Dan Munro’s Guide to Overcoming the Validation Addiction

Dan Munro is back, and this time we go after the validation addiction: the quiet habit of arranging your life around being liked. Dan is a coach and the author of "The Naked Truth", and his angle is always the same uncomfortable question, where are you lying to keep the peace, and what is it costing you?

We get into self-deception and the biases that protect it, the link between shame and dishonesty, and the mixed messages culture sends about being honest. Dan shares the real damage his own dishonesty caused. We also talk about being comfortable with being disliked, expressing yourself honestly without using "honesty" as a weapon, and we even use the Chris Watts case as a dark study in where dishonesty can lead.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

This is John Brooks. Today I'm going to be speaking to Dan Munro. I've already spoken to Dan before, about a year ago. This is one of my favorite all-time podcasts and one of the most downloaded podcasts of all time. And in this episode, we dive into his new book, The Naked Truth. Dan is an honesty and authenticity expert and coach. In this episode, we talk about essentialism, the trap of the shiny object syndrome. We talk about self-deception, the mixed messages we receive from society on whether or not we should be honest. We dive into Dan's own story of how he transformed himself from a dishonest people pleaser into someone who was boldly unapologetic and confident. We discuss the various hidden types of lies. Lying is quite a complex game that we play. We discuss the link between shame and dishonesty. How to express ourselves authentically without harming people or being a jerk. The validation addiction detox Dan walks us through. We talk about why it's actually a good idea to rub some people up the wrong way and to be disliked. It's actually good. It's a healthy sign to be disliked by people. And then we discuss the recent Netflix show American Murder, where Chris Watts destroyed his entire family, even though he had no previous signs of mental illness. We discussed whether dishonesty played a role in that. All in all, this is a really, really important episode. I believe that if you carry around lies and dishonesty, and you're trying to fix these peripheral things in your life all the while not being truly authentic and honest, you're really putting the cart before the horse. Honesty, authenticity, boldness needs to come first. It's vital. If you don't sort it out, you can get anxious, depressed, and live a live a lie. Literally live a lie, which is not what we want to do with this precious gift of life. This is my interview with Dan Munro. Enjoy. So the last time that we spoke was just over a year ago.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Yeah, it's been a year since we've spoken. And our first podcast that we released is one of our most downloaded podcasts. I've had a lot of people tell me that they liked it, they liked you. Uh, I know that quite a few people had coaching with you after listening to that episode. Um, so let's just start with the last year. What have you been doing for the last year? What has been occupying your time and and focus?

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah, well, uh, this last year I had to tackle, I think, one of my biggest demons, which is I've heard someone called it shiny object syndrome. And it's this kind of compulsion to just start new things all the time. I've been doing that my whole life. And then I read a book at the beginning of this year called Essentialism. And I mean, in summary, it's about doing less, but doing it better. And I kind of realized that my habit of spreading myself thin over thousands of projects is actually a kind of self-sabotage strategy. It's something that holds me back. So, yeah, so my big focus since we last spoke was really to just get very specific and prioritize around honesty, around writing the book on honesty, around coaching about honesty, basically developing a borderline obsession with honesty. And uh, it was interesting timing that last talk we had because that was kind of the precipitant, if that's a word, for me just going kind of all in on honesty as a concept, as a niche or whatever you want to call it, my business.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

I'm uh it's funny you mention essentialism. I'm about 70% through the reading that book right now. And the for those listening, but I think the subtitle of the book is The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which I think is a great, a great subtitle. And I'm also finding it really transformational. Uh, I'm I'm curious what areas of of your life were you spreading yourself too thin on? And how did you come to arrive at, okay, here are the things that I really want to just spend all my time uh focusing on now?

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Yeah, I mean, in it was in every area of my life to some extent, like even say health, I'd be constantly trying new workout regimes or getting into some new fad of eating or exercise or whatever. And but in business is where it hurt me the most. Like I was just trying to do everything all the time: podcasts, videos, online programs, books, coaching, group coaching, running a community, and trying to do all of it at full throttle all the time, and kind of ending up doing all of it average, you know, that kind of perfectionism trait when you actually never do anything really perfect because you've spread too thin. And I I just I sort of finally caught myself doing that. Um, my wife's been telling me about it for years. I've had many coaches point it out that I could just never let go of anything, it all seemed so important. And then that essentialism book said, well, actually, there's only such a thing as a single priority. You can't have priorities, plural. That's kind of like a it's a paradox. How could something be a priority if it's not at the top by itself? So I had to get really clear like, what is the one thing, the only thing that's at the top, and everything else has to kind of cue up behind it. And essentially it was sort of becoming an advocate or uh even a philosopher, I guess, in honesty, and that's making decisions for the rest of my work. So when it comes to coaching clients, I'm only gonna coach people who are interested in becoming more honest, so that cuts out like a number of clients who wanted to do something else. Or like when I make videos, I make them about honesty, but also a prioritization like my coaching clients are the highest priority, so I'm gonna do less videos and less podcasts and fuck all courses and just write the book and coach clients, and that's it. And it's amazing how much more I get done with that less focus. It's bizarre, like I feel like I'm doing less, but I'm getting so much more done than I ever did before. Just because I switched from constantly starting new projects to sticking to one thing and seeing it through to the end.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

