Few years ago while I was still a student hungry for the self-improvement I had the luck to discover Jordan Peterson and his work. His book “12 rules for life” helped me to crystallize the image of a man I want to be, and it encouraged me to invest more of my free time in reading books of a similar type. Rules in the book were really simple at the first glance, but Jordan did the great work in expanding the meaning and reasoning behind them, one rule really resonated with me, that was the rule 8:
Tell The Truth – Or At Least Don’t Lie.
First thing that you might notice is really convenient addition of "or at least don’t lie" that enables you to plead the fifth or just weasel out of uncomfortable situations by using half-truths as a substitute for lies. "Tell the truth" is what I will be selling you in this article because it is short and simple rule to implement and yet it gives enormous results in short time. Here are my two main selling points:
It will significantly increase your self-esteem
It will save you a lot of time (most precious asset that you have)
To make yourself stronger you first need to realize how weak you really are, think about that treacherous feeling in your gut while you give false impression of compliance to a groupthink, saying yes when you want to say no, telling your boss all that crap that he wants to hear instead of what he should hear, lying to temporarily avoid consequences you are afraid of... Weakness is the strongest motive behind all those lies accompanied by shame and paid by your time and self-esteem. Sometimes it is not so simple to identify this weakness, often your mind will form some rationalization as a fig leaf on why it is better that you did what you did as it is easier than admitting how pathetic you really are.
Once you become aware of this it becomes hard to ignore it, when you look at lies as a pathetic characteristic of a weak man you start to despise them. That feeling of despise although not virtuous was a great motivator for me and you really need that because telling truth is not always an easy thing to do. Some situations that you could solve with a simple lie are now complicated, worst thing for me was to say "no" to people because I knew that next question will be "why not" and than I will have to say what I really think. In one such situation I told my boss that I will not go to one convention (that boss was shilling for weeks) and on question "why not" I told that I am not interested and I see it as a time-wasting event. The problem here was real possibility of consequences for honest opinion, but I knew that I was right. I was on that convention in the past and I couldn't justify spending two days on it when in that same time you can learn much more about same topics online. The thing is telling truth might be hard, but it is never wrong and you will never make mistake by doing so. The stronger the consequences that you risk by telling the truth the more self-esteem you get as a reword and whatever happens you can look yourself in the mirror knowing that you did the right thing. By doing this you are forced to defend your word and stick up for yourself, every win in this "battle" is the food for your self-esteem.
Peterson sums this up in one of his talks:
If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then you will find yourself doing terrible things.
Another great benefit of telling the truth is that it saves everyone’s time. Time you spend on making your lies consistent, remembering things that didn't happen, doing stuff that you didn't want to do and so on, all that time will be your free time. Take, for example, people that engage in catfishing, how much of their and victims time they waste just to face inevitable truth in the end. Other great example are people that use "maybe" as substitute for "no" when invited on some event, it gives you enough hope to reserve time for them just to get some flimsy explanation on why they "cant come" in the last minute. They use that tactic because it is easier than saying "no" to a friend, motive behind it is not malicious it is just weakens. As the bible says:
Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Anything more comes from the evil one.
Gradually you will become increasingly comfortable with the truth. Your actions will be less aligned with desire to win approval of others, that might result in loss of some "friends" but it will straighten the relationship with your real friends, no more time wasted on people that do not deserve it. You will become a relevant person, and people will see value and authenticity in things that you have to say. This will all reflect on the image that you have about yourself and you will become happier person in the end. The truth will literally set you free.
"To make yourself stronger you first need to realize how weak you really are, think about that treacherous feeling in your gut while you give false impression of compliance to a groupthink, saying yes when you want to say no, telling your boss all that crap that he wants to hear instead of what he should hear, lying to temporarily avoid consequences you are afraid of... Weakness is the strongest motive behind all those lies accompanied by shame and paid by your time and self-esteem. Sometimes it is not so simple to identify this weakness, often your mind will form some rationalization as a fig leaf on why it is better that you did what you did as it is easier than admitting how pathetic you really are." absolutely brilliant!
I fully agree with you. The only thing I lied about was my exam scores, 'cause my father expected me to have all straight As 😁, but even that felt like a self-betrayal. You're a nobleman, I'm so glad to read your articles.
@wakeupkitty, check this out.