Chapter 7: Show Your Real Self to Others

How few are authentic

All of us operate in the presence of countless social filters that influence what we think, feel, and do. You are conditioned from a young age to develop and apply a filter to prevent the expression of anything that would exceed the tolerance of the masses in what you say or do in public, and you develop a similar but individualized filter for each person you come to know personally. The filters become so well established that by the time you reach maturity, you’ve long-since forgotten you have them.

Each of us has a different willingness to maintain sovereignty over what we think, feel, and do, and most exercise very little. For example, a famous set of experiments by a psychologist named Asch showed that only 25% of people will act outwardly according to what they believe to be truth contrary to public opinion,¹ and the constraints of the experiment make this a best case scenario. Far fewer still will live authentically when it costs more than just soft social disapproval.

The moral obligation of authenticity

Popular opinion and public persecution are effective filters on authentic behavior, but they are not measures of righteousness. All Christians ought to be “...perfectly honest and upright in all things....” (Alma 27:27) How many Christians are distinguishable from others in how honest and upright they are?

Most weigh their willingness to stand for what is right by how much it would cost them to support it. You ought to be who you really are and stand up for what you really believe no matter what it costs. The fact that this does not happen is further evidence that beliefs tend to not be based on reason. If you only believed what provided the highest net benefit, you would never set aside your beliefs because of their cost. Only beliefs held by convenience will be set aside for convenience.

Live as who you really are, or you are bearing false witness

One of the Ten Commandments reads: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” (Exodus 20:16) This commandment is much more widely known than it is understood. While bearing false witness clearly includes saying what you know is false, it is also about how truthful you are in how you publicly portray yourself. A “witness” in the scriptural languages was not limited to what you said, but the full demonstration of what you did. A false witness includes any difference between what you believe and what you say, do,² or feel. A false witness includes how you interact with others, including how you present yourself to them.

A true witness is one who is always how they really are. While a true witness will do all they can to improve in every way, they demonstrate their virtues and vices, their strengths and weaknesses. As they do, they best situate themselves to become aware of and be more disposed to improvement and to help others through the demonstration of their strengths. For this reason, it is good to be a true witness, whether you are good or not, and doing so will lead to greater righteousness, while bearing a false witness is always detrimental.³

The personal cost of inauthenticity

Your ability to retain and grow the amount and accuracy of truth that you presently see doesn’t just depend on how well you live up to it in your own life, but also how effectively you persuade others to do the same.

You don’t realize that every single time you inhibit what you really think, feel, or would otherwise do, you are voluntarily assuming some measure of the consequences of dishonesty in your life, causing great harm to yourself and others.

The alternative, which almost no one has the courage to implement, is to authentically express what you think and feel, and faithfully do what you otherwise would in every situation. If the pushback you receive in doing so is invalid, then continue thinking, feeling, and acting just as you did before, no matter how much it offends others. If the criticism you receive in doing so is valid, do not respond by hiding your true self, but by changing your true self. You can tell the difference between hiding and changing by analyzing how you subsequently think, feel, and act in subsequent situations free from the oversight of those who would correct you.

Live as if all things about you were known by all people

What if everyone knew everything there was to know about you? What would it be like if anyone who saw you instantly knew all your virtues and faults? What if everyone else knew everything you thought, felt, and did? What if everyone knew what you really wanted, how much, and why? Would this result in people seeing you as more and better than they do now, or less and worse? Would it make you change how you are?

People frequently think, feel, or do worse when they don’t believe anyone can see.⁴ If all things were known, many seemingly highvalue people would lose value in the eyes of others. How many hidden past mistakes and ongoing indulgences would be revealed?⁵ How many seemingly kind people would be shown to be willing to cause major harm to another for their own slight benefit?

Many good thoughts, feelings, and actions go unseen. Those things that are seen are evaluated through an imperfect idea of what is good, what is evil, and by how much. If all things were known, many seemingly low-value people would gain value in the eyes of others.⁶ How many hidden virtues and quiet heroes would be revealed? How many seemingly normal people would be revealed as having fought and won many private battles? How many seemingly arrogant people would be revealed as gifted and patient? How many seemingly offensive people would be revealed as holy?

So much of our lives remain hidden from one another. We tend to advertise or exaggerate our best aspects, disappointing those who get to know us better. Live with such virtue in what you do and why you do it that the more someone gets to know you, the better they find you to be.