It's it's uh it's such a big trap, people trying to do everything and spreading themselves too thin. And I think there's this attachment to I want I like I have so many interests and I have so much value to give people on so many different areas. Like I'm sure I know that you have, Dan, so many areas of expertise and you could easily offer something to everyone, but there's something you need to let go of to just be the person who becomes world-class, like a leading philosopher on honesty. But in the process of doing that, you you end up offering more value to people because you're not giving them just something they can get anywhere. You're giving them something that you know you've dedicated your life to mastering. Um, so you end up giving more value to people. And I think that's like one of the traps people can fall into.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Yeah, well, I had to, I mean, I had to get really honest with myself about the insecurities that were driving that do everything style of behavior, fear of missing out, you know. Uh it's funny, once you get into sort of self-development or whatever you want to call it, and you start getting enthusiastic about making the most out of your life, it can turn on you where you suddenly become scared of not making the most out of your life. And it becomes this kind of, it was for me anyway, this compulsion to squeeze as much life out of every minute as I possibly could. And I ended up interpreting that as doing as many different things as I could possibly handle doing, which was just not the right interpretation of that. Going to mastering, becoming a master of a single thing that's the most needed to do. But I had a coach earlier this year, so I received coaching uh from Rich Litman, actually, who's like the king of coaching, and he called me out on I was actually using this as a self-sabotaging strategy. The way I spread myself thin stopped me from becoming the master in any one thing, and I actually held some really quite subconscious fears about pure mastery or expertise, like becoming the man in something. There's some part of me that was actually quite scared of that or reluctant because I didn't want to become one of those fucking guru guys that I can't stand, and you know, I was worried that I'd end up getting a bit too full of myself or something. I don't know what. But whatever it was, it just drove me into this compulsive start new things passion, which was actually just a secret system to keep me down. So going all in on honesty was actually I mean, I knew it was the right move because honesty saved my life, and it's like the one biggest thing that's ever occurred to me in any sort of philosophical sense. There's nothing I care about more than that, but at the same time, like giving up everything else, you know, stop being the like guy who can help everyone a little bit with everything, and being the guy who can only help you with one thing but all in. That was actually it's quite hard to let go of all those opportunities and potential whatever's and just kind of dedicate yourself to a single mastery topic. But uh Yeah, it took me a few months, but once I started doing it and seeing how much more I enjoyed life and how how much kind of more impact I was having on people's lives with less effort than before, I was kind of kicking myself, like, why the fuck didn't I do this before? I've been wasting my time.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Yeah, well, what comes up for me there is um there's a philosophy writer, Alain de Barton. He's written some good sort of guy. Yep. Yeah, he has a TAD talk and he said that in order to be successful at something, you need to be unsuccessful at other things, right? It's like it's just like an obvious idea that there has to be trade-offs. But we don't live like that often. We we we do try to do everything often. We we're not happy being unsuccessful at something. But what I'm hearing from you is that you you made a sacrifice, almost like a mythological kind of sacrifice. Like I'm gonna let go of all this stuff and I'm gonna go all in on this one thing, and now uh the fruits are are bearing, obviously. So that's really good to hear. Um I wanted uh play devil's advocate advocate a little bit with you for my next question. From a very young age, we are told, you know, be honest, don't tell lies. I think our parents tell us this, uh, society, our culture tells us this. And it's kind of obvious if you ask someone, you know, what is a good person? A good person is someone who's honest. Because if it's such an obvious truth, you know, you know, be honest is a good thing to do. Why would someone need to read a book, or why would someone need to write a book going into great detail? And your book is, by the way, amazingly in-depth. And I love the way that it's structured. It's like so, I'm a structured person and it's so well structured. It's not just like I've read books that are just like the author goes on a ramble for the entire book and it's good stuff, but it's just not structured. Your book is incredibly well structured. Um, but going back to the question, why would someone need to write a book on honesty if it's such an obvious truth that we're brought up to believe that it's good?

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Yeah, that's an excellent question. And actually, take the last point first. The reason the book's so structured is because this time I got myself a proper editor and had her like hack it to pieces. I am a sheep that's that right up. I've got to give her credit for that. It's the most structured thing I've ever written in my entire life because of her. Um, so the biggest lie, I think, we tell ourselves is that we are already honest. And what I talk about in the book is that we get this really contradictory messaging growing up. One is be honest, or usually it's in the phrase, just be yourself, which implies honesty. And there's constant morality as children about how it's good to be honest, how it's bad to lie, bad to steal, and so on. And yet, any child will tell you that there were times in their childhood, many times, where them being honest, got them in trouble. And so, on one hand, we're getting this messaging, always be honest, and yet, on an almost daily basis, we'll get punished for doing exactly that. You know, if we express anger through a tantrum that seems very inconvenient to the adults, and they tell us, stop being angry, stop telling, you know, stop shouting. If we're really blunt and judgmental, kind of how children are, like, oh, look at that fat lady. Like, don't say stuff like that. And so we get this really contradictory, impossible set of rules to follow. Always be honest, but not then, and not then, definitely not then, not that time. And so it starts to become a really murky message. Now, the whole time we want to see ourselves as good people. I've worked with some of the worst criminals on the planet, and they still see themselves as good people. It's like some sort of function of the brain is constantly trying to justify who you are as a good person, no matter what your behavior is. And so we've got this constant urge to prove to ourselves that we are the good person in our story. We're the hero, or at least the victim hero. And if we ever do anything bad, it's out of our control, it had to be done, it's somebody else's fault, so on. And yet we can't really reconcile that with being dishonest. I can't say I'm a good person who's also dishonest. So we start to lie to ourselves about the dishonesty. So a lot of people like this is the hard thing for me writing a book like this. A lot of the people who need to read it probably won't because they already think of themselves as an honest person without realizing that they're far from it. That since childhood they've been slowly losing that honesty over time in order to sit in with people, in order to avoid awkwardness and uncomfortable emotions, in order to be liked, in order to get results and get things in your career and all the stuff that we think lying gets us. I mean, think about it when you're a child, that's there's some point in your childhood where you tell a lie to avoid getting in trouble, and it works. You know, holy shit, that was that was excellent. I would have gotten in trouble if I told the truth. I told this other thing, and now I'm off scot-free. And that very first seed is planted. Actually, being honest all the time doesn't seem to be the most effective way to do things. There's another way. You know, I'll sort of stop there, but essentially the reason I think people need to read a book on honesty is because that's what I needed. I I got to the age of like 25 before I realized I was dishonest. I thought of myself as an honest person, and yet I was living a lie. I was completely full of shit 90% of the time. And because I lied to myself about it, I was unaware of it, and therefore unaware of that being the cause of all the misery and suffering in my life, especially my social life.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

What you bring up is uh I love that answer, and what you said about the rules being so conflicting is so true. You know, we we don't have this clear, we don't get rewarded for being honest when we were growing up a lot of the time. As you said, we get punished. We get people saying be honest, and then they punish us, like you like you said, when we are, when we do express ourselves authentically. Um, but but what you just said there is particularly fascinating. A lot of people think that if you don't tell an overt lie, you know, like a blatant lie, like I didn't do this thing when you did it. Like that's that's being dishonest, and everything else is honesty. Right? But there's like many different um subtle radiations to honesty. So can you go back to when you were younger? You said you thought you were honest, but 90% of the time you were full of shit. Um, I'm guessing you didn't, for the most part, tell blatant sociopathic lies, right? So what kind of dishonesty were you exhibiting then?

