What About Honesty?

Honesty is such a lonely word (Thanks Billy Joel!) and honesty needs to be a way of life, certainly for me and I’m guessing you as well especially if you are reading this.

Honesty is another Super Power and we can and should use it for good. Honesty is about not lying; it’s about not doing anything that will harm others. Dishonesty is about being coercive with others.

Honesty is about your moral character. Honesty keeps you loyal and trustworthy. I don’t know why we use similar words to describe other words, yet honesty has not been a word that has been used in everyday conversation. If one is honest, that person is authentic. The honest person tells it like it is; certainly, without harming anyone. Yet the use of this word, honesty, has been in a downward fall for the past 150+ years. Is it that people use another word in place of honesty?

To be dishonest is to lie to yourself or others. Yet lying is only a partial meaning of the word, honesty. Honesty is about being authentic, to look at the world and see it as it is, without judgment, and not how we want it to be.

Lying to oneself is the worst because the lie becomes part of our delusions, good or bad; about how we present ourselves to the world.

Honesty cuts through the maze of decision making and frustration. When honest, you are in harmony with the way you present yourself to others in our world.

Lying will ruin relationships. Period. If you cannot be honest in your business and other life relationships, you will feel very, very bad over time.

Know that you cannot keep secrets and be honest. If you, for example, think you must tell the truth about an aspect of your personal life that only matters to YOU, that is not being honest. That is being harmful because you are now manipulating someone.

If you want to maintain your sanity, be honest, to yourself, first and always and then to others.