Honest & Truthful to Yourself (Part 1)

You might want to ask yourself: In general, do I assess situations pretty well and accurately?  Do I assess myself pretty well and accurately?  Am I biased?  Am I overly biased?  How objective can I be?

     As simple as “Truth” may sound, there can be many perspectives to this, and it can have a wide range of applications.  For our purposes here, for now, I’m referring to “Truth” as it applies and relates to the self.  By that, I mean truth is extremely valuable for a person’s own personal development.  If a person wants to be on a path of improvement, the person must accurately assess where he or she is at currently within a particular area whether it is a task, skill, character, or other.  The person must accurately recognize where weaknesses may be and where there can be great opportunity for improvement.  Recognizing the strengths within is important too.  However, it is much more common for people to not be truthful about their own weaknesses.

     If a person is not strong in a certain area but lies to himself/herself, then the person would not work hard to actually become proficient with whatever skill/behavior/habit that the person should be learning or overcoming.  As these lies are prolonged or expanded, it can just get worse. Instead of getting better at whatever they need to get better at, they may actually just get better with lies. They may get better at lying to themselves.  In time, they may get very accustomed to lying to other people.  At some point, it may be the default skill the person relies on: lies.

     An example might be, for instance, driving.  A person claims to be an excellent driver when, in reality, he or she is a terrible driver.  For whatever reason, this person believes he/she is good enough at driving and does not want to practice or improve any more.  Having convinced himself/herself that he/she is a good driver, no additional effort is spent on actually improving or practicing, so their growth is stunted in this area.  As time passes, there could be reasons the opportunity to improve becomes less available.  It may be that the person is much older and should know the common rules of the road.  Due to the fact that they don’t actually know those rules, they may make up excuses to not drive.  They may have other people drive for them consistently or find various ways to hide their terrible driving skills.  They may be lying to other people and try to project a false presentation of their abilities.  Now, they have to maintain the lies to themselves as well as maintain lies to other people to produce an outside image of their self or reputation.  Rather than spending energy and effort to actually get better, their energy may be spent producing & maintaining lies and it can have a feedback effect where this behavior becomes worse and worse.  Driving is one example, and other examples can be: mathematics, a language, their job/career, part of their character, etc.

     Ideally, a person is able to accurately assess and be truthful with themself.  In this fashion, the person knows whether they need to work harder at something or not.  This basic ability for the truth is very important because it can virtually have an impact on all other aspects of a person's life.  If a person believes he or she has proficiency with human stress management, but doesn’t truly, it will come crumbling down one day during times of stress.  If a person believes he or she has proficiency with self-awareness but doesn’t truly, it will inhibit their learning and development.  The person may not be able to identify or recognize whatever the true root cause that is preventing himself/herself from truly learning.  The person may make excuses for themself which ultimately prevents the person from attaining a true mastery of the basic skills that are required to navigate the world.  This is one of the most important first steps of leading a life of growth & learning.

What do you plan to do to help gauge truth better?

Honest & Truthful to Yourself (Part 1)