The virtue of universal honesty

How honesty brings good

What if everyone was honest all the time? What if you could be sure no one was lying and trying to hide something from you?

What does it mean to be honest?

To me, honesty is acting, speaking, and thinking according to your beliefs. Telling what you think the closest to your beliefs.

As an example, I deeply believe that you shouldn’t change your thinking based on the person you’re talking to. I hate it when people say “mean” things behind others.

What’s preventing us from being honest?

Humankind is known to be social. We built this strong society through co-working, team-building, and hierarchy.

Being truthful often means hurting someone with something that is known to hurt but is important to both. If you hide the truth or are not honest, then you lie because you think it’ll hurt more than doing good. But that’s lying to yourself. Either because you’re keeping something that’s not good for you, or because you’re keeping something to prevent yourself (and only yourself) from being embarrassed.

What are the benefits of being honest/truthful?

After reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (which I recommend reading), I realized something.

Many successful entrepreneurs are extremely/brutally honest, and we feel like it is in some sense due to their Asperger's syndrome or introverted personality.

This is the case because most of us are not willing to take the risk of being honest with our peers. Entrepreneurs are risk takers. They don’t fear breaking things or failing as much as others do.

I know it is hard, it hurts… but gosh! that is valuable. It is a win-win strategy. Because lying or hiding the truth makes life harder in the long term.

With my partner, we have built a strong relationship by being honest and as truthful as possible. Like all couples, we clash sometimes due to this honesty but that’s what makes our relationship stronger and stronger.