How to be Honest with Yourself: A Prerequisite to Self-Improvement

Do you dare from today to be honest with yourself?

Sometimes being honest with yourself is the hardest thing there is. Our head deceives us and we boycott ourselves so that we do not get what we really want. The head is our enemy. One of the values that best define a person is honest towards others.

What is honesty?

We speak of the ability to be sincere, fair and respectful of the truth, to such an extent that the truth is put before one’s own interests.

The reality we live in shows us the way to go.

Nowadays being honest is, without a doubt, one of the most sought-after values in any person, be it a friend, partner, son or boss, it doesn’t matter, it is one of the pillars that matters most in our society.

And because? Well, because it is the basis of trust and prosperity.

We could say that honesty is the “gold” that each one has within himself and that, when it emerges outside, it makes others happy.

How many times do we get distracted from our path? from the path that you want, that you want to live, the path that comes from the voice of your soul, the voice that you know always leads you along with the best of paths.

Why do you stop listening to it? What is happening in you in those moments? Observe it, only then can you discover the WHY and HOW you take other steps that do not lead you towards your purpose. Only then can you become aware and modify it.

It is true that in life “Everything happens to us for a reason”, everything has a message on our way.

Do you think you can learn without suffering or do you cling to it to grow and be a better person by knowing how to overcome the difficult situations that arise in life?

The answer that you give to this question will be the correct one, because you will say it from your vital moment, from today.

My experience both within the training that I carry out to enhance emotional intelligence in people, as well as in individual sessions where intimacy offers the possibility of many revealing situations to the surface, I am discovering day by day that so much suffering is not necessary. Human beings are programmed by our genetics to “survive”. For this reason, on many occasions, the fact of “being happy” deserves a greater effort, because we overcome most of the situations from suffering, from stress triggers that spark in our oldest brain.

You, do you want to be happy?

This is an act of bravery. Be honest, be honest with yourself. That is the path of your soul. That is the shortcut to empower yourself as a person from harmony, strength, and from emotional balance. From the sincerity with yourself, you prevent your pain from growing and that which you can provoke to other people.

When we lie to ourselves, the snowball gets bigger and bigger, and of course, it affects other people. The sincerity towards yourself makes the disagreement with other people less because you will speak to them from your soul, a place from which it is “impossible” to hurt. And if the other person receives it with pain, keep in mind that it will be their perception. Do not feed her, offer her the best of you at that moment and with that intention things will calm down for both parties.

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiots talk you out of it. Stan Lee

Honesty is the gold that we have within us:

From a young age, our parents tell us that you always have to tell the truth even if it means a fight or punishment, that the value of honesty towards others and, above all towards them, your parents, are rewarded with great rewards.

All this makes us begin to relate, from our childhood, that honesty and truth always have a good effect on us and, in many cases, we associate being honest with material rewards. What father has not said to his son: «as you have told me the truth I am not going to punish you, as you have told me the truth, have some sweets, since you have not cheated on me, I forgive you and we are going to play ball.”

In a few words, we associate honesty with an immediate effect on our well-being, but as we get older we see that the effect is not immediate and its importance in us diminishes.

What do we mean by this? Well, the society in which we live has a great lack of thanking the people who are next to us for the favors or solutions they have given us.

As we get older, we see that our honesty in many cases is not immediately appreciated and that really being honest with your partner or boss on many occasions is not a consequence of reward, but of having a conflict even greater.

We realize that the idea we have in our brain that telling the truth is an equal gift or immediate happiness, in real life it is not.

Our boss, our friends and even our partner already take for granted that honesty has to be there and therefore we realize that there is no longer a reward. Our brain automatically tells us that what we had as an important value when we were younger is no longer so important and lowers the value in our moral thinking of the truth, giving it a lower grade on our scale of values.

Honesty lowers rungs in our thinking:

In a way we begin to see that being honest with others is not that important and what is worse, we forget many times to be honest with ourselves.

Our parents have taught us the importance of truth towards others but, on many occasions, they have not taught us the true importance of being honest with yourself and how this honesty will make your life much happier.

Knowing what your life is like will help you know what needs to change and will make you much happier.

Our happiness depends on our decisions, our decisions depend on what our brain processes and its way of processing depend on our scale of values. Therefore, if honesty and truth are not at the top of the list as super values important, our brain will not process the truth that we are living. And if we do not process the reality of our life we will never know what we need and therefore what are the best decisions for us. And what does this lead to?

Not being happy:

By not wanting to see reality, however difficult it may be, and not accepting it on many occasions, it activates the defenses and excuses and the search for a culprit for our misfortune appear, thus making it easier to accept our life and continue with our routine, but What the brain does not tell us is that the problem gets bigger until it explodes, causing us more damage.

