Chapter 1: Why is honesty important in relationships?
You should still be honest even if it's going to hurt somebody's feelings. Because although in the moment it's going to hurt and your relationship might be damaged in a way you think is not repairable, the truth will set you free. But first it's going to piss you off. Babe, you want to be my bae? Pharrell Williams said it perfectly, okay, in that song. Lemon.
If you remember the Lemon Challenge, I get it how I live it. I live it how I get it. The truth hurts. And in a world filled with lies, the truth will make you seem crazy. In a world where people pleasing is more important than just standing on business, you are going to be deemed problematic if you speak out on how you actually feel. And I'm not saying that on like some grandiose level.
I'm just saying with your, with your relationships, with your friends, a lot of us lie to ourselves. We do so because we want to be accepted. We want to keep friendships.
Chapter 2: How can fear motivate us to face difficult truths?
We want to maintain good graces with people. And I think, you know, it's good to play nice, but if you're hurting in a relationship or you feel like you're not happy with how you're being treated, why would you lie to yourself? Zerk, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of telling somebody straight up that I think our relationship is cooked or I'm afraid to be honest to my parents about why I don't want to be a lawyer and I actually want to study something else, right? Something humanitarian. I know you're scared because the truth is scary. It's scary because oftentimes it is blanketed in a bunch of lies that you've told over and over and over.
And maybe you've tried to convince yourself things are actually good when they're really not. I get it. We all deal with that. Where I think it becomes really bad is if you get to a point, like I am right now, where you have been kind of sailing on a boat of lies through an ocean of truth. And all you want to do is just get off the ship and swim in the ocean, okay? Like an astronaut in the ocean.
What you know about rolling down to the deep? When your brain goes numb, you can call the mental freeze.
Chapter 3: What are the consequences of living a lie?
When people talk too much, position in slow motion, I feel like an astronaut in the ocean, right? You remember that song? Let's forget it now. When you build an entire life on lies, it gets really hard to exist. It really does. And it makes you question if you can ever be truthful to yourself again.
I have been trying to peel back the layers of my onion self that likes to keep everything chill and I've got everything under control. It's always a process. It's always something you have to stumble through, man. I thought I had it under control. I really don't. I do want people to feel good. And in the pursuit of being honest, it's normal to make somebody feel bad. It is. It is.
Because sometimes... You really had nothing to do with it. It was the way that they're acting. And it's more of a reflection of them than it is you. Real talk.
Chapter 4: How do we deal with the fear of honesty?
They might get very upset and angry with you. What do you mean you think I'm clingy? I care about you. I want to talk to you all the time because you're my boyfriend. Them saying that out loud, I think, is just giving more evidence that It's their belief, right? Their belief system is flawed.
They think in their mind that their standard is they need to talk to their boyfriend every single day, every minute of the day, and their eyes are twitching, right? But you know pretty well that you don't feel like you have space to breathe. It feels like every minute of your life needs to be, you know, standing in attention to them, being a servant, right?
This isn't the great, phenomenal show, by the way. I recommend it. It's so awesome. You know, you don't have, like, serfs running around. You don't have to be a serf to somebody else. You are your own person. A relationship should supplement your life. And if it is draining you of the wrong things, then I think you gotta be honest. Your job, your career, what you're studying...
These are the things that people love to lie to themselves about the most. They like to say everything is fine when in reality they hate it. They hate everything about the place they work, the coworkers they have, the fact that every single day is the same. They hate it. They hate it. And instead of the honesty boat, they decide to just wallow in their sadness and their despair and their hatred.
And I think the reason that honesty is such a beautiful thing is because although it hurts in the moment, right? And some people think, you can't handle the truth! Like, uh, in that movie with, uh, Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, right? You good men.
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Chapter 5: What strategies can we use to communicate honestly?
Fire movie, bro. Um... It's a temporary pain. It's the pain of acknowledgement... Of realizing I might have been wrong. I might have sold myself a lie that isn't fully mine. Right? But... What is a long-term pain... And what will make you feel terrible throughout the rest of your life... Is lying to yourself. And lying to others. Because...
what you'll come to find is once you start, you can't stop. And then low key, everything becomes a lie. You start viewing everything through a lens that's been kind of poisoned by your own self. How do we stay honest? And how do we stay honest to people that can't take honesty? I wish I had an answer. Sometimes what helps is just breaking things down in a way that people can understand, right?
Everyone is different. And some people are kind of too narcissistic to admit they've done something wrong. And I would really, unless it's like family or something, man, I would really urge you to stay away from those kind of people. Their version of the truth will always be right. You'll never be able to have your own say in things.
Also, in a way of making people understand when you're being honest in your point, what really helps is reframing things in a way that someone else could understand. And it takes patience to do that. It takes being able to recognize when somebody blows up at you right away and they're like, I can't believe you would say that. Your immediate reaction is, I didn't even say that.
That's not even what I'm saying. It's, hey, I understand. Let's look at it from a different angle. What if this was you? And let's say, right, like I'm being honest about someone being clingy and kind of being in my personal space a lot.
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Chapter 6: How does honesty affect personal growth?
Find something that they feel equally passionate or loving or, like, find the same level of importance and make an example out of that. Well, you really appreciate your alone time, right? Which is ironic. And you really like fishing. Imagine... If every time you wanted to go fishing, I would come regardless. I wouldn't give you an option.
