How to Be More Honest With Yourself (Living Consciously and Unconventionally)

In a general sense, personal development focuses on improving the areas of your life from where you currently stand; therefore, how can you expect to consciously grow as a human being without being completely honest with yourself? The answer to that is: you can’t (at least not effectively anyway). With that being said, I highly recommend living unconventionally, which is being more honest with yourself regularly.

Being honest with yourself is unconventional because most people aren’t very honest with themselves. But can you really blame them? When you live your life in a socially conditioned atmosphere and haven’t made a conscious effort to break away from it, then you’re bound to live your life in a way that conforms to the way you think things should be, and not on your own terms. This makes for a lot of denial. Don’t believe me? Step outside and take a look around for a moment… how many people do you see who are truly happy?

If you’re employed, your workplace is the best place to look to see my point illustrated with crystal clarity. During my days of employment, I never once held a job where I wasn’t surrounded by unmotivated, unsatisfied individuals who, for the most part, were content with spending most of their life coming in to “earn the paycheck” each and every week despite the fact they were miserable (well, maybe not everyone, but at least a certain amount of them)… and I was in that boat too.

So don’t mix up being content with being truly happy. Sometimes being content is a good thing when you are truly happy, but unfortunately in today’s world, it’s often the confirmation of one’s state of denial.

How Can You Be More Honest With Yourself?

You can start by rating your life on a scale of 1-10 in the specific areas that I’ll list shortly, and then going through and doing it again a couple more times to make sure you don’t want to change any of your answers. Be sure to rethink each area every time you go down the “assessment” to ensure you’re being fully honest with yourself.

But wait, this isn’t going to be your normal 1-10 scale. You’re either going to rate each of the areas mentioned at 1, 9, or 10 and here’s why:

If you’re going to rate yourself a 2 or 3, then that’s basically the same as a 1. You’ve honestly admitted to yourself that you’re not doing so well in that particular area, and have recognized the need for major improvement (and that’s good, you’re being honest with yourself). Rating yourself a 4-7 can either mean you have no real interest in improving that area of your life, or you simply don’t think you’re doing all that bad, or all that good in that particular area.

The truth is, a 4-7 is still just a 1 (as harsh as that may be) because if it’s not a 9 or a 10, then it needs major improvement. A rating of 4-7 is often a bloated figure due to personal guilt or shame of giving yourself such a low rating anyway… which is obviously not a good thing if the reason why you’re assessing yourself is to be more honest with yourself. With all that being said, “I don’t know” isn’t an answer either… it’s just a 1 in disguise.

A rating of 9-10 on the other hand, means that you’re doing really well in that particular area and possibly have the desire to grow and constantly improve—granted you are being fully honest with yourself (which is why you should go through the assessment more than once).

Below are the areas listed, with some hints as to what you should be looking at:

Health

How would you rate your physical health and fitness? How about your mental health? (memory, mental clarity, sharpness, etc.)

Passions

Ideally, your passions and interests should align perfectly with your goals and the driving force behind your finances but that isn’t always the case. Do you set aside any time for your personal passions and interests? Where are you at with them?

Goals

Do you have any real goals or a plan as to how you’re going to achieve them? How good are you at achieving your goals?

Finances

Are you comfortable with your financial status? What about the means at which you earn your money? Are you happily employed, or do you run a business you truly enjoy?

Relationships

How would you rate your personal and professional relationships? Are you happy with where you’re at, or do you honestly think this area could improve?

Environment

Are you happy with where you’re living and working? Think of things such as your city, your physical surroundings, your home, etc.

People often give themselves excuses and justifications as to why some things are where they are at when they know they could be better, but that only serves to make yourself feel better temporarily about… well, keeping yourself stuck. Why in the world would you want to do that? Just tell yourself the truth, even if it’s uncomfortable or seemingly harsh… it’s the only way to ensure you can improve. So while you’re going through the assessment, if you feel any resistance to any of the areas… or your answers to them, then that’s a good indication to stop and really think about that area of your life. If you were about to put a 9 on the paper, then why in the world are you feeling resistance?

Note: You should be doing this assessment on your own, without expecting anyone else to read your answers later on.

Once again, I recommend going through that assessment above at least twice. It may be more effective if you take the assessment at one part of the day, and go through it again later on. This is to weed out any potential false answers, or to fix any inaccurate ratings you made with hesitation. In other words, just a small way of asking yourself, “Is that your final answer?”

If you can go through the assessment above and be fully comfortable with all your answers (honestly), then you’ll not only accomplish building personal trust with yourself, but you’ll also have a crystal clear picture of where all the areas of your life currently stand, and that in itself is a powerful basis for conscious self-improvement.

Now that you know what areas of your life need work… go get to work!

I recommend “re-evaluating” yourself using this same assessment (in the same manner) in another 3-6 months to see how you’re doing with your personal growth.

From here, you can browse the blog archives for more articles on how you can further develop the different areas of your life, or you can read more articles on truth and being more honest with yourself:

Amanda @ Look Far on being honest with yourself.
Leo @ Zen Habits on being completely authentic.
Steve Pavlina on truth and awareness.

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Live Consciously and Unconventionally: Be Honest With Yourself