Honesty- How it Benefits You and Others

Honesty is going to take you places in life that you never could have dreamed and it’s the easiest thing you can practice in order to be happy, successful and fulfilled. Honesty is part of the foundation of my core values and principles. Honesty cuts through deception and knifes its way through deceit and lies. Honesty leads to a fulfilling, free life.

Honesty is not just about telling the truth. It’s about being real with yourself and others about who you are, what you want and what you need to live your most authentic life. Honesty promotes openness, empowers us and enables us to develop consistency in how we present the facts. Honesty sharpens our perception and allows us to observe everything around us with clarity.

As an author and executive coach, I work with leaders that need to focus on honesty first with themselves, and in how they deal with people.

The Tangled Web We Weave

The opposite of honesty is deception — or lying. Lying is equally bad whether you are deceiving others or yourself. When you lie, you delude yourself into believing what you’re saying. You start digging a hypothetical ditch, even if with an infant-sized spoon, that will keep getting bigger over time. You confuse yourself, confuse others, lose credibility and put yourself in harm.

The worst type of lying we practice, in order to deceive, is when we lie to ourselves. We start messing around with our concept of morality, right and wrong, as well as our dreams and desires. Times that I lied in order to do something that I knew was wrong, I could feel it. My inner core warred and rebelled against what I was mentally committing to doing because it was in contrast to who I really am.

When I look back on it, every time I lied (that I can recall) I was trying to excuse or misrepresent my own shortcomings or to compensate for something. I was trying to pursue a sinful desire that would only, at best, produce temporary pleasure. Lies I told were often due to a lack of effort, positive morals or thoughts.

Other times, I was convincing myself I wasn’t good enough or able to do something my heart was really set on. Lying or presuming I knew something I didn’t really know was the easy path. This discouraging thought…