{transcript}
We’re gonna talk about honesty.
This is probably the single most powerful thing that I will ever talk about. I’ll come back to it over and over again.
I want to talk to you guys about making your own lives better. The steps that you can take instantly to make life better for yourself, for the people you love, for the people in your world, and – most importantly – to make the whole world a better place.
And that starts with a commitment to honesty.
You’ll be shocked when you begin to pay attention to yourself how much of your speech is not honest. I’m going to take it beyond that. It’s more than just merely saying what’s true. It’s making sure that the messages that you communicate to the people in your life and to the world at large are not deceptive.
There’s a lot of folks who like to take a very narrow view, a narrow definition of honesty.
They’ll say that honesty is something as simple as not saying something that’s not true. Or not saying anything that’s a lie.
But frankly, honesty is much more profound, much deeper, and much broader than merely not saying things that aren’t true.
Honesty is about making sure that the way you communicate to the world – both with what you say and what you don’t say, with what you do and what you don’t do – that in no way are you deceiving those who receive your message.
Pay attention to yourself, guys. Are you deceiving the loved ones in your life? Are you deceiving the people who you work with? Are you deceiving the people that you interact with?
Through words or lack of words?
Through actions or lack of actions?
What is the message that you are intending to deliver to the people?
What message are you communicating – in both your words and in your actions or your lack of words and your lack of actions?
If you will make this commitment to utter and complete honesty, to total truth, to no lying, to no deception – you’ll learn a couple of things.
Number one: you’ll find out that you are not nearly as honest as you thought you were.
Now how do I know this is true? Because I’ve been through it myself.
(I’ll probably tell you about that pretty soon: how I learned that I was not nearly the honest person that I perceived myself to be.)
The second thing you’ll learn is that being deceptive makes you weak. As you begin to rid yourself of all forms of deception, all forms of lying, and all forms of dishonesty, you will feel yourself growing stronger. More substantial. You will add “moral mass” to yourself.
You will become a man to be reckoned with.
You have to practice this over and over.
When you make this commitment to total honesty, to total 100% transparency in how you communicate to the whole world, you’ll find yourself also growing stronger.
This is the moral equivalent of deadlifting or squatting.
When you are confronted with a situation where you have habitually engaged in deceptive words or behaviors – or lack of words or lack of behavior – you will find it’s like the first time you stand up underneath that bar with an intimidating amount of weight on it.
You’re gonna want to chicken out.
Don’t do it.
Be honest.
Tell the truth.
Be transparent.
Do not lie.