“Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.”
Naval Ravikant
The Personal Benefits of Being Honest
Why do you think honesty is important? What reasons do you have to be honest?
Usually, people tend to think the main reason for honesty is fairness to others – “Doing the right thing”, “Having integrity”. We think we should be truthful and honest for the benefit of others and not necessarily for our own benefit. Although considering the well-being of others is definitely a reason to avoid lying and deception, it is certainly not the only reason. Being honest has a myriad of benefits not only for the people you interact with but for yourself. In fact, there may even be more personal benefits to being honest than there are for those around you.
Here are 10 different personal benefits of honesty.
#1 – Clarity. The more that you stray from the truth, the harder it can become to discern the truth within yourself. Often, after repeating a story over and over again, people start to believe their own made up of version of things. On some level we connect to these stories, even if they aren’t true. If the story is always changing to fit whatever desired scenario or person it’s being told to, it can get really hard to keep track of what actually IS true. When we aren’t speaking the truth, we are not only being dishonest with others, we are also being dishonest with ourselves.
The words we tell ourselves and others have power. Our words create our experience as we speak them. When we tell stories, we are also reliving these stories in our minds. Our bodies don’t always know the difference between a true or false story and the more we tell false ones, the more confusing it becomes for our emotions and our nervous system to distinguish a lie from the truth. The waters even get muddy with “little white lies” or exaggerations, especially if it becomes habitual.
The further we stray from expressing our truth, the harder it is to tell when we aren’t being totally honest, not only with others, but with ourselves. Making the decision to be as truthful as possible and checking in with yourself often to determine whether what you are saying is in fact the truth, is an exercise in great clarity. If you follow a path of transparency and honesty, things become much simpler and much clearer, not only for you but for those around you, too.
#2 – Less Stress. Keeping up a lie takes a lot of brainpower. Being honest requires little to no extra effort. Concocting stories, excuses, stretching or elaborating the truth and trying to remember all of the details of everything that you’ve come up with can not only create major confusion for the people you are telling these stories too, but also within yourself! How are you going to keep track of all of the variations that are out there that you’ve told to others and also remember the truth for yourself? Lots of extra thinking is required to manage the stories, not to mention the worrying that you might be caught in your lie… Stressful! Imagine if you just told the truth, no extra mental gymnastics to try to make the truth something “better” than it already is, no catalogue of details to keep track of, just one simple truth. Weight lifted. You can now relax.
#3 – Deeper Relationships. It’s pretty much impossible to get close to someone if you’re not being honest with them. Everything always has to be kept at arm’s length, surface level, in order to best keep up appearances. Being honest is the first step towards greater understanding and clarity in a relationship. Communication, openness and honesty are essential for finding true happiness in a relationship as well. How can you know if you are happy with things the way that they are, if you’re pretending they are different? People can tell when you’re not being honest. They might not have proof or know for sure, but just like horses they can feel it when there’s something off. Even if they don’t totally realize what it is that they are feeling, they will most likely trust their gut and act on it. Likely, they won’t fully open up to you either if something feels wrong. Dishonesty is like a wedge that separates you from others, standing between you and true connection with another. When we remove that wedge we can really see each other and possibly even see more of ourselves in each other, creating greater understanding, closeness and much deeper bonds.
#4 – Greater Authenticity. Who are you really? Not the you that you wish you were, not the you that you think other people want you to be, not your persona(s), just you. The you that you were born to be, the natural you, the one that you are without even trying – that is your authentic self. Authenticity is being honest and true about who you are and how you feel, regardless of what others think and even regardless of what you think. With the many pressures we often feel to be different or “better” than we already are, it can be hard enough to be our authentic self sometimes. If we add being dishonest on top of that, we become even more disconnected from who we are at our core. This is the last thing that we need! The more that we can get back to the truest version of ourselves, the more aligned we will be with who we are meant to be and how we are meant to be as our truest selves. Click here to learn more about your authentic self.
#5 – Freedom and Possibilities. When you’re not honest, you limit yourself to the parameters of your dishonesty. You can get totally stuck and weighed down by those lies, too, as they follow you around, which they inevitably do. If you’re telling things to people (or to yourself) that aren’t true, you are creating a starting point that has a false bottom that can’t support true growth. It’s very hard to move forward or take action from the unstable ground created by lies. Even bending the truth or exaggerating moves you away from the solid foundation that truth gives you. In the wake of dishonesty, you might be offered opportunities that you can’t actually take because they don’t align with what’s really true. You also won’t be offered the opportunities that you DO need, because your true needs aren’t known. When you start from a place of honesty and truth, you are not limited by the constructs created by your illusions and you are able to accept all of the possibilities that come your way. You are no longer trapped by any deceptions you may have put into place. You are free to step up to the next level, without fear of your lies being unable to support you and crumbling beneath your feet.
