How honest can you be?

How honest can you be?

This is a fun question I often hear.

Usually, the person asking already has a specific situation in mind where they really don’t want to be honest. So they want external justification. Or, if reporters ask this for magazines, they often have their editor breathing down their neck, wanting to keep their own dishonesty loophole open.

Well, how honest can you be?

Here’s a straight & simple answer:

There is no pre-set limit to how honest you can be. 

The more powerful question is: How honest do you want to be?

Just as there is no limit to how much you can pretend, withhold, and suppress, the same is true for the other direction as well. There is no inherent situation where you can’t be honest. Only choices.

Let’s elaborate on that for a while. 

Hiding behind rules

Usually, when we ask for a general rule about honesty, there is this specific thing we carry around and are scared of sharing. Or one situation where honesty difficult. And that’s okay. We don’t have to share, but let’s own that we are scared, not give away our power by hiding behind general ideas.

Saying things like:

“I am scared to be honest with (blank)” or

“I will not be honest” or

“I do not want to go there now”

is way more powerful than creating imaginary honesty limits, approved by your local honesty authority. At least you take back agency and admit to what’s really going on.

And that’s a more powerful place to be and gives you agency.

Your own fear is the limit of your honesty

My friend Christoph once put this very simply:

Your personal fear is the limit of how honest you can be.

Fear of what? Being out of control. Being with a lot of physical sensations. Thoughts.

And that’s okay. It’s fine to be scared.

That’s already an honest thing to acknowledge. It puts you back in the driver’s seat.

Maybe you are not willing yet to experience the consequences of being honest.

Good. You don’t have to.

Or maybe the situation is just a little too far out for you at the moment.

I do think that some difficult or “high-stake” situations might be better with more

• grounding in your body

• reference experience with “smaller situations”

• support from friends, trainers, or therapists

• skills in actually being honest

• tolerance towards strong emotional charge in your body

If we go into situations that are way over our head, we might get discouraged or worse.

But let’s not hide behind imaginary rulebooks or generalised ideas.

You can be as honest as you are willing to experience whatever might happen.

Honesty means to share yourself more

Of course, that’s no free pass for being an asshole.

The work goes deeper than blurting out surface thoughts and judgments about other people.

It’s never a strategy for getting what you want.

Or controlling the world around you. 

It’s a vulnerable act of opening up and showing yourself more.

You say more of the stuff that goes on underneath the surface: some of your true feelings, secret intentions, actual desires, and things you usually hide. You allow people to really see you, to peek behind the curtains of your social mask and performance. 

Radical Honesty really is a developmental journey back towards your core.

That takes time and practice.