How To Be Open And Honest

This is my small guidebook that answers the question how to be open and honest. Of course it won’t be able to be as comprehensive as it could but I hope it will be of some help to anybody who is interested. It’s very difficult to pin point the exact actions that define honesty, or to what extent honesty should be always telling the truth and not omitting some aspects of the truth in order for people not to get hurt. On the other hand being open isn’t such a hard thing to learn; but not so many people actually want to be open, because it can turn out to be pretty rough. So, let’s see what the defining characteristics of being honest and open are, shall we:

· Tell the truth. This is pretty strait forward, but strangely enough, not one of us can look in the mirror at the end of the day and say that they didn’t lie at all that day. Telling the truth is a very hard thing to do, and many times it seems that it can’t do any good, on the contrary. Still, there are definitely long term benefits of telling the truth, simply because sometimes you just can’t remember what lie you used, and that will get you into more trouble. On the other hand there are certain situations when telling the truth will do absolutely no good, and just end up hurting people’s feelings. For example, if your mother asks how do you like the soup that she spent all day preparing for you? You just can’t say you don’t like it even if you prefer to eat cod liver oil.

· Talk about yourself. You will never be open unless you learn to talk about yourself. Don’t think that it doesn’t matter what you did, or that it’s not interesting, just talk about the things you did that day. The more you talk about yourself the easier people will get to know you. It isn’t even important what you talk about. It’s just important, in order to be open, to let people see that you can communicate about absolutely anything.

· Don’t be afraid to express your opinion about anything. Another very important lesson to learn if you are wondering how to be open and honest is to let people know how you feel about any subject. Always express your opinion, no matter how stupid you think it would seem. Your opinion matters, and in a way your thoughts about a specific subject define little part of who you are. So always express your opinions, and you will be more open.

· Always do what you say you are going to do. This for me is the most important aspect of honesty. Words mean very little if they are not accompanied by actions. If you are trying to find out how to be open and honest this is one of the most important lessons you will have to learn.

· Don’t have secrets. Secrets have a tendency to boil up inside you. Its better that you don’t have them at all. If you do you will unwillingly become much more reserved when it comes to communicating with other people. If you don’t have secrets you have nothing to hide, and therefore you can afford to be much more open.

· Don’t worry about what everybody else thinks of you. If you do you will never be able to express your true thoughts about anything, and you will assure that you will never become an open person. There is absolutely no point in being afraid about what people think of you because it will only build up frustrations inside you. Be yourself, no matter what the context is and you will do fine.

· Never hide your true feelings. Whenever you have anything to hide it will show in one way or another, and people will pick up on that and will never fully trust you. So, you should never try to disguise your feelings if you are trying to be more open and honest.

So these were just a few advices, I picked up and learned the hard way. Of course you are the only one who knows which of them apply to you and which don’t. I think that learning how to be open and honest should be a priority for everybody. You should never hide your true feelings, thoughts and opinions about anything; because that’s the only way you can ensure the fact that nobody will ever trust you fully. People will appreciate your honesty no matter the context, even if it sometimes seems to hurt people’s feelings. In the long run, honesty is the only way to go, if you are looking for a stress free life.

How To Be Open And Honest

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