Being honest with yourself is one of life’s biggest challenges: some times people are not as good at that as they need to be. We rationalize more than we should, telling ourselves what we want to hear; we’re in denial more than is good, being more optimistic than realistic; and often we just ignore some facts, hoping that they don’t really matter. But if your mother ever told you that ‘honesty is the best policy’, this is where it might matter most because fooling yourself about the important things in life doesn’t help in becoming all you can be. Look at it this way: all the little mistakes and mis-steps help teach us how to really hone in on and improve the behaviors, skills, knowledge, and abilities we need to achieve our goals. So maybe the first principle is not fooling yourself when it really matters: be brutally honest and learn from them; you’re the only one responsible to know when that matters. Don’t kid yourself about the really important stuff today.
Richard Feynman (1918 –1988): American theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner in physics
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