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Well, first and foremost, I did tell lies, but I managed to justify them to myself and rework them in my mind until I was kind of able to say that they're not even really lies after all. So, for example, I might exaggerate a story to make it funnier. And then because it made everyone laugh, I think, well, people laughing is good, therefore what I said is good, and if it's good, it can't really qualify as deceptive or mean or cruel in some way. And I'd go through this kind of rigmarole very quick in my head to eventually come to the point where it was okay to say what I said in that story because everyone came out better off, which is another way of saying it must be sort of true in some sort of metaphorical way. This would actually lead to me in the long term to believe that story as I'd told it, and I'd get to the point later on where I'd be telling a story, and I don't even know if it's true anymore, because I've added so much to it over the years that I can't remember what the original event was actually like. So there was blatant lying, but the kind of lying that I think most people engage in, I guess you'd call it the sin of omission. There are important truths that are happening inside them, and they don't share them, or they at least allow other people to believe something that isn't true. So I might be really angry with you, but I put on a calm expression. Now I haven't told you a lie with my words, but you believed it on calm, and I know you believe that, when I'm actually angry. How could that possibly qualify as being honest? And this is the kind of dishonesty that people engage in heavily without realizing it. I mean, I I like to use classic examples like let's say somebody invites you out for a social whatever catch up or drink, and you don't want to see them because you just don't want to see that specific person today. How rare would it be for someone to say, I just don't want to see you today? They never say that.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

No.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

They say, I'm too tired, or I've got other plans, or you know, not tonight, but maybe another night. And they think I'm an honest person. Well, actually, you just lied. Because the real reason you don't want to see them is right there at the front of your mind. It's very obvious you're just too scared to say it. And that's okay. But you've actually lied to yourself into believing you're too tired. You know, you'll go through this process in your head where you're like, well, actually, I am a little bit tired. Therefore, saying I'm tired must be true. Therefore, it's honesty. And you have to work at it. And that's one of the first things I noticed when I started addressing my own dishonesty. It's like, when I'm really being honest, I don't have to explain it to myself. It's just what was inside me comes out of my mouth. That's it, case closed. When I have to talk to myself about what I've said and justify it and minimize it and rewrite it in my head, that's a big red flag. I'm now straying away from the purest kind of honesty that a human's capable of, and I'm going into something else now. I might not be being untruthful, I might not have crossed the fence over into like full-on dishonesty, deception, as you call it, like sociopathic dishonesty, where I'm like manipulating cruelly to get advantages. But I'm definitely not telling the full truth. That's for sure. I'm miles away from that at this point. You know, so that's the thing, is people will tell themselves, because I don't tell blatant lies, which in itself is usually a lie, but let's say it's true, you don't tell blatant lies. You think of yourself as an honest person, but there's actually a kind of middle ground where you're just a kind of nothing person. There's noises that come out of your mouth, but they're just neutral. They're not the truth, they're not lies. There's some sort of just gap filler. And you just don't really exist in that moment. You're not expressing yourself. Who you are is still hidden. I think I find it easier to just categorize that as dishonesty because it's not honesty, so it must be the other thing. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Oh, totally. Yeah, totally makes sense. Um, and what was coming up there is just how how difficult it is to take that first step to becoming honest. As you said, a lot of people who would need to read uh The Naked Truth probably won't, um, because they if you think about if you if if you have someone who's Dishonest, then you're going to build friendships, you're going to build a life around dishonesty. Um, you know, your best friend, you you might tell little white lies to all the time, and suddenly you have this terrible fear now that if you start telling the truth, that friendship is gonna disintegrate. And I have noticed in my own observations as well, sometimes people will will be dishonest, and it's not that they think they're being honest, but they always have a reason, you know, like, yeah, I was dishonest because of XYZ, but I'm actually an honest person. Yeah. Right? You know, it's like there's always a there's always a because there's always a benefit to being dishonest in some way. Like I had to say that because they'd get in a bad mood and you know, they'd cause a lot of grief if I told them the truth. Um, but that brings me to in the book, you have these uh bullshit beliefs. And one of the bullshit beliefs was um, if you're honest, people believe inaccurately that the only other option is to be an asshole. Um could you speak a little bit about that? Oh, like the choice between being nice or being an asshole. Yeah, the way that people see it is this binary option.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Yeah, you're talking about the curse of my life essentially. Um you know, I I'm I'm the classic Mr. Nice guy. At least I was. That was my profile. And being nice meant being dishonest. And a lot of people, when they think about it, they'll realize that that's true for them. Because being nice usually means managing and controlling other people's emotions so that they are always feeling comfortable. Which means you can't say anything, you know, it would make them uncomfortable, which means any form of truth that people aren't going to react well to gets hidden, which is a lot of it, because people react unpleasantly to a lot of truth. So if you want someone to feel good around you all the time, you have to be full of shit, basically. And so you come to this conclusion, it's like, well, maybe I am, you know, not totally honest. Like, I had some awareness of this when I was younger, like I might be around a girl I liked and not show attraction towards her. I knew that I was not showing something, I knew that I was hiding something. But the ends justify the means, kind of thing. I'd be like, well, she's happy and comfortable. I'm comfortable with her being comfortable, therefore, that's a good thing to do. That makes me nice. And then I'd think, well, the only other option would be to creep her out with my attraction or hid on her in a real sleazy way, or just basically be this asshole. Like all these other guys I would see. I'd see the people that I thought of as honest, and they were the blunt people, the judgmental people, the bullies, the cruel people, the people who caused big social scenes that were really awkward and uncomfortable for people, the creeps. I thought, so I'm either gonna be a nice guy or one of those things. Like, this isn't a hard choice for me. Like, I'll just go with nice. At least people like nice. I don't want to be that, you know, asshole that ruins everyone's lives. And I was such dichotomous thinking. And I would overlook that some of these people weren't assholes at all. They I just didn't like what they were saying because I was fragile. You know, somebody would say something truthful, which if I just listened to them would be helpful information. But let's say I'm so like fragile with my identity that I don't want any sort of negative feedback, I'd take it personally rather than you know, hear the helpful advice that I'm getting, perhaps. And I'd just put those people in the same group as like the manipulators who slept with women and never called them again, or the people who like conned others out of money. I'd just put them all in one group. And I I kind of without knowing it, I was shoving the directly honest people into that group of bad people. And what people end up doing is like, I can either be this nice thing that I am, or I can be the opposite, which is without realizing, hey, maybe both of those things are wrong. Maybe there's a third option, fourth option, even who knows. But that was I can't remember how I woke up to that. It might have been reading No More Minister Nice Guy and combined with some other factors. But there was this particularly there was this one guy I was friends with in high school who was really honest, and yet he never hurt anybody because you just knew that he was the honest guy, that he was gonna give it to you straight, and everyone kind of accepted it. I mean, I'm sure some people who but he was a really popular guy, and he always stood out to me. I'm like, how does he fucking do that? How does he like just speak his mind all the time and get away with it? And and I never categorized him as a bad guy, so he was always this exception that stood out to me that I didn't understand until my late 20s, that he was neither nice nor an arsehole. He was this third thing, he was powerful, he was masculine, he was honest, but he was also kind and considerate and compassionate. There was no conflict there. He was all of those things. Whereas a nice guy chooses only the sort of soft traits, and an arsehole chooses only the hard ones, the third option takes the best of both worlds and none of the like insecure shit. It took me a long time to realize that that third option exists. But coming back to your question, I think people use that dichotomy as an excuse to stay what they are. They'll be like, look, the only other option is even worse. So discussion over, I'm just gonna keep being this thing. Often that's a discussion they have entirely inside their own head. Um because they don't want to take on the responsibility and the discomfort and everything that that third guy has to deal with, you know, like confrontations or being vulnerable or dealing with people's feelings in a way that isn't comfortable. You know, that's what that third guy has to put up with, that the nice guy and the asshole can't be bothered tolerating. I think that kind of answers the question.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

