Honesty seems so easy to handle, right? Just be honest all the time with all the people. What makes us avoid honesty? Who cares, right? It is a quality we admire, but do we really strive for it? Have you ever called in and not really been sick? Again, honesty, what makes us avoid it?
Dictionary.com
hon·es·ty
/ˈänəstē/
noun
1.
the quality of being honest.
“they spoke with convincing honesty about their fears”synonyms:
moral correctness, uprightness, honorableness, honor, integrity, morals, morality, ethics, principle, (high) principles, nobility, righteousness, rectitude, right-mindedness, upstandingness.
Honesty
You know it’s one of those things I have always PRIDED myself in. Being honest with people. Saying what is true and right. At least in my mind it is something I thought I should do and would do, but looking at the definition and thinking about my actions sometimes don’t always line up with this truth. Honesty, what makes us avoid it?
Why is it so hard to be honest? What makes us deny the truth about somethings and get in the habit of trading a lie for the truth.
Not Honest With Others
I really believe we don’t start out intending to be dishonest. It’s just somewhere along the way the truth didn’t seem to look all that good. So we just didn’t tell things exactly the way it was supposed to be told.
Comparing Myself To Others
One of the biggest reasons we aren’t honest is we really just do not like who we are and the reason we don’t like who we are is the fact we still are comparing ourselves to other people. We don’t want to openly compete with others, but in our minds we often do and that starts by comparing.
Competing and Comparing
Competing and comparing, two places we often go in our minds and shouldn’t. I may think I want to be better than another person and just can’t, so I decide not telling the truth is a quick means to an end. As a matter of fact it is instant, even though it may not be 100% honest. I can instantly tell you something about myself to make me look better and it’s not true.
I have learned that over the years I am the least satisfied with myself and who I am when I compare myself with others. Do you remember Farrah Fawcett? Well if you grew up in the 70’s you KNEW who Farrah Fawcett was. As a matter of fact if you look in my high school annual you will see her on every female head in that yearbook. 1979 was the Farrah Fawcett hairstyle year and it lasted a few years.
No one dared to try something else. You just did your hair in that style. Even if your hair wasn’t suited to Farah’s style you still tried. The standard was set and the rest of us tried to emulate the model. We all compared ourselves to Farah Fawcett every morning before school. She was a pretty difficult standard for hair anyway. My hair never looked good that way, but I wanted to be like everyone else. I lacked confidence in myself the way I was and still, some days do today.
Self Esteem
Now that is just talking about hair, right, but we tend to do the same thing in a lot of areas of life. Self Esteem still plays a big roll in why we are not always honest. We think someone won’t like us for who we are or they may appear better than us.
Even though I am 50 years old I still have times that I compare myself to others. Self esteem is not just a teenage problem. It carries on throughout a lifetime. When I compare myself to someone else and I THINK I am not quite THERE, well I start not being honest with myself or others. We believe we don’t measure up so being dishonest about things helps us measure up.
There are so many little things you may lie about during the day that it may not even be noticeable anymore. If just becomes a habit and we feel we gain a little reward from the white lie and being honest doesn’t seem all that important.
Being dishonest with myself and who I am often leads to doing what everyone else is doing. That way no one will notice me as different. It may not be the real me, but I won’t stand out or feel like I don’t measure up.
Trust
Lisa Harper, She Reads Truth
I once had a surgeon tell me I wasn’t a very good patient because I tried to “gut it out,” instead of being honest about the pain I was experiencing. Apparently, it’s hard on a healer when a patient masks their symptoms; making a diagnosis can become a bit like trying to shoot at a moving target.
My doctor believed my stubborn refusal to admit pain reflected my lack of trust in his competence as a physician.
I thought this was so profound. We would NEVER say out loud to our doctor that we do not trust them, right? I mean, we pay good money for their advice. The truth is we don’t trust people. We all have seen it too many times. Someone asks how you are doing? You answer fine because you can’t trust that person to be really listening. To offer someone an honest answer means you trust them enough to listen and MAYBE offer some advice. You hope if the question has been asked that the person on the other end really does want to hear the answer.
Sometimes we don’t even trust our family. How many times have you agreed to go somewhere you really did not want to go to. Now this may have turned our very well for you, but the truth is we do this all the time. We do it sometimes for nice reason as well as selfish ones. Considering other peoples feelings matter to us as as well.
Really Bad Habits
I believe that most of the time our dishonesty has become a really bad habit. We just develop a laissez faire attitude about conversations and take the path of least resistance. That habit of being dishonest to people is so easy and commonplace we just DO IT.
Questions come to us during the day and we choose to be dishonest about them. We want to give validity to whatever we are saying so we add little lies to the conversation. Lies that can not be traced or counter attacked at the moment. If that keeps working out then the pattern continues.
I laugh sometimes when a person will say, “Well, they told us to do that.” The mysterious “they”. No one ever knows who they are but authority is given to them all the time!!
Easy Come Easy Go
The words just slip out of our mouths so easily sometimes. Have you ever gone to the doctor and he asks, “Do you exercise everyday,” or the dentist, “Are you flossing regularly?” Man why did you have to go and as those questions. Hmmm, I usually think a long time before I answer. I don’t want to lie, but something in me doesn’t want to look bad either. I have answered that question with a quick, “Yeah” before knowing too well that it was a big fat lie.
Just me and the doc and I couldn’t be honest. I probably am not honest with myself even!!!
So, What Is Going To Be The Agent Of Change?
You know it take a lot of courage to be honest all the time. You may even ask yourself if it is a worthy goal. Honestly, what’s the big deal about about avoiding honesty? When I look back at the definition of honesty I am reminded again, YES it is a worthy goal to be honest. It is something to strive for when it seems like no one else desires being honest. Can I be honesty all of the time to all people. I want to be that is my desire, but I don’t believe I can do it all the time alone. We need power for this. I am reminded of what Saint Paul said,
St Paul
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
See, when I get up in the morning my first thought is usually about ME. Now I am not saying that thinking about me isn’t important, but I am saying thinking about just me is wrong. Because when you start out thinking just about yourself, your day, your world it is going to make being honest pretty hard.
Thinking About Me and Why I Avoid Honesty
The word Self preservation does start with Self. So this is where some core things have to happen if I am going to be able to practice honesty all day. I know from personal experience that I am going to have to do this with help. Help that is supernatural. I need help from God to be able to put myself second and being honest first. John said that God left us the Holy Spirit to help with just that.
Thank God!! I need His help. If you have decided that honesty is a worthy goal then you will need His help too. We can not do it on our own. There is nothing in me that makes me consider always being honest and putting others first.
So think about it. Do you want to be honest? Is honesty part of your goals? If you believe honesty is a worthy goal than think about the reason you can not always tell the truth. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you and take the challenge of living a honesty life.
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