starts.
You see, we live inside our own heads, so it’s easy to forget that our internal narrative is a translation, not the source material. Two people can live through the same event and walk away with completely different stories about what happened.
Both stories can feel deeply true to the people telling them but that doesn’t mean they’re both accurate in every detail.
Feelings tell us something important, but they don’t automatically tell us the whole story.
THE truth however, is different. It doesn’t belong to anyone. It isn’t personal and it doesn’t care how we feel about it.
Gravity works whether you believe in it or not. Time passes whether you like it or not. Certain habits have predictable consequences which mean that certain causes reliably lead to certain effects.
THE truth is what keeps happening even when nobody agrees on it.
Problems arise when “my truth” is treated as untouchable, especially when it contradicts evidence, logic, or shared reality.
This is when questioning a belief is framed as an attack or when discomfort is taken as proof that someone else is wrong or when language that is meant to protect inner experience is used to avoid self-examination.
At that point, “my truth” stops being a tool for honesty and becomes a shield against growth.
Reality doesn’t argue with us. It doesn’t need to. It just waits.
You can insist that a habit isn’t harming you, that a pattern isn’t repeating, that a situation isn’t what it clearly is. Reality will just quietly keep the receipts.
Eventually, it submits the bill. Not out of cruelty but out of consistency.
This is not a call to abandon subjectivity or emotion. Quite the opposite. The most interesting, grounded, creative, and alive people that I know are deeply in touch with their inner world.
But they also hold their inner world up to the light. They test their stories. They ask uncomfortable questions of themselves.
They understand that personal truth is provisional.
One of the healthiest shifts we can make is moving from “this is my truth” to “this is how it feels to me right now.” That small change leaves the door open and allows curiosity to breathe.
It acknowledges that growth often involves revising our own narratives, sometimes painfully.
In creative work, especially in songwriting, this distinction matters a lot. A lyric can be emotionally true without being factually perfect. That’s fine but the songwriter still knows the difference.
They’re not confusing expression with evidence. They’re shaping experience, not rewriting reality and in life, confusing the two can cost us clarity.
The real work isn’t choosing between YOUR truth and THE truth. It’s learning to keep them in conversation.
It’s letting your inner experience speak, while also being willing to check it against what’s actually happening. That tension is uncomfortable, but it’s also where honesty lives. Where learning happens. Where change becomes possible.
Questioning your own story isn’t self-betrayal. It’s self-respect.
And maybe that’s the difference that really matters.
Peace,
Corey 🙂