The best will be an example so that you understand it well:

Many of the women who come to the consultation see how their husband has less and less attention towards them, caresses and pampering diminish. Faced with this situation, many of the brains of women process this situation as that their husband is tired from the stressful day he has had and that the fatigue is a consequence of work, which leads them to decide that in order to solve this situation it is necessary that your husband has a hobby and is more distracted to get out of the stress he is under.

But the woman’s surprise increases when the distance from her husband becomes greater and the caresses decrease much more.

The woman does not understand what is happening and goes back to looking for another solution that ends up without success. The woman does not realize that the problem is herself and that her husband has stopped loving her because there are things that he has stopped liking about her way of being. However, the woman continues to search for explanations since, accepting the reality of the situation, will produce a frustration that her brain feels as excessive.

However, when we are honest with ourselves, when we are honest and we say to our brain “enough. I have decided to see the reality of what is happening and I can endure any frustration to overcome it without problems”. Your brain allows your eyes to see the real problem of your unhappiness and that you can make the best decision. In this case, it may be to stop directing the husband’s life or to seek moments for the couple alone. Sometimes the solutions are much easier than we think.

Has this example been clearer to you?

Now is the time for you to put into practice everything you have learned with today’s challenge! The challenge this week is to encourage you to practice honesty, for this, we recommend that you do the following:

Choose an area of your life that you want to improve, for example, your job, your children, your partner, your mother or your friends… You don’t want to do them all at once because you can get overwhelmed.

Make a list of everything that annoys you in that area. Only what makes you really angry and lists the intensity of anger in each situation from highest to lowest. Do not hold back. Be honest and, although it is painful, write it remember that only you will read it.

Then begin to analyze point one on the list, the most important and the one that most outrages you as a person. Surely if we can solve this one, many of those that are below will be solved.

Read carefully the first point and repeat it several times out loud so that your whole brain and your body listen to your problem and learn that it is a problem that you no longer have hidden. Once you have said it out loud, add the following sentence: “I want a solution and I am sure of myself that I can improve it.”

When you have done this several times your brain will be programmed to see reality as it is, not as it has been seen until now. It is time to make another list of the possible causes of your main problem. Always start by observing the attitudes of your own person not of others. In this way, you will be able, to be honest with yourself and find the successful decision you are looking for.

Keep in mind that the list is not to frustrate you, but to free yourself from a problem and begin to see with the eyes of honesty and reality.

It is difficult for all of us to see the reality of our life. We can help you to be honest with yourself that you need to make a life filled with happiness.

12 Steps to start being honest with yourself:

Well, at this point, we can only give you a few guidelines to begin to be honest with yourself and, therefore, learn to make good decisions.

1. Deciding that life not only smiles at you but makes you laugh.
2. Accept that in 90% of cases your attitude is the problem of your unhappiness.
3. Understand that happiness has no limits; do not settle for what you have.
4. Learn to overcome frustration and transform the strength of your tears with willpower and decision.
5. Know that every decision is correct since each one leads to another and so on, but be aware that the path to reach the goal can be reduced if we see our life as it is and not as we would like to see it.
6. Do not compare yourself to others. Everyone has their own ups and downs in life.
7. Be your own boss. Only you can change your life, no one else.
8. Accept that every change has consequences. At first painful but in a short space of time happiness comes, so be brave.
9. Accept that if you do nothing, your life will never change, if you are not totally clear and honest with yourself, nothing will change.
10. Everyone has aspects of their life to improve. Do not forget!
11. We live to enjoy. Do not punish yourself with the thought that you do not do things well. Accept that there is no manual of “how to live” the same for everyone and that experimenting and making mistakes is a privilege that we all have.
12. Focus your time and energy on making decisions about your life, not the lives of others. It is not your responsibility.

When we accept that in 90% of the cases of our problems are produced by ourselves and we have the honesty to admit it by not making excuses towards others, we are able to decide our actions with real success.

Being honest with yourself is one of the most difficult acts of personal growth and self-discovery that a person can face.

Recognizing that we are the problem makes us feel small and in many cases ashamed of ourselves. However, seeing the reality of our problems and having the strength to carry out the decisions we make will be what really leads us to happiness. Even if at first you only see pain and tears, honesty is the way to success.

Seeing the reality and being honest about the situation you are experiencing will not provide you with an immediate reward like when you were a child, but this does not mean that your brain has to lower its position on your scale of values.

We have to reprogram our brain so that it understands that honesty or truth are the pillars to be able to have a better life in the near future and that it will provide us with the necessary information to make successful decisions.

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