by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Learning to Discern The Real From The Unreal & Stay On Track With A Daily “Truth Check” Ritual
One of the most important skills you can ever learn in life is the ability to discern the REAL from the UNREAL so that you can tap back into your own realness.
This is because of the simple fact that if we want to live our best lives then we need to be aligned with reality because it’s the only place we can ever get results.
Hence why I like to continually remind you over and over again of a simple truth:
REAL ALWAYS WORKS.
Unfortunately, most of us spend way too much time out there in fantasy land:
Caught up in our thoughts, assumptions, fears, and unresolved emotional baggage where – instead of being grounded in what’s actually happening – we get swept away by old wounds, social programming, and a sneaky inner voice that pretends to be ‘us’ but is really just shame in disguise.
The ‘good’ news is that you don’t need to spend your life drifting between false starts and mental detours and you can develop a simple daily habit that keeps you on track which is a quick Truth Check ritual that takes no more than ten minutes a day.
Done consistently, this will help you separate what’s real from what’s imagined in your mind, so you can stay aligned with truth instead of getting side-lined by ego, avoidance, and resistance.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Build a Daily “Truth Check” Habit: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- Learning to Discern The Real From The Unreal & Stay On Track With A Daily “Truth Check” Ritual
- Why We Stray from the Real in the First Place
- Truth Check Ritual Step 1: Emotional Clarity (2 minutes)
- Truth Check Ritual Step 2: Biological Scan (2 minutes)
- Truth Check Ritual Step 3: Mental Debrief (3 minutes)
- Truth Check Ritual Step 4: Gremlin Spotting (3 minutes)
- The Full Truth Check Ritual (Review)
- Why This “Truth Check” Works
- Truth Check Ritual – The Final Word: Stay on the Real Track
Why We Stray from the Real in the First Place
Before we dive into the daily ritual itself, it’s worth pointing out the four main culprits that pull us away from what’s real in the first place:
- Emotional ‘Stuff’: Unresolved feelings that we judge, suppress, or ignore.
- Biological Wiring: The way our body, energy levels, and instincts shape our choices.
- Social Programming: Inherited beliefs and assumptions we never question.
- Self-Hypnosis: Those sneaky ‘gremlins‘ in our head whispering shame, guilt, or trauma-induced commands to us.
Each of these can create distortions that stop us seeing clearly and cause us to filter reality through our wounds, conditioning, or fear of change.
The Truth Check ritual is about shining a light through the fog and moving in a real direction again:
Truth Check Ritual Step 1: Emotional Clarity (2 minutes)
The first step is to check in with your emotional state:
This isn’t about wallowing or over-analysing but about training yourself to notice and become fully AWARE of what you’re feeling without judgement.
It’s pretty simple but effective:
- Ask yourself: “What am I feeling right now?”
- Don’t add stories to whatever you’re experiencing or label it ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – just give it a name so you can distance your real, observing self from whatever it is: tired, anxious, peaceful, irritated, grateful, lonely, excited.
- Take a breath and let the feeling be there.
Here’s why this is so important:
As soon as you judge a feeling (“I shouldn’t feel this way”), you step out of reality because you’ve created resistance to it.
On the other hand, when you accept it (the opposite of resistance), you allow the emotion to move, teach you whatever it has to show you, and then release it.
The key lesson here is simple but powerful:
Reality can only be accessed through acceptance because to accept something means to embrace the truth about it fully.
Practical tip: Keep a small notebook and make a point each morning or evening to write down three words that describe your emotional state (no more, no less than three).
This keeps you real with yourself and stops emotional denial and distortion that makes you resist reality.
Truth Check Ritual Step 2: Biological Scan (2 minutes)
Next up is to tune into your body:
This is important because our biological wiring is constantly shaping how we experience reality but most of us only pay attention when something goes wrong.
If we make it a regular habit to pay attention before something goes wrong then we can become better equipped to be resilient in the moment and respond in a real way.
Again, the process is simple:
- Ask yourself: “What is my body telling me right now?”
- Scan from head to toe and pay attention to where do you feel tension:
Do you have a tight jaw? Stiff shoulders? Gut in knots?
Feel whatever you’re feeling and just be AWARE of it. - Finally, pay attention to your energy levels:
Do you feel vital and alert or sluggish and drained?
Your body is always connected to the present moment even if your mind isn’t but if you’re carrying hidden tension or running on fumes because of where your mind has led you, then you won’t be able to show up in a real way.