No, I love I love that the the that that's perfect, the third guy, like the third archetype that you know is this mysterious person who has it all. What came up for me there in your answer is the the keyword being, as you said, compassion plus honesty. Um, you know, having having like the intention to um to want others to to do well in life, you know, like the basic for uh like a basic good intention for other people, plus honesty is like a really killer combo. And I was wondering if people's uh people who we tend to think of as the honest jerk are actually not even necessarily honest, but they just have um low agreeableness and therefore just more likely to say things that that are that ruffle feathers in a disagreeable way. When I think of someone who's honest, they don't just go around saying things that are disagreements, um, things they don't like, things to complain about. They also say things like the they give compliments when they when they think compliments should be given, they give praise when praise should be given. Um, and that's actually quite rare, actually, to see someone who is able to be that middle between I'm gonna tell you the hard truths, but um when you do stuff well, I'm gonna completely praise you. Um does that ring a bell? Do you think that's that's accurate?

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Well, accurate's the word here. You know, those people who are deliberately contrarian, who are constantly disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable, that is simply dishonest. That's just as dishonest as the guy who's agreeable for the sake of being agreeable. Because that that disagreeable person, that contrarian, they're pretending that they don't like anything. I've called out a few people like that. Like they'll just I mean, you'll know it when you start publishing things online. It's not long before the comment section gets out of hand. And I'll have somebody who hates one thing I say, and then a year later I'll say the exact opposite, and then I hate that thing too. I'm like, dude, where do you actually stand on this issue?

unknown 31:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

It's like you stand against me. That's all you stand. That's not a position, that's just an insecure desire to stand out by being contrarian. That's not an actual honest disagreement, you're not even thinking this through. So that third person, which isn't really even a single type of person, you can be a huge range of personalities that's honest. Some will be more agreeable, some more disagreeable. There's kind of optimistic type people who always see the good in things and pessimistic who tend to see the rougher stuff. But what I talk about in the book a lot is accuracy. See, if I'm judgmental and cruel, odds are I'm not actually speaking very accurately. Like if I say something like you're too tall, I mean, who am I to make that judgment? What the hell is too tall? It's a very, very subjective thing to portray as a fact. Like I could say, in my opinion, you're too tall for me personally. But to say you're too tall as if that's a fact, that's very inaccurate. And what you'll find is, you know, a lot of the stuff in this book is essentially me reverse engineering naturally honest people who have found a way to exist in the world and going, what is it that they do? And one of the things they do is they're really, they really take responsibility for what they're saying. They won't talk about you, they'll talk about how they feel about you, which is different. So I won't say like you're a prick, but I might say like, I don't really get along well with you, which is still quite harsh, but it doesn't have that judgmental flavor to it. So I think a lot of people who see honesty as being this blunt, harsh thing, you're not actually looking at honesty. You're looking at inaccurate, judgmental superiority coming from a place of insecurity. You're not seeing what I call powerful honesty, which is where somebody would take responsibility for how they feel. They wouldn't be judgmental, they'd just be accurate about the facts and so on. So, yeah, that was a big one for me because I always thought of honesty as being this thing that hurts people's feelings. And sometimes it does, no matter how you say it. But I came to realize actually a lot of the time when you say something mean or cruel that hurts someone's feelings, it's not really honesty. It's more like you've made up a lie about them in your head and then believed it. That's not the same as being fully honest.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Well, you you've listed some benefits. I'm thinking of listeners uh who are listening to this now, and they they are behind the idea that being honest is good. Um, they want to grow as a person, they want to improve their life, but they have multiple situations that come up for them, whether that be in work or in their relationships or family life, and there's this compulsion to hide from the truth. What why would someone want to face the fear? What are some of the benefits that people can expect, some of the benefits that you perhaps experience in your own life? Why would someone want to take the leap, you know, feel those uncomfortable feelings in the short term and start living a life with more honesty?

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah, that's the question, isn't it? Um this is a hard one to sell because you only really see it on the other side. But in a word, shame. What I talk about, I think what I'm trying to get across in the book is any feelings you have about yourself that are painful or negative are derived directly from dishonesty. Here's an example of this. Let's imagine it's somebody else. Let's say you have a child, and every time they try to express themselves, you're like, shut up, don't speak. I hate it when you talk. You're not allowed to say that, you're awful. Imagine how that child's going to end up feeling about themselves if they're constantly suppressed in that way and punished for being honest. I mean, you don't even have to manage it, you probably were that child. Now imagine that it isn't a child you're doing it to, but yourself. If you're constantly telling yourself to shut up, if you're constantly telling yourself that what you have to say isn't worth saying, if you're constantly telling yourself that what you feel is invalid and should be hidden, if you're constantly telling yourself that you're wrong, where do you think your confidence problems are coming from? Well, dishonesty is that. Every time you don't express yourself honestly, that means that you're suppressing yourself. It's a form of kind of self-bullying. You're saying, I'm not worth speaking, my ideas aren't worth sharing, the way I feel about things is not worth giving to others. I'm a bad person who needs to hide himself. We think that we're worried about getting fired and we're worried about losing our partner or worried about our friends thinking that we're stupid or whatever it is that we're worried about as a consequence of honesty, when we need to be worried about how much damage we're doing to our self-worth by shaming ourselves with dishonesty. You know, losing your job is nothing compared to losing yourself. And that was the thing for me. Like, I woke up, I can't remember exactly how, but I woke up in a cold sweat one night, just like, I don't know who the fuck I am. I've been pretending to be this nice guy for so long. I don't even know who the pretending guy is. Like, I don't know who the original is. I've become the pretending. And that is so much worse. That crisis is so much worse than somebody not liking you or getting into a confrontation or you know, having to leave your job because you don't fit in with everybody. People are like sacrificing who they are for these other like very short-term, very shallow rewards. And they're also not realizing that if you live honestly for a long period of time, you design a life that's based on who you really are, which means your job will suit you, your relationships will be a good fit for you, where you live will be a kind of place that suits you well. Your honesty will create that life for you, but it takes a while if you built a life of lies. It took me probably three or four years to completely dismantle my old dishonest life and replace it with an honest one. But now I get to be myself all the time. Like, I don't even get resistance to it. I'm free, I'm like totally fucking free. And I can't say that that's what everybody should want, but it's definitely the best thing I've ever experienced. And that's why I'm so passionate about kind of advocating this idea to others, because every time I work with someone and they become more honest after they get through the initial rough period with all the conflicts and stuff, they're like, Holy shit, why didn't I do this before? This is such a better way of living. I'm so much more free. I'm I'm me again, I don't feel bad about myself, I don't care what other people think anymore. Like, why would I not want that? But like I said, you need it, it's like a leap of faith. You don't know how good it's gonna feel because you've never felt it before. Um yeah, I don't know if that answers the question, but yeah, yeah, obviously I'm sold on it, but of course I'm gonna be biased, aren't I?

