I read about radical honesty a few years ago in Esquire and it sounded interesting but impractical. In fact, it sounded a bit too extreme to me. Rather than being honest, it sounded deliberately offensive, as though someone forgot the line between inner thoughts and outer speech. I’m a great believer in honesty as you can see from previous posts, but I’m also a big fan of not insulting the people around for absolutely no reason. So while I thought the idea was interesting, I put it away as something unsuitable for my life.
I think I’ve come to a point where experimenting with this kind of honesty is not only called for, it’s past due. So, for the next month (October, 2010), I’m going to experiment with what it means to be totally honest. To not lie, even little while lies, at all. We’ll see if I still have a job and a life after this
Why?
Why not is a better question but I’ll give you at least one specific. Last night I caught myself in a little lie. It wasn’t anything big, it was just one of those little things we tell the people around us because we don’t want to hurt them. Well, that little lie exploded into something big and stupid and hurtful. So maybe there is something to this radical honesty. Maybe even the little things matter when we’re talking about lying. Who knows, maybe I’ll learn something from this experiment and maybe I won’t. At the very least you can be sure I’ll give you my honest opinion on it.
###
Thank you to The Skilled Investor for including my sunk costs post in their latest financial planning carnival.
[...] you can see, that honesty experiment is working really well for [...]