As a health and fitness coach, I’ve seen tons of people both lose and gain weight. While people come to me for first for health advice, it usually evolves into life advice, because we develop deeper relationships with the people who help us. In so many situations, the advice follows similar patterns, and the best advice I could ever give is to be honest.
Be honest with your family, friends, coworkers, social media followers, and acquaintances. But overall, be honest with yourself. Being honest with others can only happen when you’re honest with yourself.
Most people are too scared to be honest with themselves. Let’s face it, the truth about yourself can be downright scary. It takes courage, and it’s a level of courage that most people don’t really expect of us because our society accepts less than honest behavior.
Most people shape their lives around avoiding painful realities. The alcoholic won’t admit he has a problem. The introvert avoids meeting girls because he fools himself into thinking he prefers video games. The overweight client deludes herself into thinking she doesn’t care about her health and body image.
As typical humans, it’s painful to admit when we’ve gone against our morals or values. We don’t want people to know the truth, and would rather present a perfect image of ourselves as infallible.
But who actually gets the most respect, and who creates the deepest relationships? It’s those who stick up for themselves and say “This is what I did. This is why I did it. I know that it was wrong but I want to come clean and this is the lesson I’ve learned.” They’re far more healthy and successful than those who flat out lie, and lie, and lie, and lie again.
No lie goes without repercussions, even if they’re only internal psychological repercussions. So ask yourself: is it worth it? Is it worth the immediate gratification knowing that what you did will eventually be revealed in the long run, knowing you hurt the person you lied to, and not knowing how many other people it could hurt along the way.
Lies are like the snowball effect: they start small, but you’ll have to tell another lie to cover up the first lie, then another to cover up that, and so on and so forth.
If lying has been your only way through life so far, it won’t be easy. Start with honesty today.
Dont tell one single lie, and if you do, correct yourself immediately. You may not even be aware of how many times you fib throughout the day because it’s such second nature.
Start today, and you won’t regret tomorrow. Every day you’ll feel lighter, and shed a little bit more weight off your shoulders. And you’ll find that the key to a healthy relationship is brutal honesty, no matter what.
On that note, I have to be honest about something. I’m actually not a health and fitness coach. I just thought it would be a way to establish my credibility and prove my point. Now that I’ve come clean about it, I feel a lot better about this article. I’m glad that one’s off my chest, and I hope you can learn from my example.