As much as it horrifies most people to contemplate, there will be a time when much more about yourself will become known to you and others.⁷ In the resurrection, you will see as you are seen and know as you are known.⁸ The additional information thrust upon you will include onerous details proving the insufficiency of your poor choices and inadequacy of your poor character qualities,⁹ even if they were hidden to you in life through ignorance or dishonesty.¹⁰ Everyone will see much more about each other than they presently do. Everyone will know much more about what you did in life, what you didn’t do, and why.¹¹ But what about during this life?

You can come to see much more of yourself during this life, and though they are rare, there are others who already do. There are people on the earth who can see you better than you can see yourself. Whether you’re dealing with such a person or not, it’s best to be yourself and not rely on your ability to hide from others. To prepare for those who already see who you are, act as if everyone you meet can. Live each moment of each day as if all people could see what you do and—more importantly—why you do it. In every case, acting as if all things were known about you will cause you to be better than you otherwise would. Living up to the best you presently know will lead you on the shortest path to learning more about yourself than you already know. To prepare for a time when all things are revealed, act as if they already were.

Don’t hide your goodness

Honesty requires you to accurately acknowledge your vices and your virtues. Far too many understand humility as the reduction of incorrectly overinflated self-worth. Humility actually requires the correction of any error in self-worth, whether there is too much or too little.

It is not an oxymoron to consider oneself humble.¹² Like all virtues, humility is something we should all strive for and something we need to acknowledge in order to make the greatest use of it. Anyone who has reconciled their self-esteem to their perception of the truth, as far as they know it, can accurately call themselves humble until and unless evidence arises that suggests their self-worth is too high or too low relative to reality.

Some hold back on honestly acknowledging their positive traits for fear of becoming prideful. It is as important to live up to unacknowledged true strengths as it is to improve unacknowledged true limitations. It is vital that those who have virtue show that virtue in whatever area they have it.

The good you recognize in yourself and the good you do are coupled. It’s impossible to live up to your potential without first accurately recognizing your strengths. An artificially suppressed selfworth will cause you to be less and do less for others than you would with a more accurate self-appraisal. For example, the Lord said that the good examples we show help others see God’s goodness more clearly:

14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5)

Don’t hold back your virtue. If you are good, be good. If you are smart, don’t pretend to be stupid. If you are productive, don’t slow down. If you are beautiful, don’t uglify yourself. If you are kind, do not allow the bitterness of others to dull your light. Live up to the virtues you possess.

Everything lost by being yourself makes your life better

One reason people avoid being themselves is that they fear what they would lose if they did. They rightly identify the many good situations, people, and things in their lives that cannot coexist with authenticity. What they don’t realize is that what they would lose through honesty isn’t worth having, and stands in the way of what is much better. If you were truly yourself, all of the time, you would obliterate your ability to participate in meaningless work, shallow relationships, and frivolous entertainment. Identifying and removing the fake placeholders that occupy your resources and attention clears the path for obtaining the real thing:¹³ quality relationships with others, meaningful work, and a fulfilling transcendent purpose.

Dishonesty limits the love you can give to and receive from others

Recall that all forms of dishonesty harm our ability to see all parts of reality. This reduction in awareness will decrease your ability to give and receive love in multiple ways.

Love is the measure of what you are willing to suffer for the benefit of others. In order to give or receive love, you need to accurately perceive the qualities of yourself and others, as well as know enough about reality to accurately predict what would benefit you and others.

How can you love another person without correctly seeing their attributes and the rest of reality? You cannot calculate what would be beneficial for them, or the threshold that exceeds what they deserve without first being honest.

You cannot be loved by others beyond how honest you are with yourself. How can someone love you for who you really are if they do not know who you really are? How likely are they to know who you really are without you showing yourself to them? How can you show yourself to another if you don’t yet know who you really are?

How can you recognize and receive love beyond the limits of how fully and accurately you know yourself ? How will you accurately quantify the love others have for you until you accurately measure how good a person you are?

Liars overestimate their self-worth, conveniently ignoring their faults and inflating their virtues, thus chronically underestimating the love others give them. How can you recognize when someone treats you better than you deserve if you do not accurately see who you actually are? You might be immersed in love, but blind to it, mistakenly believing you are entitled to what actually far exceeds your worth. For example, it is a great act of love for someone to expose the faults in you that they have lived worthy to see, but which you refuse to see. Would you see what they share with you as love, or just hostility? Would you respond with gratitude, or would you just be offended?¹⁴

To the extent that you lie, you lower your value. To the extent you lack self-respect, confidence, and improvement, you will be less likely to receive the love of others because of your lack of love for yourself. Any degree of self-hatred can increase your hatred of others, as human nature makes it difficult to see others in a better light than we see ourselves.¹⁵ If you don’t have ample evidence of self-improvement, you will struggle to believe that other people are capable of improvement, and this will cause you to withhold the good you might otherwise do for them. This results in a condition Jesus referred to as one’s love waxing cold,¹⁶ or the abandonment of concern for the benefit of others. One whose life is full of actualized improvement cannot deny what God can do to a person, because they have experienced it firsthand. A person who recognizes the benefits they have received is more likely to give great sacrifice for the potential benefit of others.

