Unless you grew up in a ridiculously dysfunctional home, you were probably taught that honesty is the best policy. Your parents probably told you this in the context of dealing with other people. Today I want to affirm that truth, but it applies just as much when dealing with yourself. Are you honest with you?

Lying is Easy

One of the major problems with trying to be honest is that sometimes lying or just making stuff up is easier. Truth can take some effort to ferret out and even more effort to explain. Why go through all that effort? Just make something up. Just say what people want to hear.

Lying is Hard

Of course, it catches up with you eventually. Sooner or later, someone will go through the effort to uncover the truth and you will be exposed. And, as you tell lies to cover your lies it gets harder and harder to keep your story straight and not contradict the lies you told earlier.

We Lie Because

Why do we lie?

Putting aside for a moment the lies we tell to make people feel better about themselves or what they did, basically, we lie because we feel it betters our situation. We lie when we feel we have something to gain by it. Basically, we lie to gain an advantage, make ourselves look better, or to cover up something we did wrong.

That explains why we lie to others, but why do we lie to ourselves? What do we gain from that? We lie to ourselves to soothe our consciences, justify our behaviors, or, in general, feel better about ourselves. And sometimes, it is just easier to lie to ourselves than to put in all the effort it takes to suss out and deal with the truth.

Not a lie, just not the truth

And, other times we do not consciously lie to ourselves. Our memories can be very imperfect. Over time, it gets harder and harder to accurately remember exactly what we did or why we did it.

Plus, we tend to judge ourselves a lot less harshly than we judge other people. We are more likely to give our motives and actions the benefit of a doubt.

Honest With Yourself

The truth is, you are probably not as good, bad, attractive, ugly, smart or dumb as you think. In many instances, people close to us can gage us much better than we can gauge ourselves. That is one of the many reasons you should surround yourself with high-quality, honest people who will tell you the truth in love.

Your opinion of yourself is, to some extent bound to be skewed. So, get some trustworthy input and try to be as honest with yourself as possible about what is going on inside you.

Who are you?

At your core, what do you believe? What do you enjoy? What type of relationship do you want? Are the things you believe about yourself who you really are? Or, be honest, are these things you have adopted because of the expectations of others?

Where are you?

Where are you in your life? In your journey to recovery? In your growth as a person? Do you need to make some changes to grow more spiritually or emotionally or to be in better physical health? Be honest. Are you mature enough to handle a relationship? Have you healed enough from your last relationship to get into a new one?

What do you want?

What do you want in life? Marriage? Singleness? Personal growth? Better health? Be honest. Are these things what you really want or are they what you are willing to settle for? And here again, are these things really what you want or are they things you feel you should want?

Get where you really want to go from where you really are

Never let others define who you are or what you want. Be honest with yourself. You do not want to finally arrive at the place you thought you wanted to go only to realize you were talked into wanting to be that person or wanting that thing.

And, wherever you actually want to go, you have to figure out how to get there from where you actually are,