We live in a chaotic, constantly changing world. Knowing this, countless people around us try to gain success and stability at others’ expense, deceiving and manipulating to get what they want quickly.

As you’ll soon see, this approach ultimately leads to dissatisfaction with oneself and one’s own life. For this reason, we need to seek an alternative – something that would allow us to remain strong, consistent, and peaceful no matter what.

That alternative is honesty and integrity. When we develop these qualities, life’s difficulties become lighter, self-respect gets more solid, and peace become a constant.

In this article, you’ll learn how to become more honest with both yourself and others by implementing 7 specific, actionable strategies. Let’s begin.

Why Honesty and Integrity Matter

For some people, it isn’t immediately obvious why you should try to be more honest. If you just want advice on amplifying this trait in yourself, move to the next section.

Some of you may ask: why not just chase power with any method possible? It would grant more material rewards, better quality of life (physically, at least), and technically make you happier. Right?
Here’s the thing: the more you deceive others and gain at other people’s expense, the less you like and respect yourself. You inevitably feel strong guilt about your actions that you carry for a long time.

And even if you don’t experience that guilt, you still become more fearful and paranoid. Constantly worrying about your own safety, belongings, and future is a natural consequence of living a dishonest life.

Honesty, on the other hand, makes you calm and peaceful. You live without regrets and fears, knowing that your existence matters and that you’ve barely harmed anyone.

Paradoxically, the more honest you are with others and the more you seek to give, the more you gain in the long term. Deception may get you some short-term gains, but they ultimately won’t matter when you’ll be reflecting on yourself and regretting your actions.

Now, how do you actually develop honesty?

7 Steps to Become More Honest

Just like any other character trait, honesty requires conscious, consistent action. The more steps below you implement, the faster you’ll make progress in this realm.

The first step to become more honest is to realize that lying only makes things worse.

1: Recognize That Lying Doesn’t Help

When under pressure, it’s tempting to just lie and hope that no one finds out. At the moment, it feels like a safe and reliable method of achieving whatever you want.

However, in the long term, most lies do get revealed, and it deals damage not only to your relationships, but to you.

The more often and severely you lie, the more your self-respect, confidence, and sense of responsibility erode. You start viewing yourself as unreliable, question your own choices more, and become afraid of people’s judgment.

This realization is very important: the first step to become more honest is to realize that the alternative is harmful, even dangerous. Manipulating others and twisting narratives into what you find convenient ultimately makes your life worse.

Accept that lying kills self-respect, accept its long-term consequences, and commit to being truthful both to yourself and others.

The fastest way to do the latter is clarifying your core principles.

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2: Clarify Your Core Principles to Become More Honest

Many people never consciously think of what they believe or stand for. They blindly consume content, follow trends, and rarely question their actions.

As a result, they act against moral principles, harm other people, and become hypocritical. With this approach, you may get more physical rewards, but you won’t feel satisfied. You’ll constantly feel a sense of guilt and shame at the back of your mind.

When you pick and live by your principles, you protect yourself against these dangers. You may get less benefits by refusing to work at a shady company, scam people, or lie to them, but you live with more peace and clarity.

This is because you know what’s important and what matters to you. Each time you decide not to act against your principles, you reinforce your proactivity, self-respect, and feel proud of yourself – and that builds honesty.

Clarifying your principles and applying them in your life will build your self-respect, self-esteem, mental strength, and thus make you less prone to lying.

Think about 3-4 principles you can adopt and live by. Maybe it’s serving others and ensuring stability in your family. It can be discipline and refusing to get quick gains through questionable methods. Whatever these principles are, write them down.

Speaking of applying principles: it requires you to make and keep commitments to yourself. This is the most important step to become more honest.

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3: Keep Commitments You Make To Yourself

Excellence and self-respect are things that many strive to get – but few actually achieve. That’s because most people lack what’s necessary to cultivate them: consistency.

Consistency matters more than intensity in every realm of life. Consistent and deliberate actions turn into unconscious habits, while intense efforts become irrelevant if they aren’t sustained for long enough.

As an example, you’ll achieve more by having three 1-hour gym sessions weekly than by training intensely for 4 hours a day. Not only will you conserve your energy, but you’ll also achieve more progress months and years later.

What am I leading to? To become more honest on an automatic level, you should reinforce your honesty consistently. After cutting down on lying and deceptive actions, the next natural step is building honesty through commitments to yourself.

Based on what matters to you, make a commitment to do something that will lead to better results every day. Tell yourself to cut down on fast food, learn a valuable skill (like Excel or Power BI), make a person smile every day. Whatever it is, make and keep a commitment to yourself.

It’s a good idea to start with small commitments like the ones I mentioned. They likely will be hard at first, but will become easier to do once you pick up the rhythm. Once it becomes a habit, you’ll feel strong self-respect and integrity that will help you become more honest.

Small positive habits strengthen your reliability, but to develop true confidence necessary for honesty, you also need to develop competence. The fastest and strongest way to do it is through learning specific skills.

4: Develop Confidence Through Skills to Become More Honest

As human beings, we’re psychologically wired to seek excellence and stand out from the crowd. That’s because these things allow us to build a better life for ourselves, attract partners, and protect our families.

Moreover, when you feel competent and reliable, you see lying as an inherently disgraceful action, and thus avoid it naturally.