Honesty attracts quality relationships worth having

Different people will react differently to you when you live in sincerity. While it is true that many will see you as a fool, some will resent you, and others may even hate you, the few that see who you are as a good thing will make the other reactions worthwhile. Authenticity attracts those worth knowing while repelling those who aren’t worth your energy. However, it is important to recognize that in the face of the shrinking space of options, abundance is not measured in the number of options open to you, but the increased value of those options that remain.

If you are true on the outside to how you are on the inside, you will always find yourself in conflict with those who are not, but, at the same time, you will gravitate towards everyone who is authentic, no matter how different they are to you. The people who appreciate and can benefit from who you really are will self-select, and that filtering is very much a part of the purpose of this world in general and your life in particular.

Relationships that require deceit are not worth having. When you lose the support of those who don’t want you to be yourself, you haven’t lost much. These types will only support you as long as doing so makes them feel better about themselves. Eventually, friendships that are based on you pretending you are something you aren’t will always crumble in when unavoidable eventualities reveal the charade.

The easiest way to avoid the difficulty of terminating relationships based on deceit is to never begin them in the first place. If you are always who you really are, those who don’t appreciate you will avoid you from the outset. This is a wonderful blessing because it frees up your time and resources to meet people who actually like you— something that is increasingly difficult the more time you spend with people who don’t. It’s difficult to meet new people when you are spending all your time with others, and those more likely to be interested in you may be repelled by companions who you aren’t compatible with on more than a superficial level.

Pretending to conform to the expectations of others only works when it isn’t recognize as fake. The people who matter won’t fall for this, and the people who fall for this don’t matter. Those whose opinions matter the most will think poorly of you for fakery, as it shows an immense lack of respect and suggests that the real you is much worse than you pretend to be.

The best people will only be interested in you if you are yourself. The best people seek out those who think for and stay true to themselves, even if they stand alone, not those who agree with them.

If you want to get to know deep people, you’ll first have to reveal yourself to be one. Otherwise, the deep people you invariably meet will pass you over as someone not capable of the depth they, like you, crave. All people who withhold the next increment of themselves from another until that person is worthy of that increment are too guarded, and will never enjoy the relationships with others they would have if they instead decided to dispense the next increment based on worthiness to what has already been given. These people are always lonely and unfulfilled, but remain in their self-inflicted problem by lying to themselves, claiming that they have people in their lives to whom they are open—people who also complain about how closed they are! They claim that they would somehow recognize and open up to “the right people,” without any ability to describe what these conditions would actually be.

The only way in which your public self should differ from your private self

There are times when your behavior in public should deviate from your behavior in private, but never for the purpose of deceiving others. Instead, it is about withholding the parts of yourself that they cannot presently understand or which they are not yet worthy of knowing. Perhaps the easiest example of this is in the form of boundaries you might have that distinguish the parts of yourself you expose to others: coworkers versus friends, friends versus family, family versus your spouse, and your spouse versus God. Honesty precludes presenting a false self in any of these scopes, but each scope consists of withholding some different level of intimacy.

The principle of appropriately withholding intimacy ought to be applied at the individual level: Although you should never pretend to be someone other than who you really are, it is always going to be the case that you limit the extent to which you reveal yourself. This raises the vital question: how do you determine how much of yourself to reveal?

Incrementally revealing yourself

People today mistakenly believe that it is possible to identify those who are worth opening up to before opening up to them. Under this approach, the only way you will get to know others or others will get to know you is if they open themselves to you before you open yourself to them. This only works when they are more willing to open themselves to you than you are to them.

A person can’t show their trustworthiness to you without being given trust. They can’t show you that they are worthy of what you haven’t yet revealed; they can only show you if they are worthy of what you have already revealed. In order to see what more they are worthy of, you must first lend them greater trust by revealing more of yourself than what they already deserve.

If you are honest, you will show others the next increment of who you are as soon as they prove themselves worthy of what they already know about you. You will reveal yourself to others on a different pace and to a different degree depending on the differences in their worthiness. You will reveal large chunks of yourself quickly to a person who demonstrates themselves to be benevolent and trustworthy, far less in smaller chunks to someone who is guarded, and little at all to a person who clearly intends to use whatever you give them for personal gain or malevolence.

