An amazing thing happens when you get honest with yourself and start doing what you love, what makes you happy. You stop wishing for the weekend. You stop merely looking forward to special events. You begin to live in each moment and you start feeling like a human being. You just ride the wave that is life, with this feeling of contentment and joy. You move fluidly, steadily, calm and grateful. A veil is lifted, and a whole new perspective is born.
– Unknown
Honesty is an art. All this world needs is a bit of color and sunshine spilled here and there; it needs art, in any form it comes in. So when you are being honest to yourself and to others, you are painting a picture that can never fade awaysimply because the truth can never be killed, no matter how significant the suffocation of Reality and Time around it might be. Besides, everyone else is already taken, so be honest, be yourself. That is a hard feat to accomplish, though, given we live in a world constantly trying to change us and silence the voice of truth within us. But if that voice is loud enough, nothing and no one can smother us to silence it.
Here, we look at the 5 best things that happen when you get completely honest with yourself. And once you take this step, learning to be honest with others happens by itself, without you even trying.
1. You get in tune with what you really want
You do not always know what you want and need, not really anyway. Sometimes, it is the heavy clouds of fear, doubt, insecurity or depression cloaking your sky of objectives in life. You feel like you are sitting on the sidewalks, watching life pass by but not knowing what you want for yourself.
You become so accustomed to hearing others tell you what to do and say that you lose sight of what you yourself want. It becomes intoxicating at times, doesn’t it? That is when you need to shut that outside noise and listen instead to the voice of truth lying dormant within you.
As Clark Moustakas said,
Accept everything about yourselfI mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the endno apologies, no regrets.
Be honest to yourself about what you actually like, not what someone else told you to like; ask yourself what you want to do with your and where you want to be instead of relying on what people have always been cramming up inside you. It is your life and you alone have to live with the consequences of your decisions. So how will you get in tune with those decisions in the first place? When you choose honesty for and from within yourself.
I lay and cried, and began to feel again, to admit I was human, vulnerable, sensitive. I began to remember how it had been before; how there was that germ of positive creativeness. Character is fate; and damn, I’d better work on my character. I had been withdrawing into a retreat of numbness: it is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch one. But my honest self revolted at this, hated me for doing this.
Sylvia Plath *Continue reading on next page*
2. You start to live in the moment
You might think how a trait like honesty can make you live for the moment. Think about it. It is only when you are honest about how you feel and not feel about something that happened in your past, or something that might happen in the future that you look at things around you, notice their value in your life and so, you stop wishingВ for things that might never happen. Honesty about how your present is impacting you makes you appreciate it for what it is worth.
Moments in life the past and the future all blend in to your present. And the only way you can begin to enjoy your present is by being honest to yourself. If what you are currently facing is not something that pleases you, you would try changing it, right? If what you are hearing in this present moment is something you can relate to, even this article you are reading, and you honestly mumble to yourself Wow, this is good stuff, would you not want to carry on with it? When you listen to that song in a drive with, lets say, the people you love and enjoy being around with, the voice of honesty will rise inside you and go something like oh, hey, that is so true, I have felt this before, and that honesty right there will make you feel infinite.
And life is all the more fun and less hectic when you have loads of these infinite moments, now is it not? These moments arise from honesty indeed.
There are people who say all these things don’t happen. And there are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen. I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all become somebody’s mom or dad. But right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening. I am here, and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song, and that drive with the people who you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.В В
– Stephen Chbosky
В 3.В You find a way to be satisfied
When you learn to be honest with yourself about your likes, dislikes, habits and everything in between you find a way to be okay with all that, you know? Yes, you might not be completely satisfied in the perfect sense though you will be, don’t worry but somehow, you will find a way to be satisfied with all your haves and have-nots.В *Continue reading on next page*
You can never be perfect; perfect is just an illusion and it’s overrated. By being honest to yourself like, "Okay, I do not possess such magnificent qualities as many people out there do, I never will, what I have is enough" being honest like this will open the door of satisfaction for you.
Whatever lies on the other side of that door is something you can handle pretty well because you will have the token of honesty with you. Satisfaction means more than happiness, even. It might take some time to getting used to it too, but it is so worth it in the end. You cannot expect to be happy if you are a beggar, but if you learn to be satisfied with it, life would be less burdensome, simply because you would find a way to be okay, no matter what happens.
Honesty:
Like stripping down,
Feeling the fabric
Slip off your skin,
And fighting the urge
To cover yourself.
I am trying
Not to cower from the spotlight,
But this heat
Isn’t something I’m used to.
-Daisy Longmile
4. You achieve a peace of mind
This is not a level everyone can climb that easily. Only those brutally honest to themselves and then to the world have fully attained a peace of mind. They know their worth, their life’s purpose, their flaws and virtues, what makes them whole and what matters most to them all based on the fact that they are straightforward and honest about who they are. No aspect of their existence is camouflaged under the thick cloak of mediocrity.В
That is why when times get tough, they walk through the storm with a cool, graceful manner and even if they stumble and fall, they pick themselves up and dust off their clothes, continuing to move ahead. When the world calls them names they are not or misjudges them, they do not let it get the better of them.В *Continue reading on next page*
It is these very kind of people who others look at and say doesn’t anything get to them, look how calm and collected they are. Have you ever wondered what makes them act in such a way? It is the way they are always honest to themselves about who they are that when the world calls them names they are not, they know they are not true so they are able to ignore it. When they are misjudged for the things they say and do, they still carry their peace of mind because they know who they are; because their honesty shows them a clean mirror reflecting their true identity.
By your own soul, learn to live
And if men thwart you take no heed.
If men hate you have no care.
Sing your song, dream your dream,
Hope your hope and pray your prayer. Parkenham Beatty
Their soul finds a way to be at peace despite their inabilities and insecurities, their flaws and their quirksall because they remind themselves each day who they are, letting the art of honesty painting their mind a peaceful painting, one that no one can off from the hallways of their mind.
5. You see reality with a cleaner lens
Some say reality is just an illusion, only as good as fantasies that shatter in no time. Others say it takes its form from your actions, decisions and words. Still others say it is a prison. But reality is only what you make it to be. And that can be anything, literally, depending on your imaginations and aspirations. So if you play the card of honesty often enough, both with yourself and the world around you, it will gleam a glare of honesty too.
Being honest with yourself would enable you to accept things as they come and to complain less what you do not get. In a way, you are only as real as your honesty.В Life’s harsh and it is only when you get honest about it that you get real about it. Throw away the glass behind which you look at the world from. It is made of nothing but lies that didn’t justify the kind of person you are.
Everybody wanna hear the real version of life then don’t get so sensitive
When I say something a little bit raw
I jot my thoughts and they call it negative
You wanna know where my heart is? I stand out cause I wear my garbage
I work my hardest and every time I look into the mirror, don’t forget about where I started…
Tell me what am I doing here?
If I’m not being real, mmm.
-NF, Real
