Self Honesty

How honest are we with ourself?

Are we living in a dream world that we have invented? One selects the things he wants to hear about oneself and ignores the unpleasant or unwanted facts. It is as if we have cut out of a magazine a picture of someone we admire and pasted it over our mirror. Now, whenever we look into the mirror, we say: " Thats me!" But it isn't true. Its not our true physical image, its just what we are deceiving ourself.

To have a wrong image of oneself based on self deception is not good. It is foolishness, and eventually might make us unhappy.

Self-honesty is sometimes painful. Often, however, it is a way of raising our self-esteem. One can't really afford to deceive oneself this way, coz we are then basing our entire life on a deception.

When we are not self-honest, we create a state of tension between the superego and the ego.

The superego is the part of our unconsious which contains our ethical standards and our guilt. The concepts of right or wrong come to us from our parents, partly from others who influence our thinking and partly from our own experiences.

The ego is our eye to the world. It observes reality. The ego, however, is sometimes willing to make compromises with reality.

When ego gets to much out of line with the demands of super ego, tension results. One becomes anxious and unhappy, and may even become physically ill.

Self-honesty is an important criterian of maturity. The indivisual who persists in deluding himself is not acting as an adult.

We may smile at the unfortunate individual who considers himself to be GOD, for we know the truth. We are embarrassed when someone claims to be something he is not. The same embarrassement results in ourself, when we try to behave in an immature way.

Children are immature. They have fantasies about who they are and what they can do. Children are frequently unrealistic. They may incorporate these fantasies into their lives and play as though they were true. A child can take his fantasy life seriously.

A mature adult is aware of the difference between fantasies about himself and real life. Self-honesty is working well from a psycological point of view when the ego and superego are in harmony.

Its worthwhile to be frank with oneself and to make an honest self appraisal. The self- knowledge we gain will make us a successful individual and we will achieve emotional maturity.

The most important result, however, will be the increase in our personal happiness. We will find that we have new enthusiasm for life. We will have more energy. We will develop an appreciation of ourself and our world.