All people should have full access to you on a path comprised of steps of the next reasonable increment. Anyone who meets you should come into contact with the essence of the depth of your heart and mind. When the degree to which a person knows you depends only on the amount of time they have spent with you, and not the amount of trust you have in them, you will know you have removed these barriers.

Revealing the minimal next increment of yourself to others protects you from many of the examples of betrayed trust, which tends to come through revealing much more of yourself to a person than they have proven themselves worthy of.

Revealing the next increment is not negotiable in the path to more honest and meaningful relationships with better people. Those who wait for others to prove themselves worthy of their trust before they lend any trust to them will never find the people they seek—not because they don’t exist, but because they will never recognize them nor be recognized by them.

You can’t have self-respect while living a lie

The approval of others is meaningless when it is based on a lie. No one worth having the respect of will be fooled or impressed by fakery, and that includes yourself.

Your self respect is hard-won and easily lost. Every move you make to please others by pretending you are something you aren’t is a move away from respecting yourself. Don’t sell your birthright for a mess of porridge by pretending that you are someone you aren’t. If you aren’t impressed with yourself, it won’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. If you don’t like who you are, nothing anyone else thinks will make you feel better about yourself—at least, not for very long.

Live to know you are who you know you could be, and you will have the confidence and courage of a lion, even if you are the only one who believes in, admires, or respects you. If you are impressed with yourself, it won’t matter what anyone else thinks about you. If you like who you are, nothing anyone else thinks will make you feel worse about yourself—at least, not for very long.

Intimacy and self-exposure

Some fear that if they show who they really are, no one will love them. The truth is that until you start acting like you really are, no one can love you.

If you are a deep person, you realized at a young age that openly demonstrating the depth of your heart and mind to others causes confusion and resentment in them and sorrow in yourself. The sorrow comes as a mix of the negative reactions from others and the painful realization of the fact that you are surrounded by people who are not like you, who cannot see you, and who cannot fulfill your deep yearning for true interaction with another soul.

No amount of people will alleviate your loneliness until or unless you know yourself and show yourself to others. Without giving direct access to your inner self, how can you ever attain the deep meaning only possible through deep connection with other people? The barrier of distance is two-way: You can’t experience someone beyond the access you give them to yourself.

No one can ever like you if you are never yourself. A mask protects you by hiding who you really are, but it also makes it impossible for anyone to really know you. When someone likes you for who you pretend to be, they don’t like you —they like the mask you are wearing. Pretending to be someone else requires you to maintain a certain distance from others who might otherwise more easily discover your rouse. Why pantomime as another person just to please others? Is there anything more lonely than playing a role for the rest of your life because the people around you love someone who isn’t really you?

You can’t be loved by someone beyond how much they know what you think, feel, and do. You can’t love another beyond how much you know what they think, feel, and do. Love is an action—the choice to sacrifice for the benefit of another—and you can’t know what would benefit a person without knowing them. To the extent you do not disclose yourself, you will withhold from others the love you could otherwise give them and withhold from yourself the love they could give you.

You can’t experience the joy of someone enjoying you for who you really are without first being who you really are. You have to open yourself to greater sorrow from others if you want to open yourself to greater joy with others. The inner self is inherently vulnerable. Direct access to it can cause greater suffering than anything else. While it is impossible to be who you really are without exposing yourself to criticism and disappointment, it is also impossible to find emotional connection, trust, and intimacy without exposing yourself. Criticism and disappointment are the price you must pay for meaningful relationships. The good news is that invalid criticism need not affect you, valid criticism will only make you better, and every disappointment orients you more fully toward what is worthy of your expectation.

Be your best, even if people hurt you for it

The more honest you are, the more the world will hate you. Normal people are dishonest, and the dishonest don’t take honesty kindly.¹⁷ They always get angry,¹⁸ and they frequently resort to violence.¹⁹ They respond this way because they have so thoroughly damaged their conscience that it is momentarily renewed when they hear truth, causing them to feel immense guilt.²⁰

Too many people hold back the gifts God has given them because they realize early on that what God values is abominable to the world and to those whose hearts are still set upon it. Honesty is just one of the Lord’s attributes, all of which will increase the ire of the world the more they are manifested within you.²¹ Honest people say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done, even if other people hurt them for doing so.