SPEAKER_00 38:29

This episode is sponsored by Podia, the platform that I use to host all of my courses and online tools. In the sea of online business and entrepreneurship, it's quite easy to get lost. But for me, Podia is the compass, the map, you can think of it as a sturdy ship. With everything from course creation to community engagement to website design all in one place, navigating the digital world has never been easier. And the thing that I particularly love about Podia is the design functionality. It's very sleek. I've used Podia to create free PDFs that my listeners can download, meditation courses, multiple week experiences, interactive communities, and full blown multimedia courses. Podia is my favorite content creator platform. If you'd like to learn more, you can visit Podia.com forward slash John. Podia.com forward slash John spelled J-O-N, and there'll be a link in the show notes. Let's get back to today's episode. I think I think um I think that people can who who are dishonest or can be dishonest themselves, and I think there needs to be sometimes like a breakthrough moment, like a like you woke up with a cold sweat, maybe it's this conversation, maybe people need to read your book, but just to kind of reflect, you know, like really have a hard look. And I know you write about this as well in your book, like you have to admit to yourself that I'm not being honest, you know. You otherwise, why would you change? Um, there was a moment for me that that I was just reminded of when I was in Costa Rica about about a year and a half ago, and um I did this uh ayahuasca ceremony, and then right at the end of the ceremony, everything's kind of settling, every you know, everyone's kind of coming around and kind of more like themselves, uh, but not quite fully. And I had this really vivid understanding of how much I was just lying, like it's it was really profound. Like I could see clearly that, and I'm someone who I I don't like to lie, I I always try to tell the truth. If you ask people who who are in my life, would they say that I'm honest? Yes. And I obviously I'm still working on this. Um, but I could really see, and the example that came to me in that moment was if a beautiful woman was sitting right next to me, um, I would completely hide those strong emotions from her. That that was the image that I had. Instead of just being like, hey, you know, wow, you know, you are uh very attractive, you know, um, not in a way that's trying to seduce or just but just expressing, hey, that's a nice sunset. Um, you know, just but just opening up about the feelings in my body and how so little I I've been doing that my whole life. And um that was shocking. That was like a shocking realization. Kind of reminded me about your your night of waking up in cold sweats, like, who am I? Like what who is this person? You know, is this really me? Yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Yeah, I mean, uh I can I can give some examples so that listeners will get a sense of how honest or dishonest they really are. Um first off, all the people in your life that you have to see that you don't like, do they know that you don't like them? All the people in your life who you feel really strongly about in a positive way, do they know exactly how you feel about them? You know, when you're tired, angry, confused, hyper excited, depressed, anxious, do people always know when that's happening? Or do you hide it? These are the kind of things, and like you said, your example's a good one. The way you feel about someone, the strong emotions that come up that could be kind of controversial, high-stakes emotions, you might call them. Do people always see that when that happens to you? Or like 99% of the time, are you the same with your best friend as you are with your boss and with your mother and with the stranger in the bus stop? Are you the same person in all those scenarios? Because if not, then you're dishonest. And that's okay. Because here's the thing: you want to know who's definitely a dishonest person. Anyone who says that they're an honest person in some sort of fall-in way. It's actually something I learned working with psychopaths a lot, is one of the first things that they would try to do is establish the idea that they were an honest person. So they might tell me a few judgmental truths and say, Well, I'm just an honest person. You get it straight from me. And it's all a big setup for me to believe they're honest so that they can get away with lying later. And I came to realize like an honest person doesn't need to tell you that they're honest. As soon as they start saying it, especially when they make it sound like it's a hundred percent, because even I, so-called master of honesty, will admit that I don't get it right a hundred percent of the time. I don't even know if it's humanly possible. There are times I don't know I've been dishonest until after it's happened. How am I how am I supposed to know? And if I only find out afterwards, how am I supposed to be a hundred percent? So anyone who says I'm definitely honest all the time, all I think of straight away is no, you're definitely not. That in itself was a lie. And I think you believe it, which means you lied to yourself. And I think this is the scariest thing for me. When I was reading No More Mr. Nice Guy, and I came to realize that being nice was actually a form of manipulation. I was like, holy shit, I didn't even know I was doing it. I managed to convince myself that I was honest. I somehow believed my own lie. How was it even possible? How how's my brain able to trick itself? But when I thought about it, I guess I always deep down knew something was off, but I just had these justifications, had these reasons that made it okay. It's amazing how many people will tell the same lie that they would hate for someone else to tell. You know, like you might hide your feelings for someone and think it's all right, but you'd hate it if someone hid their feelings for you. That kind of double standard that we have around honesty, where it's okay for me to be dishonest, but it's a betrayal when somebody else does it. There's so many warning signs that if you really look and go, How dishonest am I? The answer's quite painful because it's as you say, like when you have a look at it, you're like, holy shit, I lie a lot, you know? And it's it's hard to accept because you think, well, I can't be that much of a liar and be a good person. Do I have to give up like my belief that I'm a good person? And the thing is, yeah, you kind of do. Because you don't actually need to be a good person if you focus on being an honest person. Like this is one of the biggest changes I made in my life was going from trying to be a good person, which really meant being someone that everyone liked, to trying to be an honest person or a person of integrity, which includes other values. And not, you know, I have more people hate me today than ever before in my life, because of whatever I pissed certain people off, and there's certain people who really disagree with me or whatever, and like the cut of my jib. Now I used to have everyone like me, and I'm not exaggerating, like there was like one person in my high school who didn't like me, and all other 2,000 kids did. Like I was that good at manipulating people, really. Now I like me, but a lot of other people don't. And before it was reversed, and the difference is honesty, you know. When I started focusing on being honest rather than trying to be good in other people's eyes, my self-worth went up while actually other people started to find me disgusting or uh somehow repulsive. And I'd polarize people. People now either tend to love or hate me. There isn't really much middle ground where, like, oh, he's alright. Whereas, you know, back in the day, everyone was in that middle ground. It was like nobody really loved me, nobody really hated me. They just all thought I was kind of funny and okay to be around, kind of thing.

