Be honest with others about what you really want

Be honest with others about what you really want. If you feel like you need to hide what you really want, you should consider the possibility that your shame is suggesting you should want something better—something you would not be afraid to reveal to others. If you are not proud of what you really want, the way to fix that is not through pretending you want something else. Instead, seek what you truly want with your full focus, and you will quickly either find reasons to want something else more, or you will find reasons to be more confident in publicly admitting what you truly wanted all along.

If what you desire is good, the best way to obtain it is to be honest with other people. Those who desire to obtain what is best can only do so through emulating how God is, and he is honest. Sometimes, our reluctance to say what we really want isn’t so much because we think it is worse than what others will tolerate, but because we know it is better than they will tolerate.¹ We should still be open with others about our desires even when we are ridiculed for them, especially if that ridicule come precisely because they are righteous.² How else will the desires of others improve except through the beacon of your example?³ Those who hide their desires don’t realize how easy it is for others to see their true motives. Those whose desires are revealed to be something other than what they pretended are always thought less of by those who find out. When those hidden desires are evil, this is obvious, but it is as true when the hidden desires are good,⁴ in which case the discoverer will see you as a coward who didn’t love God or their neighbor enough to live true to the good they knew of and could have done.