Simple Honesty Revisited

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“When you tell a lie, a problem becomes part of your future. When you tell the truth, a problem becomes part of your past.”

- Indian proverb

Almost two years ago, I wrote a blog post I called Simple Honesty.

Back then, I had a slightly naive view of honesty, and several readers pointed it out. I’ve learned  quite a bit since then, and I think it’s a good time to re-visit the topic of honesty with new insights.

I won’t cover the obvious “tell the truth” and “don’t lie”. Everybody can tell you that. Instead, I’ll focus on 3 not-so-obvious aspects of Simple Honesty…

1. Be honest with yourself

A performance hypnotist once gave a funny demonstration. He had a subject in trance, and as a post-hypnotic suggestion, he told the subject that when he (the hypnotist) clapped his hands, the subject would turn to the man sitting to his left in the audience and slap him.

Then he brought the man out of trance and sent him to sit down. He carried on with the show, until about 5 minutes later, when he deliberately clapped his hands.

The man in the audience immediately turned to the man to his left, and slapped him.

“Why did you do that?” demanded the hypnotist.

“He looked at me funny.” Replied the man.

The man was completely unaware of the post-hypnotic suggestion. In fact, he made up some convincing reasons for slapping the man.

We all sometimes act like the man in this story. Not slapping random strangers, but making up bogus, yet convincing-sounding reasons for our actions. For some reason, we have a wonderful innate capacity to lie to ourselves, to the point where we completely convince ourselves that the lies are true.

The first step of simple honesty is being honest with yourself. Don’t make up those excuses in the first place.

If you’re afraid to start your own business, don’t make excuses about the economy. Sure, the economy is what it is, but that’s not the main problem. Tons of people start business successfully in the current economy. (If you have limiting beliefs about the economy, you might want to change those limiting beliefs first.)

Being honest with yourself is about taking responsibility for your own actions, thoughts and feelings. The traffic doesn’t make you mad. You choose to be mad about the traffic.

That doesn’t mean you should blame yourself for being mad at the traffic and feel bad further about that. But accept that you’re responsible for your feelings, and you can start looking for a solution for the future.

When you lie to yourself, you’re cutting away your freedom. You can only change things if you acknowledge they exist. By being honest with yourself about everything, good or bad, you can enjoy the good and change the bad!

2. If you don’t want to talk about something, just say so.

A lot of people think honesty means telling the full truth every time. Nope.

Saying “I don’t want to talk about that” is perfectly honest as well.

If you have a good reason why you don’t want to talk about something, your friends will accept that. And if someone keeps bugging you to get full details of everything, all the time, forcing you to lie just to get away… they’re probably not worth spending time with. Good friends can hear “no”.

3. Do… NOT… exaggerate. Really.

“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

Exaggeration is the easiest form of lying to let slip by, and stop you from achieving your true potential. And it doesn’t have to be anywhere near as drastic as the lawyer in the above example.

Let’s say you’re meeting a friend, and they arrive 25 minutes late (by your watch). “You’re half an hour late,” you say. That’s exaggerating.

Every time you exaggerate, you’re making yourself look slightly better, or making somebody else look slightly worse.

People will feel this, and although it’s a small thing, it will add up over time. Every time you exaggerate, they will like and trust you a bit less than before.

What’s the solution? You can either be ridiculously exact… or, more easily, exaggerate in the opposite direction.

In the above example, you could tell your friend “You’re 20 minutes late.” If they glance at their watch and see that they’re actually 25 minutes late, it changes everything. Suddenly, you’re exaggerating to make them look better, and yourself worse.

(Or, if they’re a good friend and probably have a good reason to be late, you could let it pass and say nothing. Your call.)

Put simply, exaggeration weakens your argument and alienates people. As in:

You: Hey, you’re 30 minutes late…

Friend: Actually, just 25 minutes…

… which immediately takes the wind out of any point you were going to follow up with. Contrast that with:

You: Hey, you’re 20 minutes late.

Friend: (glances at watch) Uh, huh…

You: Please don’t do that next time. Or, at least text me that you will be late, so I can spend the 20 minutes more productively.

If your argument is strong enough, you don’t need to exaggerate. And if it’s not strong enough to work without exaggeration, it’s probably not worth making.

Understate instead of exaggerating. Your arguments will be stronger, and people will like you more.

Taking simple honesty further

Of course, Simple Honesty is a work in progress, so I’m opening this up for discussion. Do you think I’m right? Do you think I’m wrong? Do you think I failed to stress an important point?

Please share your thoughts in the comments!

(image courtesy of sukanto_debnath)