unknown 47:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Starting to rant a little bit now, but yeah. Actually, I'll stop there because I've kind of lost track of where I was going with that.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

Oh, this is all gold. This is all this is all really good stuff. Um I'm enjoying it all. Um one thing that I wanted to just pick your brain on as well is you ref referenced the book No Mom Mr. Nice Guy. Um, I've seen a couple of times people who have got it gotten into this um you know, not being a nice guy anymore type thing. You know, they were a nice guy, then they read a book like No More Miss the Nice Guy or an assertiveness book, and then they go through this fundamental change. But it I've seen a few people that there's like a rigidity to it where they are almost like um hard to describe, like almost feeling like other people are constantly putting them in some sort of power play situation or kind of threatening them to be nice again, and it's like there's this um this awkwardness in like, hey, do you want to go hang out? And then there's like thinking about it, no, you know, like and just like kind of like disagreeing because there's like a little uh little voice in their head that's like, if I say yes, I'm I'm being a nice guy again. I don't get that at all with you. You seem both honest, but also very chill, like very easy to hang out with. Um, do you know what I'm saying? But like I've seen some people and then they they read the no one miss the nice guy stuff, and there's this kind of tension in the air that you that they feel you can kind of sense that they feel like you're threatening their assertiveness at all times. Um, yeah so how do you balance that? Like, how do you be chill and like easy to be around and also just be yourself and honest as well?

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Look, it might almost be a rite of passage that you have to go through uh if you're like a nice people pleaser. That first phase is like you become super resistant to everything because you're scared that you're slipping back into nice guys. And I definitely went through that phase where it was essentially I couldn't trust myself. I'm like, I don't know why I do anything. It seems to be all affected by this approval seeking malaki. So whenever somebody asked me something, I'd have to think about it real carefully. Like, am I just being nice? Is this real? What even is real? And I just couldn't trust myself, so I'd just start like pushing back on everything, thinking that even like agreeing to something was being Mr. Nice Guy. And it was just a kind of like correction, an overcorrection to try and get back to zero. Because what I really needed to do was get back to zero to get back to the simple realization, I don't know who I am, let's start over again. And I think the the problem is that even the nice guy label this identity, so you go, okay, I'm gonna try not to be that identity, rather than trying to realize that nice guy means dishonest guy. So this isn't about you trying to stop being nice, it's about you trying to stop being dishonest, stop being manipulative, uh, stop being underhanded, sneaky, emotionally ashamed, and all the other things. Rather than calling that nice, you know, just call that being very insecure or lacking in integrity. And so I started to realize, well, there are times where I would actually engage in nice behavior, but that's a totally legit thing to do as long as I'm doing it for the right reasons. I'm actually still very nice to people. Generally, unless you're like really pushing on my boundaries or trying to hurt me in some way, I'll respect you. But now I'm doing it for different reasons. I'm doing it because it aligns with values I have, like respect or acceptance or compassion or responsibility. Whereas before I was doing it to make you like me, which the behavior is the same, but the reasoning is so much more unhealthy. So it really starts, I believe, rather than trying to stop being nice, start by trying to figure out who you actually are. What are your core values? What do you believe in? How do you wish people would behave? Because that's how you really want yourself to behave. What would it look like if you were more honest, but without losing any of your compassion or human kindness? What is a combination of honesty and kindness look like? And so on. And so that when somebody comes to, I don't know, offer you things, or you feel like your niceness is being provoked, you just need to check in like, is this legit? Do I actually feel like doing this, or am I just people pleasing? And you won't know at first, but you've got to try and figure out the difference. Like, quite often I wouldn't know till afterwards. I'd do something and then come back and realize I feel all exhausted and go, ah shit, that was self-sacrifice, I'm doing it again. But at least now I know. And then other times I'd be like genuinely kind to someone, I'd be like, you know what? No, I'm I'm cool with that. I didn't care if they liked me or not, that was just the right thing to do. I'd do it for anyone. And you start to slowly kind of put the pieces of who the fuck you are together again. Um, but yeah, it's just there was a real, I don't know how long it lasted, months maybe, where I just I didn't know how to trust myself because I just found out how badly I'd be lying to myself that I didn't really trust why I did anything. You know, I'd be going to buy lunch or something and be like, but why am I buying this lunch? Who am I doing this for, really? And it got like kind of a bit uh slowed me down, put it their way, questioning everything all the time. But essentially it was a good place to start, you know?

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Yeah, so I'm hearing that it's it's a natural process and almost uh it it's a good it's a good sign. It's like a natural um i if if if you're going through that period, at least you're you're working your way to integrating more honesty, but you just don't want to get stuck there. It's it's uh it's like a temporary place of integrating. Um and you you said focus more on honesty rather than not being nice, which is uh quite an important distinction, I think.

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Yeah, and it's actually um my mum gave me this advice once, like she said, never set a goal that a corpse could do. It's this idea your goal should never be something you don't do, because that's a corpse cannot do something. Wow. So rather than trying to be not nice, try to be more honest or be more assertive, or I don't know, enhance your masculinity, whatever you feel is lacking that's been holding you back your whole life. Try to do more of it rather than trying to do less of something, replace it essentially. So I started to replace people pleasing with honesty. You know, now there were times where I'm like, I'm not brave enough to be honest right now, and I'd go, well, I'll at least not be dishonest, kind of thing. I'll just go neutral. That's better than lying and people pleasing. It's like one step up at least. I'll at least create the space where one day integrity could take place, you know. Like just not laughing at a joke that you don't find funny rather than fake laughing. Now you might not have the balls to say, you know, that that wasn't really funny, bro. But you can at least not encourage it and not pretend that you found it funny. You can kind of make these little incremental movements towards more honesty and understand actually that is you being as honest as you're capable of being right now. That's the limit of your courage or whatever it is for the day. So you're actually on track. There's not like some milestone you have to get to in the future where you go, okay, and now I'm officially an honest person. You're an honest person the minute you start trying to be more honest. No matter how that attempt goes, if the intention was honesty rather than something else, like people pleasing, then you can say, Well, that's me, as honest as I can be today. And that's all. That's what I'm still working on to this day. I'm like, what's the most honest I can be right now here today? Like, I'm thinking about it when you and I talk. I'm like paying careful attention to what I say, thinking, is this what I really think and believe? And is this what I really want to say right now? I mean, I'm not thinking like that all the time, but it pops up. I would have probably had that thought like five or ten times during this conversation, where I'm just like constantly like checking in, like, am I being honest right now? Making sure that, you know, especially I think I'm a bit more hypersensitive in a conversation with you about a book on honesty. But yes. It's the thing, I'm I'm always working on it. There's no final destination here. Sometimes I slip. The other day I was on a call. Uh long story short, I got into a call with a guy that I thought was going to be a collaboration and it turned into a sales pitch. He was trying to sell me something, but he had kind of like tricked me onto the call thinking we would be working together on something. And I was really uncomfortable with him making that switch, but I didn't say anything. I just kind of got through the call. And afterwards, I'm like, ah, fucking drop the ball there. That's that's it again. I you know, a bit of dishonesty snuck through the gap. And so the next uh about two weeks, three weeks later, I guess it was just last week, I had another call where I had a similar feeling of discomfort, and I remembered that first call. I was like, don't do it again. So I called out the discomfort and kind of redeem myself. And this kind of thing happens to me all the time. I'm just constantly trying to catch myself and redeem myself, but I'm not hard on myself about my failures because I know I'm trying my best to be honest, and this is the best I can do right now.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Such a good example. I I can relate, I'm sure we can all relate to that. That um, like I slipped up, I missed that. Uh, I I should have said something I didn't say. Um, but you're never gonna say it unless you've built those habits of practicing saying it or being uh attentive to the things that are going on in the present. Um yeah, that's such a great example. Um, switching topics for a second, um, I recently watched this Netflix special. I I know you've seen it, American Murder. And then I I had all these thoughts as I was watching it, and then I saw that you had done a post on it, and your post was uh showing exactly what I was thinking. Uh so the this guy, Chris Watts, had a family, bunch of kids, pregnant wife, um, good job, fit, healthy, um, no history of like drugs or being a criminal or being anything other than a nice guy. And he met someone. And again, the the there's no evidence that this the woman that he met and was having an affair with was like a sociopath or anything like that that I've seen. And he killed his entire family, right? And this this is uh on Netflix, and I was watching it thinking like these deaths could could have been avoided if this guy just told the truth. Like he was like an extreme, extreme conflict-averse individual. Um, and I anyone listening to this, I highly recommend you just check out the documentary just to see someone who's not honest and like the dire consequences of that ingrained patterning. Um, you have anything to add on to that? I found it fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 58:31

