Maybe the best thing you could give up in 2023?
When we think about habits or behaviors to change in the new year for better health and wellness, I think there’s something that often gets overlooked.
Being dishonest.
There are a multitude of ways that we are often less than honest with ourselves and others. In our experience with leaders engaging with our simulation during intensives, we usually don’t even realize the pure number of times we are dishonest. Perhaps we say we’re “excited” when we’re actually feeling tension or anxiety. Or we say, “I can see how much everyone here cares about kids,” when no one has said anything about kids. Often it’s dishonesty by omission because we are not saying what we are actually thinking and feeling.
We’re wired and conditioned to see the short-term gain from lying to ourselves and others. Our egos often focus on the risks of being honest. Usually, when we invite leaders to see what it feels like to be fully honest, we see their initial, adverse reactions and we hear things like:
I don’t want to hurt that person’s feelings
I don’t want to lose my job
I would never say that - that’s just not me
Maybe a white male could say that, but I can’t say that
And all of those are beyond valid thoughts and fears. Probably 99% of the time they’re persuasive enough to steer us away from our most honest place.
Unfortunately, the consequences of that are also very real. Dr. Anita Kelly, a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, is one of several people that have done extensive research on the actual wellness and physical health impact of not being honest, and the results are striking. When people in control groups focused on being honest for even a few weeks, they experienced fewer mental health complaints, like being tense or feeling melancholy. Counterintuitively, they experienced improvements in relationships and social interactions. But maybe most surprising: they experienced dramatically fewer physical complaints, like headaches and sore throats.
Why? Every time we tell even a small lie it creates an alternative reality that we have to maintain. We’ve created a performance that we’re expected to give. Our bodies and hearts might be feeling tension, sadness, fear, or anger, but when we choose to project outward approval, neutrality, or “politeness” - we’re essentially trapping those real emotions and sensations in our bodies, and they have to go somewhere – whether they get stored away in your racing mind, ready to re-emerge at 3:00 a.m. when you could be sleeping, or tucked away into the chronic tension held in your lower back – the physical consequences are real, and build over time. So the consequences of being honest may be real and hard to ignore, but the consequences of NOT being honest are also real and much easier to ignore.
The opposite is also true. When we give voice to what we’re actually feeling – even if it’s hurt or frustration – there’s often an immediate feeling of calm or relief. We’ve aligned our bodies, hearts, and actions. We don’t need to resolve the thing that was causing the hurt in that moment, just giving voice to it created an important positive impact. And the words we hear leaders use to describe what it feels like to be fully honest? Freeing. Liberating. Even healing.
There are likely areas of your life where you will still feel compelled to be less than fully honest, but just like exercise, every bit helps. Be more honest with yourself and others where you can. And if, like myself, your identity markers might make the prospect of being honest feel a little safer in some settings, you may have an opportunity to take more risks and create an environment where others might also feel it’s safe enough to be true to their hearts.