To be excellent is to be hated, but the hate is stronger and begins much earlier than you might expect. It takes almost no level of performance to begin earning the hate of others. Most people detest those who excel them in some way. By living according to who you really are, you provide living proof that they could do the same, and this makes them feel guilty for choosing otherwise. It is hard to accomplish anything of worth in life without accumulating people who hate you. The better you become, the more those around you will actively resist you and the things you attempt to accomplish. Anyone who intends to always do their best should expect a life where the ratio of those who hate them to those who love them will grow as they do.

Don’t allow the faithlessness and fear of others to restrain you. Push through it, and prove to them that they, too, could be more by providing them an example of what better looks like. Not all people will choose to adopt the example of improvement you provide. Those willing to allow you to do your best even if they choose not to will still benefit a great deal from what you are able provide to them.

Sometimes, those around you will obstruct and discourage you, and they may threaten to distance themselves from you, even if they are your family or friends. Do it anyway. You never know when those who resist you for doing your best will suddenly change their course, support you, and improve themselves.

Many are tempted to hide their flaws in order to protect themselves from harm from others, but doing so causes greater harm to yourself and those you might otherwise help than it prevents to you. It is impossible to pretend to be someone other than who you really are without causing great damage to yourself in ways that extend further and deeper than what anyone else could do to you.

The better you are, the fewer people will see you that way. The brighter God’s light within you, the fewer the people will respond well to it. However, the brighter God’s light within you, the more it will mean to those who need it.

Being the best you can be is the most direct way to find the best people. Only the most exceptional people will admire you for being better than they. Only the meekest people will celebrate your victories independent of their own.

Be who you are, even if you are a terrible person

Life will provide numerous situations where hiding who you really are may seem like the best path. Maybe you have traits that others do not like. Maybe you have a perspective or desire that you know will be unfavorable to people who you care about or who you want something from. Be yourself anyway.

It is always in the best interest of all to be who you really are. If you are true on the outside to how you are on the inside, you will always be a better person than you are when you are pretending to be someone different than who you really are.

If you are less-than-ideal in some way, don’t hide it. When you place yourself in situations that are beyond your ability to contend with, you not only guarantee eventual defeat, you also guarantee unnecessary suffering along the way. If you have faults that you aren’t willing or able to fix, don’t hide them. It’s better to show others the parts of yourself that are difficult to accept up front. It saves you and them from subsequent unpleasant experiences as they have to deal with being lied to and you have to deal with them rejecting a more clear version of who you really are.

Be yourself. If you don’t like what that gets you, change who you are. If you are antisocial, be antisocial all the time. Don’t try to be artificially outgoing when meeting new people. If you are lazy, be lazy all the time. Don’t deceitfully pretend to be diligent only when someone is watching. If you are sloppy, be sloppy all the time. Don’t clean the house extra before friends or family come over. Don’t pretend you are someone else to get gain you don’t, by definition, deserve. If you want better outcomes, the only enduring way to obtain them is to actually change who you are. If you do not like who you are, the solution is to change who you are, not to pretend you are something you aren’t. The cost of change is reduced by honestly admitting the cost of staying the same. Through consistently living your character qualities, you will accrue sufficient reason to change.

Be yourself at work

Too many people clock out of being themselves when they clock into work. Your job doesn’t give you an excuse for failing to be yourself, nor does it spare you the negative consequences of practicing this form of dishonesty.

Does your work align with your purpose in life, whether directly through what you do or indirectly through the resources it secures? Do you really make the world a better place through what you do? For example, if you are a school teacher, are children better off in your care than in that of their parents?

Does your work require you to violate your principles? For example, if you are in the military, do you renew your contract even after realizing that the reasons you joined for are not aligned with how the military is used in practice? If you are a doctor, would you dare tell a patient what they need to hear to improve their health, even if it doesn’t include pills or surgery? If you are a lawyer, are you up front with your client about their chances of success, or do you take on unlikely cases just to increase your billable time?

Do you find yourself doing things you might otherwise consider wrong in order to compete with those who do not share your principles? For example, if you are a scientist, do you apply for grant money for politically popular ideas that you know to be unfruitful or untrue?

Employees are hired in good faith under the assumption that they are capable of the job they will perform and that they will consistently apply their best reasonable effort. Do you provide value that matches your pay? Do you waste time at work? Do you shirk responsibility?

How consistently do you apply what you learn at work to the rest of your life? Remember, Jesus castigated the people of his time for exercising wisdom in their work that they did not apply to test their religious beliefs.²² If you are a visual artist, do you beautify in all things, or merely when you are performing? If you are a scientist, do you apply the same skepticism of conventional wisdom, employ the same degree of critical thought, and open-minded experimentation in all things, or do you just blindly follow the majority in other aspects of your life? If you study something, do you study everything? Do you think deeply about all topics, or just those you are assigned?

