Self-honesty—Keeping it Real
Honesty is one of the most important qualities we can have as people. Honesty is key in interpersonal relationships, forming the basis for trust, loyalty, and love. But more important than honesty with other people is honesty with yourself. Dishonesty with yourself can lead to a whole host of problems and issues, and the only way to address them is by coming clean. Self-honesty is also the only path toward a meaningful life. If your path isn’t genuine, it will lack meaning. Honesty can be challenging, but it just takes practice, like any habit.
Pitfalls of not being honest with yourself
Being dishonest with yourself seems like a strange thing. You live in your brain, so you’d think you would know it if you were holding something back or when your internal voice says something untrue. But we rationalize. We create or manipulate circumstances that help us believe a falsehood when we want it badly enough. Rationalizing can support a great many unhealthy or dangerous behaviors, such as laziness, compulsion, and addiction. We create a story that makes the behavior OK and run with it. And this is only the negative tip of the iceberg. There is a wealth of positive and meaningful aspects of your life that you risk losing out on if you aren’t honest with yourself. You risk losing the life you were meant to live.
Dishonesty when interacting with others
During an argument, people often hold to their stance and opinions in the face of overwhelming logic and reason. It is hard to admit when you’re wrong—it can be humiliating and embarrassing. So, to avoid this, you convince yourself that you are definitely right, rationalize your perspective, and stick to a weak argument. In the end, you likely lost the argument in the other person’s eyes anyway, and you damaged your integrity along the way. In these instances, there are two possibilities for your behavior. One is that you know you’re wrong but are being dishonest with the other person. You intentionally misrepresent the facts to make the other person believe something false to be true (also known as gaslighting). The other possibility is that you’ve convinced yourself that what you’re saying is true, so you actually believe it. Most of us (including me) are guilty of this to some degree, and it takes courage and determination to return to honesty.
The courage to be honest with yourself
Honesty is scary, and self-honesty is no exception. It’s hard to face your inner demons, deepest desires, and significant mistakes. It’s significantly easier to make excuses and take the easy way out—to continue on the path justified by your dishonesty. To change your path, you must swallow your pride, come clean, and face the music. The process begins with sitting yourself down and telling the truth. This involves developing an awareness of your rationalizations and how and why you use them. Because you have been dishonest with yourself, this may not be straightforward. You may need help, professional or personal, to delve into the closed doors of your psyche and dig through the areas you’ve been hiding.
Get to know yourself
Sometimes, dishonesty with yourself is a reaction to your perception of others’ opinions. You develop a notion of others’ ideal characteristics of people, and you try to live up to those characteristics. You become dishonest with yourself about who you are and become a vague version of what you think people would find attractive or worthwhile. Trying to live up to others’ perceived expectations will invariably fail because people can’t be who they are not. The only person you can be is your genuine self, your honest self, and only by being your genuine self can you lead a meaningful, fulfilling life. So, spending some time getting to know yourself will help you be that honest, genuine self.
Once you’ve tried dishonest paths, you’ll eventually find that honesty is the only real path toward a meaningful, fulfilling life.