#6 – Trust. Honesty creates trust! Not only are you more trustworthy to others when you are known for being honest, others are much more likely to be trustworthy towards you, following your example and confiding their truths to you. It is also much easier to trust others when you choose to uphold honesty and integrity yourself. When you fall into the habit of being dishonest, it becomes easy to believe that others must not be honest either. Thinking everyone else is lying too makes it really hard to trust anybody! Additionally, although it’s not 100% possible to know for sure if someone is being honest with you, people are usually pretty adept at being able to sense when someone is hiding something or not being authentic. The horses & donkeys sure can! When you’re shrouded in deception, people (and animals) can sense it and they may act accordingly. Conversely, those who make a habit of being dishonest can become detached from their own instinctual wisdom that enables them to sense authenticity and other energetic vibrations from others that signal trustworthiness. Instead their senses are blocked by feelings of paranoia, separation and fear. Trust is very hard to find when truth becomes a stranger.
#7 – Strength. Sometimes being honest is really hard! It seems much easier to just tell that little white lie. Especially if the truth might hurt someone we love or even ourselves. Recognizing the greater, longer lasting benefits that honesty has can help us to do the more challenging thing even if it may result in immediate discomfort. It takes strength to do the hard thing and it builds strength when we repeatedly choose challenge for the greater benefit of all, rather than taking the “easy” way out for temporary relief. Every time we face a challenge, we are stronger from the experience of getting through it.
#8 – Vulnerability. Dishonesty usually comes from an effort to protect yourself. The truth can make us feel vulnerable and we think that there might be some kind of danger in that. So, instead of being open and honest, we close up to protect ourselves. We hide the truth, what we’re really thinking and feeling, for fear that if we express these truths we may be judged or hurt by others. Sometimes, we even hide the truth from ourselves because we don’t want to feel the pain or discomfort we think will come with our true emotions.
This closing up and hiding of the truth, doesn’t make the truth go away or change it. It just buries it deeper and deeper within us so that we can’t access it, we can’t process it, we can’t heal it and we can’t move on. We get stuck and the buried truth continues to affect us, but it does so under the radar in such a way that we become disconnected from our power to communicate with ourselves and to evolve. We think we are protecting ourselves from the “bad” stuff, but we are also blocking ourselves from the things that we want, too. Nothing can get through, good or bad. Vulnerability is allowing ourselves to be open to what is, to be honest about our truth, no matter if we think it’s “good” or “bad”. When we are vulnerable, we are flexible, we are able to recognize our thoughts and feelings, to process and to release them. There is power and strength in vulnerability. We are open to the natural flow of living – of receiving and releasing. We can access more of our abilities to shift and change, to accept the truth and to feel the freedom and peace that comes with that acceptance. Vulnerability is a super power.
#9 – Self Confidence. Committing to being truly honest can foster a sense of pride and self-respect. Not only does it take confidence in yourself to speak the truth without being overly concerned about what others may say or think about you, the act of being honest also helps to build confidence. Not feeling the need to exaggerate or bend the truth to make things somehow appear “better” or “greater” or even different is a form of recognizing that your truth is enough and that you don’t need to pretend things are different. Your truth is worthy, you are worthy and you don’t need to hide. Even if you don’t like the truth, maybe the truth is something that you’d like to change to be different, you know that lying about it isn’t going to make things different. Acknowledging the way things are and then taking action is the way forward and you have confidence that current circumstances don’t define who you are. The more we practice being strong and honest in our truth, the more we are shown what we are capable of.
#10 – Self Love. Recognizing all of the benefits that being truthful has on your own life and experience means that committing to honesty is itself an act of Self Love! When you find yourself in a tough spot where you wonder if full honesty is the way to go or if falling into a half truth will somehow benefit you, making the choice to live your truth is deciding that you deserve the best and highest. That you are worthy of living a life of truth and integrity. When you commit to the truth you commit to yourself. You do it for the benefit of you, because it will lead to a happier, healthier mind and a happier, healthier you. So love yourself and give yourself the gift of honesty.
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