Most modern jobs do not respond well to employees who ask why. Seek a job where your employer understands the additional contribution made possible by employees who understand and believe in the company’s purpose, particularly in how it translates to their daily tasks. Be yourself at work by asking questions, bringing up ideas for improvement, and sharing counterarguments with what is suggested by others. Ask for reasons when requests do not make sense to you. If you disagree with what you are asked to do or why you are asked to do it, make your objection known calmly and respectfully. Before opposing anything, ensure that you have adequate reasons that are at least as strong as your feelings about the situation. Share them clearly with a honest openness to rebuttal. If you can’t come to an accord with your employer or coworker, decide whether you have sufficiently cleared your moral obligation by speaking up. If not, seek employment elsewhere.

The average person spends a great portion of their adult life working. Though so many share the experience of work, very few even scratch the surface of the potential value of what it could provide to them. So much advancement in life can come through honestly extracting and applying value from employment. Try it, and you may be surprised.

Be yourself at home

The home environment can foster several tendencies that encourage a person to act in ways that do not align with who they really are. As with work, the home is not an exclusion to the need to be yourself. If anything, it is the place where honesty is most important.

It is no surprise that a desire to please others can often be strongest in the family, as it is presumably the collection of people who you care about the most. At issue is the tension between the short-term benefit you will provide through saying and doing what pleases them now versus the long-term benefit you can only provide them through being an honest, integrated person. You can’t have both.

Unfortunate as it is, another strong motivation to withhold your true self in family settings is the desire to avoid close-quarter strife. Ironically, much of the strife seeking to be avoided in the home is from one or more members of the family with no such reservations. Some people are more apt to fight with people they do not live with, but many preferentially fight with those in their own home. Those who bend their authenticity to avoid conflict in the home are aiming for unity, but unity can only occur through addressing and resolving differences—not ignoring them.

The family unit is the best situated for the greatest growth. Families provide a wonderful opportunity to give and receive invitations to improve—invitations based on greater familiarity, greater concern, and a purer motive than any relationship outside the family. But these benefits cannot occur beyond the degree to which family members are willing to be themselves and be honest with one another. A family that grows together will continuously discover new areas of difference, each providing a new opportunity to achieve even greater levels of unity. A family that ignores differences cannot grow together, because they cannot grow at all. Growth requires change, and change can only occur as differences are actually addressed. Present your true self to your family members, and encourage them to do the same. Always ensure that what you say to and how you spend time with family members reflects your sincere beliefs. It is the only way for you to give and receive the best benefits in your family.

Marriage presents a special case of the danger of dissociating from your true self. Most deadening in marriage comes from an unwillingness to continue attempts to discover and resolve differences. Too many have watched their spouse transform from a vibrant, interesting person to a person who can only have fun during superficial experiences and conversation, and who typically has far more to say to friends and strangers than they do to you. This erosion comes over time as a spouse opts not to address additional faults revealed through marriage. Lovingly engage in the typically long and laborious process of assisting your spouse to address their faults within the limits of criticism they tolerate.

Requests for improvement become increasingly frustrating for both the repeater and the receiver when they need to be repeated. Faced with increasingly hostile responses to repeated requests for improvement, most quickly abandon future attempts, preferring the quiet misery of living with someone they don’t like to the intense unpleasantness of confronting them on their faults. Superficiality is not a solution to unresolved differences in family. Instead, continuously repeating an incrementally shrinking invitation for improvement provides the only hope for things improving. When you take the seemingly easier road of appeasement by ignoring what bothers you about a family member, you will find that those things will grow in incidence and intensity while your patience for tolerating them shrinks.

Deep and truthful communication is essential to maintaining a happy family. Be honest with your family when it comes to what you desire, what you appreciate, and what concerns you, whether you are talking about the world, yourself, or your family members.

Be yourself at church

Too many people use religion as a way to obtain a community rather than as a way to learn about and become more like God. Even worse, that community tends to be even more shallow than social relationships outside of church. Church presents potential pitfalls to the person seeking to be true to themselves at all times. Part of the draw of church is the opportunity to participate in a community of like-minded individuals. Unfortunately, relationships at church rarely grow beyond the superficiality of what is shared. To resist the pressure to remain within the shallows of superficiality, avoid the temptation to go along with jargon, rituals, or any other pattern of behavior that you do not understand, that seems odd to you, or that you do not feel is useful. To help you detect the draw of fitting in, imagine you are an outsider attending your church for the first time. What would you find odd or confusing? Could you explain these oddities to a newcomer in a way that convinces them that these differences are an improvement over what they are familiar with? If not, avoid it.

