This week I’ve been reading a great deal of articles on the detrimental effects of high stakes standardized testing based on the Common Core State Standards. Which seems, at first glance, to be an issue far flung from the simple moral principle of unconditional honesty. But in all of the articles, what I kept seeing, was a lack of honesty. I saw a lack of honesty with ourselves, and a lack of honesty with others, as being the root of the problem that the Common Core creates.
That being said, honesty is hard – we can all agree on this – and deciding to live a life of purely honest interactions is neither a small feet nor common. So, in honor of the many hours I have spent pondering the negative impacts of dishonesty and the benefits of the converse, I have compiled a short list of reasons that honesty should be the only policy.
1. It reduces stress – keeping track of untruths is stressful, to say the least. Building a reality based on lies is difficult to maintain. When you resort to honesty, you live in the realistic present and don’t have to worry about maintaining your reality.
2. Honesty diffuses most tense situations – part of being honest is conceding to others, acknowledging that disagreements don’t have to be black or white, and allows people to much more easily find a “middle ground” with their peers.
3. It keeps you honest with yourself – acknowledging the motivation behind your feelings and actions is the most fundamental part of being honest. When you are honest with yourself you are much more at-peace, and better able to go out into the world as a purely open individual.
4. You attract more (and better kinds of) people – when you display a frank, honest, confident persona, you draw similar individuals to yourself. People connect honesty with confidence and self-assurance: traits that naturally draw others to you.
5. It’s good for your reputation and career – being honest wins you trust, and people appreciate having those that they can trust around them. This is true both in your personal relationships, and also in your work environment. When you are trusted to be truthful, you can be placed in higher positions of power due to your ability to be open with your coworkers.
6. It makes you more loveable – because trusting in the other person is the cornerstone of any friendship or romantic relationship, being honest and open from the first interaction with other people naturally draws them to you. People like people that make them feel safe, and people like the people that care about them enough to be honest with them.
7. Being honest is good for your mental and physical health – a 2012 article conducted at Notre Dame (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/07/honesty-healthy-lies-truth_n_1748144.html) asked for being to refrain from all untruths, even white lies and exaggerations. In the “honest group” they later found not only decreased levels of depression and anxiety, but also reduced incidence of headaches and stomach upset.