And I would make you feel bad if you said, listen, I just want some of my own space. Like, I would say, no, you just want to go and cheat on me with another fisherman. I don't know if that's the best example, but like finding common ground comes from understanding that all of us have different passions and different things that we can look to as an example.
And it takes a level of empathy to do that, which is kind of hard, but it can be done. Let's say you've been honest in that way though. You've tried to kind of express these things and it's like not just, it's not hitting. Right. Yeah. It might be time.
It might be time to recognize that the relationship is not worth saving, that the friendship isn't going to go anywhere because if you can't build on honesty, how are you expecting this to survive the long run? It won't. Right. Right.
You could try and I think you should, but there will come a point where, especially when you try to change and you try to be more honest with yourself and with other people and you kind of acknowledge that you're frustrated and you're not a happy person all the time.
You acknowledge that like your life recently, it's been kind of off the rails and you got to find some other kind of solution or you acknowledge that you need alone time more than you'd like to admit. And that you need like a month or two to just like focus on getting back on track with the gym. Getting back on track with talking to your family members on time.
Feeling like you have routine again. The relationships that are meant to stay will stay. They'll flourish. They'll get even stronger. But the ones that are testing you will test you even harder. Problems don't go away.
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Chapter 7: What role does empathy play in honest conversations?
They either grow or Or get solved. And dude, time loves to grow problems. It's like a tree. Like a poisoned tree. And the branches are kind of coming all weird, right? It's like these issues will then spill over into other facets of your life. Now, I'm not somebody who is honest all the time, and this is a process I'm trying to learn.
I don't think you should feel bad if you're like, oh, well, I haven't necessarily been the most honest person. I've led people on. I've liked the company. So instead of being like, hey, I'm not into you, I kind of dragged it along or whatever. That's okay. It's okay. What you did in the past, you can't change.
What you can focus on is right now what you have and how you're interacting with problems right now in your life. Are you still letting other people have more say over your existence on this planet than yourself? Are you still allowing the part of you that is like beating yourself up for being a loser or failing at life to have that weight?
Or are you doing something actively to counteract that and you're being like, I'm not listening to that. I am going in on the things that I like.
I'm going to focus on writing instead of staring at a screen, comparing myself to other people or better yet, like I'm going to focus on reading instead of filling my brain with worthless information because I'm trying to escape from the fact that I want to read. It's the loop, right? Honesty hurts. It has always hurt.
And what you will find also with honesty is the more honest you are, the more respect people give you. Real talk. The more honest and upfront you are, although you might come off as rude and a D-I-C-K, right? Like people that are also honest recognize that. There was a person in my life. And I've had this happen a few times where I met, I meet them and they're very blunt and they're very honest.
Right. And immediately something about that ticks me off, makes me go, what the heck is wrong with them? Like have a little respect.
but now reflecting on it right them being honest to me and saying hey man i i think you're slacking a lot or telling me hey i don't think you right like i've had roommates in the past that i used to get pissed off on because they they would tell me why what like why isn't you know the bathroom clean and i'd be like bro chill like it's it's been like a month like give me some time but in reflecting in it and actually taking it to heart i realized wait a minute like
They were low-key right. And I low-key respect the fact that they were able to call it out. It's another thing. People would rather bite their tongue and not be honest and live in this kind of delululand. Oh, well, if I had told them, I would have known. No, you don't.
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Chapter 8: How can we learn from past mistakes in our relationships?
You have no idea. You never did tell them. So you cannot live in that delusion that like, well, they would have rejected me or I would have known. No, you weren't honest. When you had a crush on them, you didn't tell them. When you had an opportunity lined up, you didn't take it. You didn't follow up. You weren't honest.
The reason that you are in the place that you are in right now, although some circumstances that had nothing to do with you happened and life happened to you. It was about how you reacted to them. It was about the cards that you were dealt and how you handled them.
And there is a level of accountability, I think, that when you are honest with yourself, you reach where you can recognize two things to be true. You can recognize that there are some things that might be systematic, that might be totally out of your control, right? That just happened and that you are experiencing and a lot of people are experiencing. And also...
There are parts where you gave up. Sure, it might be harder to find a date now, but you know that you also kind of didn't take those signals that somebody was giving you that you liked because you were scared. You were scared of yourself. You had fear. You had doubts, whatever. Still, we got to acknowledge that. We got to say, all right, we made that mistake. Let's be honest. The truth hurts.
I fumbled it. Okay, let's go. Let's move forward. What can we learn from that? That we have to be more truthful. In our interactions with people, in our interactions with ourself, we have to recognize that power lies in honesty. And we also have to recognize we might lose somebody. We might lose some thing. But honesty in the long run will get rid of the eternal suffering of regret.
I promise you that. There are opportunities that you might be given, right? You might get an admittance to an Ivy League school and that's been like your parents' dream. They've always wanted you to go to an Ivy League school. And you might have to be honest and reject it. Because you know if you go to that school, you're gonna be miserable.
Although it'd be kinda cool to have like a Yale sweatshirt. You're gonna be miserable, bro, right? You have to trust that your truth sets you free. And that your truth is one that people that are meant to respect it will respect it. And that might not be your parents. That might not be your partner. That might not be your best friend that really is just a friend you've had since childhood.
It might not be that. In adulthood... You have to be honest. People that aren't honest, you sniff them out, man. Like those dogs at the airport.
Jeez, I always get scared when I walk by him because I don't even have anything on me. But I'm like, bro, if they stop me and they find something and he just like sniffs, you know, I don't know, remnants of another dog.
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