A guide to honesty E-Book

Martin Bolt

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 51

Beschreibung

Honesty makes the world go round and is the basis for sucessful and long lasting relationships, both in private and in business. There is hardly anything more enjoyable than dealing with a person who does what he says and says what he does. The benefits are evident and countless. No second guessing, no waste of time and resources, no unpleasant surprises and no lies or deceipt. This little text than simply tries to provide tools for the individual to find one of many ways, to become and to stay honest and in the process also be able to spot dishonesty. How this might be a good thing is a question, everybody has to find an answer to for her- or himself.

Leseprobe

A debate can be initiated as to whether the subject of honesty is a pure character trade, has to do with morals and ethics, or can be contributed to various states of mind and thus should be viewed and treated as coming from the psychological side of things.

All I can say is that honesty seems to be a pretty hot commodity.

People I have met throughout my life have been rather forthcoming on this subject.

People I talked to seem to value honesty pretty high.

I assume a lot of other people made the same observation or can reference similar experiences with their family, friends, or colleagues.

I wondered a great deal about honesty. It always intrigued me, made me think.

Let’s define what honesty is, for starters.

Concise Oxford Dictionary says:

“1. Free of deceit, truthful, and sincere.”

It comes as no surprise that the word ‘honesty’ is stemmed from the Latin word ‘honestas’, which means honour.

It is then fair to say that being honest has to do with honour, respect, and such.

So just to clarify right at the beginning, some select few often try to grab onto anything they can find to pick anything apart if they don’t like something. I mean, these people are going to do that anyway, no matter what anybody says, does, or proves. If something doesn’t align with their view of the world or a subject, they dismiss it, and there is nothing you can do about it. You can try, but it will normally exhaust your willingness to deal with such people pretty fast.

But that put aside, being free of deceit, being truthful and sincere, that I think is pretty simple, isn’t it? I mean, we can lament, discuss, pick apart meanings and definitions, and you probably could, but I will make it easier for you. I will add something to that definition:

Being free of deceit as far as one knows. That is the little factor many people forget and sometimes can’t wrap their minds around.

Being honest means that you must know when you are being dishonest.

So there is a factor here which comes into play that, in my opinion, is very important in all this honesty talk, because sometimes you hear stories from people which at first sight are pretty unbelievable. Your immediate impulse is to dismiss this as dishonesty or fantasy, or to put it more bluntly, as a lie. But you are not in this person’s mind. His reality might differ from yours to a great degree.

A good example would be a young child who tells you that she ran 100 miles today. You know that this isn’t true and can’t be true because this kid just came from school, which is five miles away. So, where is that coming from? Well, the kid is confused about what miles are; that is all there is to it. In the kid’s mind, she didn’t tell a lie and was not dishonest because, for her, the distance between her house and the school is 100 miles; that is her state of mind when she said it. There was no intention of deceit, dishonesty, or lying. In her mind, she walked 100 miles because of whatever she learned from somebody or heard somewhere; now, the five-mile hike to her school in her mind is 100 miles.

We as adults dismiss such foolishness pretty easily, because we know that we know better. But the child wasn’t dishonest even though, factually, she told a lie. It’s not 100 miles to school, whichever way you may slice it.

In this case, experience has told us, that kids, when they are young and just discover the language and play with it and combine that learning experience with their surroundings and their relationships to their friends and family, come up with amazing stuff. We laugh at it because we know, pretty soon, she will know better.

When an adult tells you the same story, you immediately dismiss him as crazy or a straight-up liar.

Imagine your husband comes home from the parent-teacher meeting from the same school and tells you that he just walked 100 miles. You would be baffled. What the heck is he talking about? Let me look into his eyes for just a second here. Is he drunk, delusional? Did he hit his head? Are there any signs of trauma? Is he playing some kind of game that I don’t know about yet? Is this a joke? Is he trying to tell me that he will never again attend meetings like this?

These are easy examples, clear-cut, and simple. If anybody ever dealt with kids at a young age, they know that they can say the most outrageous, crazy things, and we don’t give it a second thought. We laugh, wonder, are amused, and that would be the end of that.

When we deal with adults, however, that becomes a completely different story.

Why?

Because adults know better or to be more specific and exact, they know better as far as they know.

It’s all about that factor. Being free of deceit, and being truthful and sincere because you know. And if you know and still say something different than what you know, then that is dishonesty.

In other words, you know when you are being honest, and you know when you are being dishonest because you provide information that is based on your real life, not on fantasy or wishful thinking or on a reality you dreamed up.

And what about the child again? Why is the kid not dishonest since she just told you the most outrageous and unrealistic statement you could ever hear?

Well, for one, she didn’t have the experience. She didn’t know what five miles were in her case, and she had no idea what 100 miles meant. Maybe she heard her favourite cartoon character say something about 100 miles when the child clearly saw that the donkey, the monkey, the teddy bear, or whatever it is these days, only went from his house to the candy store.

But the reason is not really important for where kids get these ideas from. The point is, that young kids have not experienced what 100 miles are.