One particular example of an odd behavior that spreads due to desire to fit in is the display of seemingly deep sentiments as a shallow gesture. While there are times when the display of intense emotion or conviction is appropriate, it too often presents another opportunity for superficiality. Those inclined towards public gestures of moving emotion should temper themselves against their day-to-day example. Deep spiritual conviction is not something that only appears at church. True spiritual conviction effects all areas of life, because all areas of life are opportunities to revere and emulate God. Have you invested the requisite discipleship in normal activities to honestly profess such deep conviction at church? Are you a passionate person in real life, or do you just play one at church? Don’t be a different person on Sundays than you are the rest of the week, nor a different person in church than you are outside of church.

It is common for those who attend a given church to have at least some beliefs that differ from the doctrines of that church, but very few speak about or act in recognition of these differences. It is necessary and appropriate to respectfully voice when you dissent from the positions espoused by your church or fellow congregants. It is also necessary to abstain from religious practices that you do not believe accord with God.

It is possible that the deviations between your beliefs and those of your church are significant enough that you should find another church or not attend a church at all. Much of that decision will make itself as you are open in your communication about what you disagree with and consistent in your refusal to participate in what you do not believe in.

Be yourself in recreation

Too many people think of recreational activities as a break from who they really are. If you aim to be a sincere person, you should be the same person during recreation as you are at any other time.

With whom do you spend your discretionary time? Do you spend the most time with those you find most important?

How do you spend your discretionary time? Do you spend the most time on what you feel is most important? Do you allow the people with whom you spend your time to bend you into activities that you do not feel are the best use of it?

What do you converse about with friends? Do you find yourself endlessly rehashing days gone by with friends from earlier in life who have not remained reconciled to your life since then?

Do you abide by the same personal and interpersonal standards you would outside of recreation? For example, do you become a vicious, violent, trash-talking monster on the basketball court?

Boost the truth

To be true to what you sincerely believe all the time no matter the cost will always get you into trouble with anyone who isn’t sincere, and hardly anyone is. Often times what appears to be persecution for extreme beliefs is actually a reaction to extreme honesty. Absolute and constant honesty is not, never was, and never will be normal. Very few people appreciate their misconceptions, faulty assumptions, superstitions, or lies challenged.²³ Even the most mainstream person would encounter stiff persecution in their lives if they were deeply honest all of the time. To persuade you of how immediately total honesty will get you into trouble with the world, consider every relationship you have with other people in this world, and how few of them could endure such honesty.²⁴

The few people who refuse to lie, even when everyone else does, are anchors to society. Without these people, there would be far less of everything most people value in life, and yet, instead of supporting them, the majority persecutes them, while the few who see that they contribute something of value turns a blind eye for fear of what the mob might do if they were to support them. Those unable to see or unwilling to stand against dishonesty rely on those who are willing and able to do both. The only ones able to resist lies as necessary to slow societal decay are those who see them and understand their consequences, which necessarily makes them appear to be extreme to those who do not. These people are almost always viewed as radicals, but they are the only force resisting the sudden decay of society. Those you see as radicals today are the only thing preventing you from being seen as a radical tomorrow.

It is the selfless honesty of a few good people that sustains society, but the good that they do cannot be sustained without the support of the many who must support and defend them in order for them to continue.

Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil. (D&C 98:10)

Boost those who tell the truth by sharing their ideas with those who would not hear them from the source. Defend them from those who dishonestly misrepresent their character.

Restore justice

The more a person thinks, feels, and acts as Jesus would, the more the world will treat them as it did the Lord:

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. (John 15:20)

If the world doesn’t hate you enough to try to kill you, as it did Jesus, you aren’t very much like him yet.²⁵ Anyone who maintains the friendship of the world has betrayed and continues to betray their honesty at least occasionally. You don’t have to do terrible things to lose your honesty, and the world won’t typically require you to do terrible things to get along with it. All it takes in either case is to betray yourself just a little bit here and there. The seriousness of such things is denoted by the language James uses in describing those who do it. He calls them adulterers, stressing that it is impossible to be a friend of the world and a friend to God:

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. (James 4:4)

This echoes a point stated earlier by Jesus:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matthew 6:24)

The more wicked the world becomes, the harder it will be for people with greater honesty to support themselves. There are those who have lost their careers for the sake of the truth. How many more will be added to their numbers? How many jobs would be lost if everyone told the truth all of the time? Everything you are compelled to say or are not allowed to say that deviates from how you actually think, feel, or do is an example of such lies. Many jobs require you to lie to customers or coworkers on a regular basis. How often do sales people, customer service reps, or politicians lie to their customers? Even outside of careers that are primarily deceitful, there are countless moments where workers are required to lie to each other or their customers.