Yeah, I found that uh that whole docuseries really riveting because I pegged him as a nice guy right out of the gate. And I sort of my wife and I always have this competition whenever we watch stuff like this to who can correctly guess the bad guy before it's revealed, you know. Yeah, and I'm like, you know what? I used to work in criminal justice nine times out of ten as the husband. I'm gonna go with the husband on this one. But there was also this that the fact that he was so nice where a lot of people would see him as the victim, and I think at the start he's kind of portrayed as the victim of this like overbearing, cruel, jealous wife. But what he really is is a nice guy that she's trying to like provoke into masculinity. She's like exasperated with his spineless approach, you know. And I've just I mean, that's like half of my coaching clients is their wife comes to me and goes, I can't take this guy anymore. Please do something with him. Because he's just so, as you say, conflict averse is probably the best term for it. That she's like, Come on, stand up for fuck's sake. Like, I just can't help but push this guy under my thumb. And he is a great example of the reason why I take honesty so seriously. People think a bit of dishonesty here and there, like worst case scenario, is you kind of tricked someone, or maybe you don't get to go out on a date with someone because they don't know you like them, or you don't go for the promotional work, it's not as big a deal. Now, it is a big deal because of the psychological burden of keeping your true self a secret. It can cause you to snap. And he's a great example of the kind of most extreme. But I spent you know, seven years working in corrections going, how the fuck are so many of these criminals nice guys? Blows my mind. I was expecting like these leering, tattooed, like deviants, and most of the time I'm looking across the table at my mirror, you know. I'm just like, this guy's like me, except he killed someone, or this guy's like me, except he steals, or this guy's like me, except he molests children. And it really bothered me. I'm like, I really wish these guys were less like me. I'd be much more comfortable with that. But what I was watching is the guys who finally snapped under the psychological burden of constantly being dishonest. You don't find honest criminals, they simply don't exist. And it's not a fluke. For a start, if you're fully honest all the time, you wouldn't even get away with crimes. If you're like, by the way, I'm going out to rob a bank, someone's gonna stop you, right? So if you're honest all the time, you don't even get to escalate to bad behavior. Like, let's say, I mean, he starts with cheating on his wife, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:21

Imagine if he'd started by telling her, like, I'm having thoughts about cheating on you. Imagine if that conversation had taken place. Those kids would still be alive if that conversation had taken place. Yes. Because it would have precipitated either healing or a separation, but it would have quickly got to something healthier than the resentment and the bitterness that caused him to briefly go psychopathic, which I'm sure he now regrets because he'll, you know, I worked with a lot of murderers, and like a week after it happens, they're just like, oh my god, how did I do that? And most of the time it's a guy murdering his partner and he's gone into a criminal history. It's like it's a thousand small cuts. There are a thousand resentments, ten thousand resentments, ten thousand times you didn't stand up for yourself, you didn't express yourself, you didn't back yourself and show who you were. That adds up. You know, for most people it ends up in a kind of self-harm. I was talking about this with someone the other day. We often think of self-harming as someone cutting their wrists. But self-harming includes binge drinking on alcohol, smoking cigarettes, dangerous driving, uh, getting into fights, taking drugs, binging on Netflix. There are a lot of ways to do damage to your body and punish yourself. Even just sabotaging your success is a form of self-harm. And you watch the correlation between people who make their life harder for themselves and dishonesty. The weight of that dishonesty just causes this kind of lashing out either at others, you know, which makes their relationships really tense and disconnected, or at themselves. You know, and anybody listening who's got chronic anxiety or depression, guarantee you you've also got a chronic dishonesty problem. And honesty is probably the cure.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:13

Yeah. Yeah, that so I'm I'm liking the way that referencing American murder is tied into this conversation, the severity of not being honest, and how that also links to criminal behavior and also uh psychological issues. I remember Jordan Peterson saying that when he worked as a clinical psychologist for 25 years, the first most common reasons people would come to him were depression and anxiety. And the third reason was because they couldn't be assertive, like they couldn't tell the truth to people. Well, obviously that all three are linked, but you wouldn't think that, right? Like you uh a lot of people are going to therapy because they simply need to be able to tell the truth to people. It's uh it's a real issue, you know, it's not just like, oh yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we were more honest? It's like this is ruining lives, this is really ruining lives. And Chris Watts, the the the murderer, he's obviously an extreme example. But how many people and you know, have we ourselves ever been in a relationship longer than we wanted it to last? You know, uh you often see the nice guy, you know, they they don't break up with their girlfriend for like six months or something, you know, all this strange behavior, and it's like you you've just wasted six months of your life in misery, you've wasted your partner's life for six months, you've created way more conflict than was even needed because you didn't have that conversation. Oh, I'm not very happy right now. It's like it's crazy, it's really, really quite sad.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:47

