Being Honest With Yourself | GrowingSelf.com

How to Be Honest With Yourself

Being honest with yourself… is, honestly, sometimes harder than it sounds. It’s said that “the truth will set you free.” Sure, we’ve been schooled about being honest, but being honest with oneself is a different story.

Being honest with yourself requires self-awareness and even courage. It can sometimes be challenging to make contact with your truth, and even harder to take action based on that truth (as a therapist, personal growth advocate, and coach, I know this to be true for my clients time and time again). 

Honesty is a little threatening because it’s so powerful. It’s also transformational. And (again, if we’re being honest!) sometimes we’re not ready for all the changes that radical self-honesty can bring.

[When faced with radical self-honesty, we can often find ourselves needing to explore Radical Self-Acceptance. Click here for more]

When We’re NOT Being Honest With Ourselves

So what do we do instead of being honest with ourselves? We play little games with ourselves, or minimize our feelings [we may experience gaslighting from others – or even ourselves!). We might even convince ourselves of things that are absolutely NOT true, in order to make peace with non-ideal circumstances over which we feel we have little influence or control. (We might even convince ourselves we have less influence or control than we actually, honestly do).

These strategies to avoid being honest with ourselves are especially common when embracing the fullness of our power feels scary. Honesty challenges us to take action and do courageous things in service of our own health and happiness.

Honesty is hard. Honesty is elusive. It can be anxiety-provoking. It can also be exhilarating. Being honest can be quite tricky, in reality — Whether we’re being honest with ourselves, or with others. But above all else: Being self-aware, and being honest with ourselves (whether or not we choose to act on our truth!) is essential to our overall well-being, and the quality of our lives and relationships.

Because being honest with yourself is SO important (and SO challenging) I’m devoting this entire episode of the podcast to it. I have invited my colleague, Denver therapist and online life coach Josephine Marin to share her unique, compassionate insight into why being honest with ourselves is crucial for our growth (no matter how uncomfortable it could get), and some real-world, down-to-earth strategies to help you connect with your deepest truth. 

In this episode, Josephine gives us a glimpse of the process of becoming honest and self-aware so that we can live in a way that is congruent with our true selves. Furthermore, she explains why being honest with ourselves is the key to love, happiness, and freedom.

Tune in to the episode to learn more about being honest with yourself to live out your true and authentic self. (Scroll down to listen!)

Here are some of the main takeaways from today’s conversation:

What Does it Mean to ‘Be Honest with Yourself’? 

Not being honest with ourselves can be a form of protection, but it is essential to tune in to ourselves. Without self-awareness and a connection to our core truth, you can get involved in situations (jobs, relationships, and more) that are not good for you.

The worst thing is investing years or even decades of your life to something that is not truly meaningful or satisfying to your authentic self. Josephine offers some suggestions to make radical self-honesty part of your daily practice, particularly when it comes to the most important parts of your life. 

Learning how to be honest with yourself ensures that you will make choices and create a reality that is congruent with who you really are, and what you really want. 

The First Step in Being Honest with Yourself

The first step is becoming aware of how you feel is to mindfully and non-judgmentally begin observing your inner reactions to the experiences you have. Noticing how you think and feel is the foundational starting point for compiling information about yourself and your truth. Changes may happen later on, but what’s important is to develop the ability to observe how you think and feel first.

Knowing What Is True

One of the tricky things about “truth” is that it can be subjective. What is true for someone else may not be true for you, and it doesn’t have to be. It can be surprisingly easy to have our thoughts and feelings about what feels true for us tangled up with the perspectives and truths of others — especially people who are very important to you. We discuss some ways to identify what’s your truth vs. what’s someone else’s truth. 

It’s also true that your truth can change: What was true for you at one point in your life may not be true after you’ve grown and evolved. Remembering that “truth” is not a constant can help you compassionately and mindfully observe, without judgment, what feels true for you now. We discussed some tips for how to keep track of how your truth evolves over time (and how to be okay with that!)

7 Reasons Why It’s Hard To Be Honest With Yourself 

While we discussed a number of different ideas and strategies for how to be honest with yourself, we also touched on the main things that can block you from being honest with yourself:

1. Invalidating yourself and minimizing your experiences.

2. Judging or criticizing yourself for your truth.  

3. Feeling threatened or challenged by the truth can make us afraid to sit with our emotions and thoughts.

4. Feeling defensive or rejecting parts of ourselves that make us feel guilty, ashamed or uncomfortable.

5. Feeling pressured to take action on our truth, instead of being patient and thoughtful.

6. Fearing the consequences of our honesty, for ourselves and for others.

7. Fearing our own power and feeling anxious about what might happen if we trust ourselves, and our feelings about what is true for us.

We discuss ways to manage all of the above, and more, so that you can move forward fearlessly into YOUR TRUTH — whatever that may be!

5 Powerful Takeaways from This Episode

“I think about what it would look or feel like to not be honest with yourself. And to me, it seems like, kind of walking around in the world with blinders on or we’re not fully experiencing everything that life has to offer.”

“I think the witnessing that somebody’s sharing or taking an interest in you and your experience, that can just be so powerful.”

“There’s not a human being on this earth that hasn’t had some growth opportunities…. We’re asking for progress, not perfection.”

“A way of thinking about being honest with ourselves is like not doing so is a disservice to who you are, that your needs and your values deserve to be tuned into.” 

“The longer that we are dishonest with ourselves, I think the harder it is to change or to create change.” 

About Josephine

Josephine M., MS, MFTC is a marriage counselor and relationship coach who provides online therapy, life coaching, and couples counseling here at Growing Self. Josephine is passionate about helping people move forward on a path toward self-discovery and authenticity.

You can read more about Josephine in her Growing Self page. 

Enjoy This Podcast?

Learning how you could create love, happiness, and success for yourself has never been this easy. If you enjoyed today’s episode of the Love, Success, and Happiness Podcast, hit subscribe and share it with your friends!

If you’d like support from Josephine on your growth journey, schedule a free consultation.

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

PS: We often use a variety of assessments and questionnaires with our therapy and coaching clients here at Growing Self in order to help provide insight and new self-awareness about subconscious aspects of themselves. One such tool is our “What’s Holding You Back” quiz. It shines a light on different ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that may be creating issues in your life — without your even being aware of them. You’re welcome to take it too!

Sources

1. Sutton A. Measuring the Effects of Self-Awareness: Construction of the Self-Awareness Outcomes Questionnaire. Eur J Psychol. 2016 Nov 18;12(4):645-658. doi: 10.5964/ejop.v12i4.1178. PMID: 27872672; PMCID: PMC5114878. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114878/
2. Klussman K, Curtin N, Langer J, Nichols AL. The Importance of Awareness, Acceptance, and Alignment With the Self: A Framework for Understanding Self-Connection. Eur J Psychol. 2022 Feb 25;18(1):120-131. doi: 10.5964/ejop.3707. PMID: 35330854; PMCID: PMC8895697. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8895697/

Lisa Marie Bobby, PhD, LMFT, BCC( PhD, LP, LMFT, BCC )