The more dishonest society becomes, the more those who are honest will be targeted and taken out, as aptly predicted by Isaiah:

When integrity is lacking, they who shun evil become a prey. (Isaiah 59:15, Gileadi Translation)

Knowing firsthand of the challenges that come from telling the truth at all times and in all places, the Lord gave encouraging promises that he would sustain and bless those who serve him.²⁶ In many cases, he gives us the opportunity to fulfill these promises, restoring good to those who have been treated badly for behaving righteously.

All Christians ought to be “...distinguished for their zeal towards God, and also towards men...” (Alma 27:27) How many Christians are distinguishable from others in how zealously they seek the benefit of those who deserve better than they have?²⁷ The reluctance of Christians to support those who are treated unjustly causes God great displeasure.²⁸

Refuse to uphold evil people

Too many support those who accomplish evil. One reason for this widespread phenomenon is that, even among the religious, we have an incorrect definition of evil. Most define evil as what violates the rules of whatever church they belong to. But the meaning of evil is much broader than the edicts of a church. Rather, if good is what leads to the greatest possible benefit of all, evil is anything less. The more something blocks the progress²⁹ of all people, the more evil it is.³⁰

A more correct definition of evil helps you prioritize your fight against it. Many common Christian protests fall to irrelevance. Instead of opposing a celebrity, musician, or author who probably has extremely little effect on the life of you or anyone you know, inform yourself about the clergy, teachers, county council, judges, county prosecutors, school board, and others in your locale. Evaluate the righteousness of supervisors where you work. Look at the comments of the people you are connected with on social media. All of these people affect much greater outcomes in your life, and yet hardly anyone pays attention to or does anything about them. Are they supporting what is good and those who support what is good, or do they fight against good ideas and the people who promote them?

The false idea that we need to treat all people nicely, even when they are evil, hamstrings our ability to conduct the duty we have to call out evil.³¹ If a person is close to you through family connection, friendship, work, church, or geographical co-location, you have more reason—not less—to raise your voice in opposition to the evil you see them do.³² Those who are offended by your stand from the truth are not your real friends, they aren’t worthy to be in your church, they aren’t your real neighbors, and they are poor excuses for family.³³

Too often, people remain silent because they don’t want to bear the cost of speaking up. They want to appease evil people in power at any price. They won’t report a misbehaving supervisor, confront a bullying coworker, or correct their wives because they don’t want to have to deal with the reprisals that are likely to follow. They don’t realize that their wicked cowardice is not only detestable to God, but can only earn them false rewards that are guaranteed to be repaid with interest:

22 Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink:
23 Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him! (Isaiah 5)

Evil that is not addressed will fester and grow. If you do not call out evil when you see it, you share in the guilt for enabling it.³⁴

Refuse to constrain your speech

A priori impositions on our free speech aren’t uncommon. We face these in general in the form of societal expectations and specifically from family members, friends, and employers.

Many modern examples of compelled speech occur in the workplace and social scene. Here’s a less commonly recognized example: Have you ever had a friend preface a story by asking you not to share what they are about to say? You probably wouldn’t recognize this as a seed for dishonesty, but it is. Without first hearing the story, you can’t know whether agreeing not to share it will violate what you consider best in what you do as a result of hearing it. So why agree ahead of time on how you will react?

You should always remain free to act in the way you see fit based on the information you have. When someone imposes a condition of non-action, they are asking you to act differently than you believe is right. If anyone ever gives you constraints on what you can do with information before giving it to you, interrupt them and refuse those constraints. You can say something like, “I reserve the right to act on this information as I see fit. If you have a problem with that, it’s better that you don’t tell me.” You may be shocked to notice how many times this happens, and how much previously unnoticed emotional baggage you free yourself from when you reserve the right to act as you feel you need to.

Don’t make unconditional agreements based on a conditional future

It is dishonest to break your agreements. Often, people make promises regarding the future with implicit conditions that they don’t bother doubting because they believe them so sure. You do not know the future.³⁵ If you make an agreement that is based on your expectations of the future, you should state what those conditions are. If you can’t or won’t specify those conditions, you should not make the agreement.³⁶