It sounds obvious and simple, but I can tell you right now. Real, straight forward, unhinged honesty is one of the hardest and scariest things you will ever attempt in your whole life. Telling someone how you really feel, about anything, is nerve wrecking. You’re thinking about how this is going to affect your relationship (friendship or otherwise) with this person. Are you going to get in trouble? Is your friend going to get in trouble? What is everyone else who is there going to think of you? Countless amounts of questions that zip through your mind at lightning speed. All your brain really needs is one, just one excuse so it can tell a white lie or withhold some of the truth. I can tell you from experience, that not telling the truth to spare someone’s feelings will only cause you more trouble in the long run. The truth almost always finds a way out. It’s like water under pressure. No matter how small the crack, the water finds a way.
There are two main hurdles that you will have to overcome when beginning the path to a philosophy of honesty, or as Depeche Mode would call it a “policy of truth”. The first is being honest with yourself. Many times, you will be dishonest without even really thinking about it. This is because you have already internally justified what you are saying. A friend of mine had a good response when I tried telling him something and he knew I wasn’t being 100% with him. He said “look man if you want to lie to me that’s fine, just don’t lie to yourself”. It was a quote that hit me hard. I had never really encountered someone who put it so simply what was going on. Being dishonest with myself wasn’t hurting him. It was hurting me. We tend to get preoccupied about how we don’t like it when our friends and family aren’t truthful to us. When in fact unless the lie has had a huge impact on your person, the correct reaction indeed is to look your friend in the face and say “who are you trying to convince here?”. Only when you are at peace with what you believe internally, will you have jumped the first big hurdle.
The second big hurdle is coming to grips with other people’s opinions of you. This is just as hard if not harder than the first hurdle. We humans are social creatures. We like it when people like us. We want to belong. We want to be part of a group. That’s why we’ll say we like that one band a group likes even though we don’t really like it. It’s why we’ll go out with a group to a specific event that we’re not that interested in. We want to be accepted. We want to be liked. We want to be popular. I know. I’ve been there. There is no faster way to unhappiness then trying to please everyone. You will eventually find yourself caught in between a rock and a hard place because you tried to be everything to everyone. You can’t. Not only is it not possible. It’s not healthy. It’s also not very ethical.
People who mutually respect each other don’t lie to each other. If you have been honest with someone and you feel they haven’t been honest with you, find out why. If they are still being dishonest, then you may have to make a decision on how close you want to be with this person. When someone asks you a question, you answer it. You say how you feel about it. If there is something in the answer that you can’t say because it’s extremely personal to you or you promised someone else to keep something in confidence, you say so. Anyone who pushes you beyond that is an asshole, and it’s ok to call them out on that. While it may be respectful to not outright lie to someone, no one has a right to the information you hold in your head.
NGS thrives in an environment of dishonesty, both internal and external. Someone with NGS is too afraid to tell the truth because he or she is too afraid of the consequences. Too afraid that by being honest they will potentially lose out on the reward they so desperately covet. There are times where you are going to lose. You are going to fail. It’s not a question of if. It’s a question of when. It’s ok. You will be better off in the long run. You will have more people who will respect you. That girl you like wants to be friends but you don’t want a friendship? Say so. It’s ok. She’ll move on. You’ll move on. That’s life. If on the other hand you lie and say “sure let’s be friends” when you really don’t want that, you have already spoiled the friendship. You’ll complain about being friendzoned and slowly but surely the friendship will deteriorate until you both simply grow apart from each other or have a full-on fight where you both will say things you will regret later. Speaking of friendzone, this discussion on honesty gives us a nice segue into the next topic.