Despite what many people may tell you, genuine confidence can’t be faked. There is no other way to build it than showing up, failing, and trying again until you succeed.

The more you try to learn something, whether it’s a digital tool or a calisthenics element, the more you believe in yourself and your abilities. You become healthily certain in yourself and brave enough to say what you truly think.

David Goggins, Garry Kasparov, Keanu Reeves, and many others have cultivated honesty without fear through developing unique skills. Of course, you don’t have to be on their level to be honest – you just have to be uniquely useful for society.

Pick skills that interest you (and that are in demand), and spend 1-2 hours a day on learning them. Just remember that mistakes are normal and expected during learning: you didn’t learn to walk or talk without making a few errors either.

Now that you’ve rejected deception, defined your principles, and started building habits that improve your character, it’s time to focus on what people associate with honesty – speaking  the truth.

5: Speak Truthfully as Often as Possible

This point may seem simple: just speak honestly and you’ll be fine. But things are a bit more complicated than they seem.

If you don’t consciously assess your words, you can still lie more than you intend to. That’s because your brain doesn’t prioritize being honest as important and just goes with the usual flow.

Small occasional lies aren’t harmful as long as they aren’t rooted in fear, malice, or self-interest. Nevertheless, the ideal scenario is talking truthfully most of your waking time, both with yourself and others.

Whenever you’re about to lie, stop yourself and ask:

• Is it really necessary?
• Why do I want to do this?
• What would happen to me if they found out I’m lying?
• How would I feel about myself after lying?

These questions will naturally make you hesitate before lying. Hesitation usually interferes, but here, it is useful: instead of risking potential retaliation or drop in self-esteem, you’ll just decide to speak truthfully instead.

Try your best to say things as they are, without manipulating those you interact with. Use the technique above to control lying impulses. Even if you don’t always succeed, keep trying your best to increase how much truth you speak.

There is another way to become more honest, even without relying on cognitive effort or questioning yourself: prioritizing mutual benefit.

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6: Always Prioritize Mutual Benefit to Become More Honest

In most cases, when people interact with others, they either play Lose-Win or Win-Lose. That means, they either sacrifice too much for others’ benefit, or they act too aggressively and satisfy themselves at other people’s expense.

As you probably see, both these strategies are deeply flawed and breed dishonesty. Lose-Win breeds hidden resentment and lack of contentment, while Win-Lose makes you manipulative and ultimately unlikeable to others.

How do you avoid this? You do it by seeking mutual benefit whenever possible. Try to understand other people first by listening empathetically.  Figure out their needs, concerns, and then develop a mutually beneficial solution.

For example, when you and your friend can’t pick a movie to watch, instead of sacrificing your own desires or forcing yours upon the friend, tell each other what you’d prefer to see in a movie. Then, pick an option that would satisfy the interests of you both.

It takes courage, assertiveness, and empathy to do this. But the more you practice, the more honest you’ll become, because you’ll naturally avoid deception and openly express your thoughts.

Speaking about avoiding deception. After implementing all the strategies above, the last way to become more honest is avoiding influences that would erode your honesty.

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7: Avoid Deception and Negative Influences

It’s pretty obvious why you should avoid deceitful people: they can corrupt your perception of what’s allowed and deserves praise. Thus, if you hang around deceitful people, you are likely to become a liar yourself. But how do you actually avoid them?

The first obvious solution is seeking distance from friends who lie frequently and don’t fulfill their promises. If they can’t speak truth in important moments or act upon their words, they cannot be relied on in harder times.

The next solution is more subtle: you should avoid consuming any content from people who’re infamous for their dishonesty. This includes fake gurus, streamers, and other public figures who have a record of lying to their audiences.

No matter how stimulating or entertaining their content is, it’s a good idea to avoid their influence. Our environment partially shapes our behavior and habits, so if you consistently watch attention-seeking liars, you may accidentally become one too.

This step may seem extreme, but if you’re serious about becoming an honest person, you should execute it. You won’t suffer from it in any way: there are many other content creators with better character traits anyway.

The more you act honestly and the less factors derail you from it, the better person you’ll become. And good people are exactly what this world needs.

Stay Honest, for Honesty Creates Prosperity

Dishonesty is one of the worst sins a man could have. It destroys relationships, creates guilt, and decreases your personal happiness.

Honesty, on the other hand, liberates you from guilt and shame. It makes people respect you, brings peace of mind, and helps gather allies for whatever you’re planning to do.

It doesn’t take much to become more honest. You just need to adopt a few consistent habits:

• Remind yourself that lying doesn’t help
• Clarify your core principles
• Keep commitments and promises you make to yourself
• Develop confidence through useful skills
• Speak truthfully as often as possible
• Seek and prioritize mutual benefit
• Avoid deception and dishonest people

Over time, these habits become automatic and form your core identity as an honest, reliable, and kind person. On top of that, you respect yourself more, feel happier, and start appreciating life no matter what happens.

Remember: no matter what anyone tells you, there are no downsides to being honest. Honesty is a trait of sages, and deceit is a sign of personal weakness.

Work on yourself, go to the gym, and keep being a great man. Good luck on your journey, brother.

If you liked this article and found it useful, make sure to share it with friends who need it and leave a comment below. See you next time.