Being honest includes being truthful with yourself with regards to your personal strengths and weaknesses. An honest person has the courage to acknowledge his shortcomings and faults, and accepts himself as he is and not as he wishes. He admits the truth of his being even if the truth is unpleasant. An honest personal evaluation followed by all-out efforts in personal improvement goes a long way towards boosting one’s relationship prospects.
When interacting with other people, it is your full commitment to complete honesty and integrity that builds lasting mutual trust. You ensure that any gains you receive are obtained with absolute honesty. Any attempt to do otherwise means you employ unethical means to get what you want, and this can only end in total ignominious failure. Your commitment requires you to do your honest best in every situation, especially when people regard you as trustworthy.
Once self-evaluation identifies objectively the weak areas, the next step is to work hard on correcting them. Be exactly the kind of person you aim to attract. If you desire to attract a person of moral integrity, you must become a moral person with integrity yourself. You are most unlikely to attract someone into your life who is in sharp contrast to the person you are inside you.
The practice of honesty and integrity means you stay entirely truthful at all time and wherever you happen to be. You do not enter business partnerships that are dishonest or immoral or personal relationships that you feel is not right for you. You do not say or do things that are not honest or against your principles. You express only what you believe are true. You rightly insist on the truth from others.
When you stay consistently true to your principles, you reap the reward of your own peace of mind. You experience peace of mind when you discipline yourself to remain perfectly honest with yourself and others. Do not waver in your determination to be honest. By being honest, you build trust which attracts people who want to cooperate and enter relationships with you. What more can you ask for?
Anything that we do again and again easily becomes a habit. We learn by doing, so by practising honesty constantly we acquire the trait sooner or later. Likewise, if we practise dishonesty, we soon become adept at it. It is merely a process of constant practice. But how many people want to develop the value of honesty in a corrupt environment? In such an environment, even the honest residents become cheats and thieves.
Strong self-discipline is certainly required to attain the admirable level of absolute honesty. With self-discipline and self-determination, it is not impossible. Do it and be labeled as trustworthy by everyone who knows you or at least build an enviable reputation to that effect. When you are truly honest, people feel entirely safe to rely on you. They view you as a person of reliability, someone who can be relied on to keep all the commitments you make. In business when you are paid for your products, the topmost question you want to ask yourself is whether you have overcharged.
You have to be extremely frank in expressing your opinions without fear or favour. Some people choose to be tactful rather than truthful. They avoid telling the truth as the truth hurts or is too painful to be told.
There are times when an honest man fails to acquire wealth while a known dishonest man prospers. It appears that honesty does not pay, and some people may be tempted to employ unethical means to make their acquisitions. The contention here is that the dishonest man should not prosper given his dishonesty, and the honest man should prosper as he is honest. This is based on the assumption that the dishonest man is thoroughly corrupt, and the honest man has high moral standards. If we gain an accurate and deep understanding of this whole thing, we are likely to uncover some qualities the dishonest man possesses that are conducive to prosperity, and the honest man has negative qualities that are detrimental to his pursuit of wealth.
As long as you maintain your honesty, you are admired for your personal strength and good character. However, tell a little lie, which to you is a harmless one, and you lose your credibility and so the trust of others. People have different perceptions, so exercise complete discretion when you have to tell a lie. Honesty is not just about telling the truth, it is about being transparent, especially when you are holding a public office. Your actions are open to public scrutiny. Withholding information, instead of full disclosure, from the public is very likely to work to your disadvantage. Honesty is also about accountability. It concerns the actions you take and the decisions you make, especially while occupying a responsible position in an organization, business or politics. You are required or expected to justify your actions or decisions.
There may be times when we are forced by circumstances to be dishonest. When we can help it, we prefer to be honest. But for those who consciously choose to be dishonest, it is a different game. They perpetrate their deceptive act or deceit until they are eventually exposed as a liar and a cheat. There is indeed no substitute for honesty. You can get away with dishonesty but only for a temporary period. You suffer an irreversible loss of reputation, and you may even lose your freedom once you are uncovered.
We owe it to those who place their trust and confide in us to not disappoint them by violating their faith and confidence in us. Their belief in our honesty and reliability takes more than quite a while to develop. A minor breach of trust on our part can easily destroy our relationship in an instant. Honesty not only makes us more trustworthy but more likable as well. We cannot hide our honesty, nor do we want to hide it. We need not brag or shout around that we have it. It is there in us and it shows in our attitude and actions. Our actions, though not our words, portray the kind of persons we are, and are proof that we have it.
Complete honesty is a rare personality trait and is very much in demand. It is highly advantageous to practise it habitually. We respect ourselves more when we do it and we gain the respect of others. In spite of that, some people lie so easily that they know not what the truth is anymore, while some others lie due to much internal conflict when the truth serves them better.
The problem with lying is that we have to remember our lies. Deliberate lying is cruel and comes in various forms: we flatter knowing very well our words are not true, we intentionally omit facts or give half-truths, we provide incomplete facts or insufficient information or we exaggerate so that we represent something as being larger, better, or worse than it really is. We can tell the greatest lie on earth too by remaining silent.
...
