Simple Honesty
August 27th, 2008
In recent years, there’s been a trend called radical honesty. It was founded by a guy who got tired of lying. He decided to stop. COMPLETELY. And instead he started telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He wasn’t afraid to bare the most intimate details of his life.
He got quite a following of people who were also tired of all the lies around them.
While I like the initiative, I think radical honesty is too much. You need to have some private stuff you don’t share with just anybody you meet. And some private stuff you don’t share with ANYBODY. Period.
So instead of radical honesty, I propose the following:
Simple Honesty
- Always be honest to YOURSELF
- Always tell the truth
- If you don’t want to talk about something, just say so
Be honest with yourself
“A lawyer came to my office one day, complaining he was feeling bad, but didn’t know why. As we talked, I found out he had this habit of always slightly exaggerating his achievements. For example he would make $80,000, but report his income as $81,500. Or when he went golfing, he would report his score of 73 (which is already a great achievement) as 71.
No wonder he was feeling terrible. No matter how well he performed, he could never do as well as the self he pretended to be.”
- Paul McKenna, a psychiatrist
Are you honest with yourself?
If you lie to yourself, it usually means you’re avoiding some unpleasant truth so that you don’t have to deal with it. Maybe you tell yourself your job is ok when you really hate it. Maybe you tell yourself you have a great marriage when you’re really clearly married to the wrong person. Maybe you tell yourself you’re not addicted to computers when you really are (I used to be guilty of that one).
Hey! Wake up! Face the truth!
Once you start being honest with yourself, and face the bad stuff, you can CHANGE it. Then you can actually work on having a great life instead of just pretending so.
So how do you go about it?
Here’s a cool trick: Just notice when you’re avoiding thinking about something. Like, every time it comes up, you just kill the thoughts as soon as they come. Like you’re afraid to even go there.
There’s a very thin line between not thinking about something because you’re avoiding it, and not thinking about something because you consciously decided thinking about it won’t do you any good. But once you consciously look for it, you’ll be able to tell the difference. Really.
Tell the truth
How many times did you lie today?
Count everything. Little white lies. Or exaggerations (“I’ve been waiting there for HALF AN HOUR” when it was really 20 minutes.)
Can you truly say you didn’t lie a single time today? (Or yesterday, if you’re reading this in the morning.)
Before I started my quest for simple honesty, I used to lie dozens of times a day. Small, innocent, unimportant lies.
But why?
The common causes for lying
Why do we lie?
We exaggerate to make ourselves look better. We exaggerate to make our boring lives sound more interesting (instead of MAKING our lives interesting).
We also lie to avoid facing the truth.
But those aren’t the biggest reasons. The following scenario illustrates the biggest reason we lie…
Imaginary case study - why we usually lie
Let’s say you’re a middle aged man, you decide to hop in to the pub with your buddies after work, and come home two hours late. Your wife asks why. Here are the scenarios:
Case 1: Simple Honesty
Wife: Why are you two hours late?
You: I went to the pub with my buddies.
Wife: What? You went to the pub with your lousy no-good friends? Blah blah blah…
Case 2: Simple honesty 2
Wife: Why are you two hours late?
You: I don’t want to talk about it.
Wife: Why don’t you want to tell me? Were you doing something bad? Blah blah blah…
Case 3: Lying
Wife: Why are you two hours late?
You: I was working late.
Wife: Ok.
So what’s the conclusion? In the above example… you lie because you’re married to the wrong person! A good mature wife would be ok with the fact that you spend two hours with your friends at the pub, and she would be ok if you didn’t want to tell her what you did with your time.
Most lying comes down to avoiding confrontation with immature people. Mature people can handle the truth without bugging you about it.
Learn to say no
Once you start telling the truth, including “I don’t want to talk about it”, you will probably find people around you resisting the change. They’re used to being able to push your buttons and get the truth out of you. Once you start keeping some stuff private, they’ll get withdrawal symptoms.
Don’t worry. The mature friends will get over it in a few days, after they learn you mean it. When I first started simply saying “I’m not going to tell you” instead of making up lies, I also got some resistance from friends and family. I went to London for a couple of days in July, and I didn’t tell any of them what I did there. They bugged me for a few days, and once they found out I’m not going to tell them, they stopped and moved on. Yay for simple honesty!
But if someone keeps bugging you, and acts downright negative (like trying to make you feel guilty), that’s a sign they’re an immature person. You might wanna cut such people out of your life. They’re disastrous to your growth in the long term.
Why honesty rocks
Honesty feels great! Seriously.
When you stop lying, it’s like you stop banging your head against the table. You go “Wow, I feel great! Why the hell did I start doing it in the first place?”
Peace of mind. It is teh roxxorz.
So give simple honesty a try. Stop lying. Completely.
To make sure you don’t slip into your old habits, I propose the following method: The rubber band trial. Take a rubber band (or a bracelet, or a piece of string), and put it on one of your wrists. Then, whenever you catch yourself lying, simply take the rubber band and put it on the other wrist.
