Honesty

[angussdundee]

I came across this to-day whilst taking a step 10.... :-[

"No one can be perfectly honest all of the time. Honesty is the absence of intention to deceive - but sometimes we deceive ourselves or others about our feelings or intentions without realizing that its out of a desire to please.
We can forgive ourselves for that. But we can also learn to be smarter about evaluating ourselves, others, and situations so we can avoid unintentional deception in the future".

Sound familiar.... ;)

Anguss.

[samf]

Anguss, early on, the person who 12-stepped me used to tell me, before I'd share, "Just speak your truth."

So I would.

I remember standing outside with home group members, sometimes, afterward, and telling them, "Do you ever get through sharing and think to yourself, "I am just so full of ____!"?" They said that they did, too.

I remember, too, where it spoke of people who didn't have the capacity to be honest, and I thought, "Oh, that's me."

Then without my saying anything, this guy came up after the meeting and said that he had thought that very thing...said almost the words I had thought, and that his sponsor had come up and said to him, "If you think you don't have the capacity to be honest, then, you do."

I remember thinking, "****!!"

For me, honestly is a process, and I learn. Sometimes I don't always know, until I hear myself or go through an experience.

Sam

[angussdundee]

One of my early sponsors always emphasized to me that 'we must be hard on ourselves yet gentle on others when it comes to coming clean and being honest'.
Honesty to the point of hurting others is as wrong as lying. He would say, "so called brutal honesty is more brutal than honest" as the motivation behind it is often more towards being hurtful than actually trying to get at the truth itself.
Telling the truth was definitely hard for me in early sobriety (and still can be :-[) simply because I wasn't used to it. But in the long run it is much easier than lying - to myself or others. For one, I don't have to keep tabs on what I've said to who, and I become released from worrying about being 'caught out' from the guilt of knowingly mis-leading anyone. And release from that type of worry is being released from the bondage of self - to be in a position to better do Gods will.
When I lie to others I lose their trust, but I also lose their help. And without trust and help the world becomes a very lonely place indeed... I speak from experience....


Anguss.

[sobergirl17]

When it comes to honesty I believe that as human beings we are not capable of doing anything perfectly including being honest all of the time. I learned this through doing a fifth step once and realizing that I had lies of omission. Its not always what we do say......it can also be what we dont.

[WolfM]

One of my character defects is not lying, but not telling the whole truth to avoid conflict. I think I know what you are talking about. I also know when I am sharing or telling a story, when I am beginning to embellish the tale and have to pull myself back from telling more than the truth.
thanks for the topic

Wolf M