Yeah, I think that's it's the the millions of smaller crimes, I guess you'd call it like they're not illegal, but damage done to lives. Like I had a guy on my group coaching just this morning, and he he said he was in a 15-year marriage that was a disaster, and he knew it was bad a week after the wedding. So he took on another 15 years after that realization because he just couldn't have that conflict. He had rather just sort of sit with it, and people don't realize that these contracts we sign with dishonesty, we're like, look, I just won't say anything this one time without realizing we're just signing up to a lifelong pattern of behavior. Like if you take shit from your boss one time, you're actually signing up to take shit from him every single time you go into work for years, maybe even decades. And people don't see that. They think it's just this one time I'm gonna tell a white lie, or one time I'm gonna hold back. It's kind of like smoking cigarettes. Like, if you're choosing to smoke a cigarette, you're choosing to be a lifetime smoker until you choose not to. So you're not really just having one cigarette, you're having 20 a day until you die. Thousands and thousands of cigarettes. So that's it's the same with dishonesty. If you're choosing to lie to like keep things nice and even today, you're really choosing to lie for the rest of your life unless you change that choice at some point. So you can predict, like, if I'm gonna lie to keep my partner happy today, then I'm gonna do it every day for the remainder of our relationship. What's the effect of that gonna be? If I have to lie to her four times a day, what effect is that gonna have on my psyche? What effect is it gonna have on our connection with each other? If I'm too agreeable every day for 10 years, how's she gonna feel about me at the end of that? People don't do that calculation. I never did. You know, all my relationships. Relationships ended up being superficial, including my friendships. My career was unsatisfying. Not that I was in a bad career. I was still in probation when I made my change, but I was tolerating shit from people. I was getting manipulated by offenders. And it was all because I was making these so-called one-off decisions to be dishonest without realizing now I'm making a pattern decision. I'm deciding to always be dishonest. And the this the switch was the same. One point I'm like, okay, this time I'm going to be honest with them. And that started a new precedent where I'd always be honest with them after that. And this whole new relationship would form. I've rescued a few relationships. You know, we talk about honesty ending relationships. There's honesty that saves relationships too. And that's been one of the most surprising things for me. When I first dedicated myself to being honest, I kind of prepared mentally to end up alone. I was like, this is gonna just be like a nuclear attack. Like I'm just gonna destroy everything I've got. And at that point in my life, I was like, fuck it, fine, because I'm miserable. So let's destroy it all. But I had some, like I think the ones that surprised me the most were male friends, where I'd be like more intimate and vulnerable with them, and they reciprocated. I was just like, whoa, I didn't know you could have a friendship like this with a guy. You know, I'm used to just like talking about cars and women and farting, like I'm having real conversations with guys now. Like we're talking about how we feel about stuff and all that. I always thought that that was super gay, but I actually quite enjoy it, you know? Yeah. And I just I was surprised at like how some people came forward rather than moving backwards. And I I actually started to feel real connections with people, the loneliness started to go away. And when you start seeing those kind of results, it becomes a lot easier to take the uncomfortable path of honesty. You're like, actually, it's worth it. You pay up front with discomfort, you get your rewards later. With dishonesty, you get a reward right now, which is usually not even that good. It's just you suppressing an emotion while somebody else likes you, and then you suffer later, like the relationship where you're under the thumb all the time, or the boss who treats you like shit, or you just don't get promoted, or whatever. You know, this long-term suffering where you have to keep hiding who you are. So, you know what? If I was to make a single point, really, you gotta ask yourself, do you want to be free? Because dishonesty is a prison, really, isn't it? It's you hidden in a cage inside your head while your representative goes out and lives your life for you. Whereas honesty is you're out of the cage, you're the one living the life. Complete freedom, less security, less manipulation. You don't always get what you want when you're honest, not in a way that you might be able to when you're dishonest, but you're free.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:45

I love that. That's super powerful. Dishonesty is a prison. Yeah. Um I always love speaking to you because uh you have a real clarity around um super important self-improvement areas that for some reason or another I often skip over or overlook, and others do. And then when I listen to you speak, it's like, you know, that all that the self-actualization business that I'm that I'm working on, it means nothing without honesty, you know, and it kind of brings me back to the the essentials uh to on which you build everything else. Like having a six-pack, having money in the bank is meaningless if your life is built on lies, it's like it's meaningless, it doesn't do anything, and it you're gonna suffer just as much as anyone. So um yeah, I I love this conversation. Um, I'm about halfway through the book. I'm gonna keep reading it, and yeah, I'm looking forward to having a round three with you. Where can people find out more about you and your work and what's the the plans with the the book?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:03

Yeah, and I appreciate your kind words. I love that you're halfway through the book because you're about to get into the juicy stuff, uh Ruthless Honesty, which is when you start like yeah, the real uh the stuff I had to learn with criminal offenders. It's my favorite bit, and I left it till the end of the book, so enjoy. Um yeah, I think the best way to get started on all the stuff I do is just to go to Brojo, um, the Brojo website, brojo.org, and I'll give you a link as well. If people want to pre-order the book, there's a way that you can do that now. I'll give you a link, and that's all my best shits in Brojo, so you can start there. And if you like it, binge, and if you don't, go find someone else. That's fine too.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:45

And another synchronic uh synchronicity as well is uh Donald Robertson wrote the uh preface to the book, and he's someone, or the forewords, and he's someone we've had on the podcast too. And it was just completely not we we weren't linked through each other, but it was like a crazy coincidence how there's this sort of circle arising where we're kind of like everyone's kind of licked in this in this great way. So Donald Robertson is one of the the greatest stoic philosophy writers on earth, and uh he had a lot of good things to say about the naked truth as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:21

Yeah, well there's a lot of there's a lot of stoicism sort of weaves throughout the book. Um, it's been such a big influence on me, particularly around. I mean, they don't actually list honesty as one of the four virtues of stoicism, but if you read about all the stoic philosophers, they were all primarily quite honest people. Um and yeah, Donald Robinson's such a cool guy. I've I've had him on the podcast to basically lecture me on philosophy a bunch of times and probably learned more from him over the last few years than just about anyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:54

Well, I'm actually reading a book at the moment on Epictetus, it's just a book, like a kind of um an academic look at who he was, piecing together his philosophy. And the author of that book says that underlying Epictetus' uh approach to stoicism, he had four key sort of um uh sort of like uh things that he wanted to always get across to his students, and one of those was integrity. So uh yeah, so there you go. Epictetus valued integrity. Absolutely. Um so yeah, it all links up. So uh I'll provide links to all of that in the show notes to the podcast. Uh thank you so much for your time. Uh really enjoyed it. Thanks, Dan.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:40

Oh yeah, love talking to you, bro. It's uh it's me gone. So excellent stuff, man. And um yeah, learning it again.