If it stays on the same wrist for seven consecutive days, congratulations! You have completed the rubber band trial. You are now… simply honest 
August 27th, 2008 at 12:49
Being someone who used to lie a lot, I can testify that sticking to the truth makes life radically easier.
One indirect result which surprised me: when I became interested in never being deceptive, I began to notice that I mainly lied, exaggerated, or told deceptive “technical truths” around certain people and situations. I started to avoid them so I wouldn’t feel the desire to lie, and I came to enjoy not spending my time with judgmental people, jobs which generated way too much work, and the people who got under my skin and made me want to pretend I was a hotshot, when I wasn’t.
Most of the time there was nothing wrong with who I was with or what I was doing, and I just had to suck it up and tell the truth. But sometimes, once lying wasn’t an option, some things which I was able to tolerate before, or would have even said I loved, became too intolerable to stand any longer, and I was basically forced to ditch the stress I didn’t know I had and find something better.
August 27th, 2008 at 13:22
“Most lying comes down to avoiding confrontation with immature people.”
I love that; it puts a whole new spin on things.
August 27th, 2008 at 18:17
Well, damn! The exact same day I post this, an article on PickTheBrain ( http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/tell-a-whopper/ ) argues that exaggeration is actually a good thing! Check out that article and make up your own mind about exaggerating. Personally, I’m keeping an open mind and will try some exaggerating and notice what happens.
(I also updated the body of this post to show the new development.)
August 27th, 2008 at 18:26
This is one of your best posts to this date, so thank you and congratulations.
August 27th, 2008 at 21:07
That was a nicely put primer on honesty. And don’t worry about the PickTheBrain post — yes, they are talking about exaggerating, but for different applications. You are both correct. Their exaggerating does not stem from the fear of truth or personal accountability.
ari
August 28th, 2008 at 4:57
“Most lying comes down to avoiding confrontation with immature people.”
That isn’t at all accurate. Does president Bush lie because he wants to avoid confrontation with immature people? Unless you are a die hard republican, the answer is clearly no.
Does a criminal insist on his innocence because he wants to avoid confrontation with immature people? You will hard pressed to find a murderer who regards the judge as an “immature person”. Just the opposite.
When a CEO brazenly lies to his shareholders, is that because his shareholders are immature people who cannot look out for their own interests? Think about Enron.
Do you think that the President, the criminal and the CEO in these examples believe for even an instant that the people they are lying to are too immature in any way? Of course not, they know damn well that they’d be strung up in a heartbeat if they told the truth. They lie, because they are afraid of the consequences of not lying.
While we’re on the subject, do you think that children lie because they believe the adults are “too immature”? Obviously the reverse is true!
Even in the case you gave, is it really so unreasonable for the wife to have some idea of why her husband is coming home two hours later than he should? Isn’t it simple courtesy for him to have informed her beforehand? And saying “I don’t want to talk about it” is a horrible answer. What spouse (husband or wife) would not become very concerned if they got an answer like that when their mate took off for two mysterious hours and has no interest in explaining what was going on?
If you were married, and your wife made a habit of taking off for a couple of hours here and there, and whenever you asked her what was up she said “I don’t feel like talking about it.” wouldn’t that begin to freak you out?
The truth of the matter is this: most lying comes down to fear. You lie because you are afraid, it is as simple as that.
Now sometimes, it’s actually a very good idea to lie. When is it a good idea to lie? Whenever a lie will keep the peace.
The classic example is if your wife asks you if you think she’s too fat. The correct answer is always “No way! I think you’re perfect!”. Another example would be if someone came to you and said “listen, did our friend say anything bad about me the other day?” If your friend spent several hours badmouthing this fellow and you tell him “oh yes, he did.” Then I think you’ll agree that is not the way a friend should act.
Here is another example, let’s say someone is in the process of trying to cause you or someone you love harm. And you realize that if you lie at the right moment you can save a lot of innocent people a lot of grief. Are you going to stick to a principle and tell the truth? Or are you going to bite your lip, lie through your teeth and save a lot of pain and suffering from the world? I know what I’d hope to do.
Now I am not saying that lying is something one should do. Obviously, honesty really is the best policy. But sometimes a lie is exactly what the situation requires.
August 30th, 2008 at 9:48
@ron:
Yes, you’re absolutely right.
In each of the examples you give, the person is lying for different reasons than avoiding immature people. And I could add a dozen more examples that support your point.
But that’s not what happens most of the time. Most of the time you don’t have big executives and presidents lying about big stuff. You have lots of little everyday lies told by everyday people.
Though about lying because of fear… I think you’re absolutely right, and I missed that point.
Like when someone lies about their music preference… because they’re afraid of what the other person might think. That’s definitely fearful immature behavior.
And don’t get me started on the “Does this make me look fat?” question. Romantic situations work completely differently from normal situations. If my girlfriend asked me that question, I would probably answer something like “Well, I didn’t wanna say anything, but since you bring it up…”. Even though the dress obviously WOULDN’T make her look fat.
But hey, thanks for bringing up all these points. It definitely cleared up a few things for me.