Honesty starts with yourself

I wanted to share something that I feel is important to me. I feel that if you want to accomplish anything in life, you need to be honest more than most people are, and most of all, honest to yourself. If you can’t even be honest with yourself about what you’re good at, not good at, what your motivations are, and what drives you, I don’t see how you’ll ever do much of anything that matters.

We’ve all heard that anything worth doing is hard. We’ve also seen plenty of people not do hard things, or give up easily. Normally these people make up excuses for why they couldn’t or didn’t do something. I can fully appreciate that you can’t do everything, and I can fully appreciate why people would choose not to do something hard. What I don’t appreciate are excuses.

Next time you decide not to do something, give something a try: Drop the excuses. Tell yourself “I didn’t want to do that” or “I don’t feel that was worth the effort”, or even “I have more important things to do with my time”. Don’t tell yourself “I can’t do that” or “someone else is stopping me from doing that” or “I don’t have enough money” (or are not smart enough, not well connected enough, etc). These are all excuses you need to rid from your life. If other people are confused by your honesty, just tell them “That’s hard and I’m lazy”. People seem to understand that language.

It may be difficult to swallow your pride like that, but it’s important. Because some day, something will come along that is hard, that you *will* want to do, that you *do* want to put the effort in on. If you’ve told yourself and everyone else your whole life “I can’t do that, because X”, when that important thing comes along, you’ll believe it. You’ll think “I couldn’t do any of these other things, why is this different?”

If you take a different approach: “I can do any one thing I want to do, but I can’t do every single thing people ask me to do”, then when something important comes along, you’ll be ready. Train yourself to say “I could do that, and the only reason I don’t is that it’s not important enough to put in the time and effort”. That’s the one excuse that I allow you to have. Then, when something that is worth the time and effort comes along, you’ll have lost your one excuse and be ready to begin.

Anything is possible if you work hard enough. What is important is only working hard on the things that are worth the effort, and not giving up when you find that thing worth doing. If you are honest with yourself, you will be prepared when you find it.