By checking in with your body daily, you can start noticing patterns:
Maybe caffeine crashes are messing with your clarity or maybe unexpressed anger shows up as shoulder tightness, for example.
Practical tip: After your scan, release one area of tension by stretching, shaking, breathing, or simply exhaling deeply. Let your body know you’re listening and it will get better at ‘speaking’ to you.
Truth Check Ritual Step 3: Mental Debrief (3 minutes)
Now comes the big one: your thinking.
Our social programming and ego-driven assumptions are the biggest culprits for pulling us away from reality and so it’s really important to constantly check in and make sure we know WHY we think what we think (as opposed to thinking we know WHAT we think).
Here’s how you can do it:
- Ask yourself: “Do I actually know this or do I just believe it because it feels safe?”
- Reality is not about what you want to believe but about what you can actually verify.
- Catch the slippery unstated assumptions that you carry and start to notice where your mind fills in the blanks with comforting stories instead of the truth.
The harsh reality is that of what the average person thinks is just recycled programming from parents, long lost peers, media, and culture and so – without a daily check in – we can end up mistaking our assumptions for truth.
If those assumptions are actually aligned with reality, then no problem, but – if they’re not – then we end up taking ourselves away from a real path and not getting the results we truly want and need from life.
Practical tip: Pick one thought that’s been bugging you (“They don’t like me”, “I’ll never get ahead”, “This will never work”) and then write it down and ask yourself:
“Is this based on evidence or am I hypnotising myself with fear?”
A related article that can help you here is about a powerful question that can help you break through the BS: According to Who? The Question That Cuts Through Illusion
Truth Check Ritual Step 4: Gremlin Spotting (3 minutes)
Finally, we deal with the sneakiest enemy of all: your own self-hypnosis.
This kind of self-hypnosis appears as the inner gremlins – the voices of shame, guilt, or fear – that whisper in your head in a tone that sounds like your own voice but that’s actually totally unreal.
To start waking yourself up do this:
- Ask yourself: “Whose voice is this really?”
- If the thought is limiting, static, or shaming in any way, it’s not truth but ego.
- Reality always invites growth, expansion, and wholeness whereas unreal thoughts trap you in fear and stagnation.
The more you practise spotting gremlins, the quicker you’ll learn to detach from them – the best way to do this is, learning to label them instead of wrestling with them.
It’s really simple but “That’s a gremlin, not me” raises your awareness and cuts off their power.
Practical tip: Each time you catch a gremlin thought, imagine writing it on a piece of paper and throwing it in the bin. This symbolic act trains your brain to drop the unreal and replace it with the real.
Check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want build a sense of absolute flow in your own life.
The Full Truth Check Ritual (Review)
Put all the steps together and you’ve got a 10-minute daily practice:
- Emotional Clarity (2 mins): Name your feelings without judgement.
- Biological Scan (2 mins): Notice your body, energy, and tension and choose one area to release.
- Mental Debrief (3 mins): Question your assumptions and distinguish truth from mere belief.
- Gremlin Spotting (3 mins): Identify the shame-voices, detach from them, and switch your focus to something real.
That’s it – ten minutes, once a day to keep you on track.
Why This “Truth Check” Works
This ritual works because it creates a daily alignment between your mind, body, and emotions and puts you back in contact with what’s actually happening, rather than what your ego wants to believe is happening.
Think of it in a similar way to how you might see brushing your teeth: if you don’t, gunk builds up and your health deteriorates.
If you skip the Truth Check, mental gunk builds up and so do unprocessed feelings, bodily tension, unquestioned assumptions, and unreal gremlin chatter….which means that, before you know it, you’re living in fantasy instead of reality and bringing friction, frustration, and misery into your life.
When you commit to this kind of work, you develop a kind of inner compass that allows you to notice when you’re drifting off course sooner.
This means that you’ll stop wasting energy on illusions and that you’ll start living from a place of clarity, flow, and real power.
Truth Check Ritual – The Final Word: Stay on the Real Track
Your ego will always try to side-line you – that’s it’s job (in a weird way) but you don’t have to fall for it and a simple daily ritual is enough to keep you grounded in truth and moving in the right direction.
The Truth Check doesn’t need to be dramatic or time consuming- it just needs to be consistent and ten minutes a day is all it takes to stop living from in an unreal way and to remember the fundamental truth:
REAL ALWAYS WORKS.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you want to go even deeper into transforming your life and growing real then book a free coaching call with me and I’ll help you start taking real action and stay accountable.
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