Real honesty versus an image of honesty.

Starriol

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I was thinking the other day after reading 48 laws of power.
It is said that being honest is important to lead a succesfull life... or actually, what's important is to give an image of being honest?

Let's say you are the most honest guy in the world. But an enemy (let's say you are a politician and you have a lot of them) decides to sunk your image and makes a lie about you being a dishonest prick with your taxes, for example, that everyone believes.
You are ****ed for life!

On the other hand, the other guy, a dirty criminal, has gotten everyone to believe he is clean... but he uses maquiavelan moves like the one above once and again to raise in the food chain...

Who is more succesfull? Who is more powerfull?

I believe that an action is good by it's results, not by it means. That is, a dishonest move with a good result in mind is better than doing nothing.

That get's me to another subject. It IS important for you what others think of you. If you get people to believe you are trustworthy, you are gonna get a good start in bussiness, for example. It is secundary it is true, what's important is that people BELIEVE IT.
So all this about "don't caring what others think" is, at some situations, a lousy strategy in life.

I'd like to hear your views (kinda contradictory right? Hear your views...).
 

Chillisauce

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what you should understand is that usually how people see you, IS how it is.

Perception is reality.

Honesty is usually derived from actions making it very hard to fake.

For example:

Me: tell me, you can trust me.
You: Ok, i'm secretly in love with my cousin.

I go off and tell the world and it gets back to you. Would you believe my words or actions?

So if your going to 'fake' honesty it means you have to do honest things to come across right, but wait - that just means your being honest.

Anyone who you can trick into thinking your honest by words alone is either stupid or inexperienced - something you should not bank upon if your going into business.

its all about being congruent. (stolen from shez.. Zing!)
 

TheRelic

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Originally posted by Chillisauce
what you should understand is that usually how people see you, IS how it is.

Perception is reality.

That doesn't rub with me.

Maybe you can expand on your thoughts a little?

Because it seems to assume that everyone operates on a similar plane of rationale...
 

PRMoon

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Honesty is a matter of perspective. First off there are so many people in the world that you'll have very few people you could or should never be at least a little weary of. People are "inherently good" but what is is honest for you may not be so for someone else.

Regardless of how you define honest, being honest and appearing to be honest are very different. If one of my friends likes a girl and told me to swear never to tell anyone I'd probably break my promise and tell the girl but in a pretty round about way. From that view I was being dishonest with my friend by going against his wishes but I did it for a good reason.

That example is pretty simple, there are different levels of human interaction that shape and form the understanding of honesty and then there are people who are good at selling you on your preception of other peoples out look on honesty is a skill.
 

Chillisauce

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But you see, your friend doesnt know about how you told the girl right? So in essense that action hasnt taken place.

But from the girls perspective you have probably dropped a notch in honesty. One action doesnt set you as honest or dishonest, its the sum of all your actions.

That example is pretty simple, there are different levels of human interaction that shape and form the understanding of honesty and then there are people who are good at selling you on your preception of other peoples out look on honesty is a skill.
I agree with this, check out the monster post i'm about to submit with the paragraph stating 'With enough practice you can learn to fake congruence' and the problems associated with faking it. Basically the problem is that while your above example is good at faking it, its incredibly hard to keep that up in the long term with overwhelming evidence suggesting you arent honest. (and lets face it, if theres not evidence to suggest you arent honest after a medium-long term relationship then you havent been dishonest much.)

Hope that makes sense - the next post i'm putting in i kinda wrote for myself to get my thoughts in order but i'll put it here too. Mayb into tips in a month or two after some rewording.
 

Chillisauce

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Originally posted by Starriol

That get's me to another subject. It IS important for you what others think of you. If you get people to believe you are trustworthy, you are gonna get a good start in business, for example. It is secondary it is true, what's important is that people BELIEVE IT.
So all this about "don't caring what others think" is, at some situations, a lousy strategy in life.

I'd like to hear your views (kinda contradictory right? Hear your views...).
Summary answer:
a) caring what others think is not going to change anything - actions change reality - not thoughts.
b)you cannot consistently 'fake it' so if you wish to come across as trustworthy you must BE TRUSTWORTHY. Stop trying to skip to the EFFECT without first having a CAUSE people!

The mega post below will explain b as i think a is common sense knowledge already. For those wondering, yes this post IS about the importance of inner game to people who want to be successful with women but it is ALSO about how to be successful in life too.
Let me pose a question relating to this.

If your feeling highly confident and don’t try to purposefully deceive the other person , is there a chance you wont come across as confident? I don’t believe there is.

Other people have only got some stimulus you give to work out (mostly subconsciously.. ie. when you get that 'gut' feeling about someone) what kind of person you are, such as ;

*vocal (words, pace, tone and all that)
* body language (a big one, includes facial expressions + eye movement)
*general appearances (height, build – fat, skinny, athletic...clothing, general attractiveness)
*and your actions(how you respond to problems/events, etc)
There are probably other types of stimulus, if you can think of some post and I’ll add it in.

So in order to trick someone into thinking you have a certain image you must be congruent in all stimulus. For example, a guy comes up to you and tells you that he's a PUA - he has the talk down (words + all the vocal stuff) but it just doesnt click. His body language is off (not portraying confidence or whatever) and he's 400 pounds. Then when you ask him to approach a HB4 he gets shutdown. So does he now have a PUA image in your mind? No - because he wasn’t congruent.

With enough practice you can learn to fake congruence, and some have - check out mASF (speedseduction) stuff and that's what a lot of people are doing. The problem with this is two-fold, firstly it’s EXTREMELY difficult to control all your stimulus coming out, most of which is probably subconscious by the way. I mean, half of you probably cant pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time, so you think its realistic to expect to be able to do all of the above?

Secondly, its hard to keep up. Ever tried to put on a 'cool' persona back in school? I tried it years back when i moved to a new school and lasted about 4 days before cracking. Its exhausting! And once you crack its right back to the old you (an example of this is Mystery, he's an awesome PUA but evidence suggests he can’t keep the relationships going at all)

So now hopefully I’ve impressed on you the importance of being congruent and why you shouldn’t try to fake it.

‘But what now, how do I become congruent?’ You ask. I’m not going to lie to you, the road wont be easy > but when you have completed these steps you will truly be a man.

The answer is this
1) write down a list of the ways you want to be perceived. Remember to take from all stimulus sources.

2) Find out the route causes of these stimuli (you will find many overlap). For example from my list – a lot of my body language stimulus such as eye-contact and posture came back to confidence. Pook actually takes this a step further with articles such as ‘be a man’ – he finds the route cause OF the route cause of the stimuli.

3) Rate that list in importance and take the top 5, 10, 20, (depending on you, its your life ;) )

4) Create a plan on how you are going to achieve these points, figure out exactly what you need to do.

5) Phase in one-by-one, some famous guy said ‘You are the sum of your habits.’ By making something a habit (done by constant repetition), it becomes congruent.

6) Some of the points will require A LOT of time, for example one of mine is to put on 50 pounds of muscle, I have already been doing this for a year – could take up to 3 more to achieve my goal.

7) re-evaluate once a month on your goals.




The ‘action’ stimulus you have written there such as the above guy wanting to become honest require different methods to achieve. Heres how I do it. Your new action ‘wants’ describe the new boundaries to your actions in life, if one is honesty then that means from now on your going to strive to be honest (this parts all about willpower), when a decision must be make think: which is the honest way to do it. Eventually this will be made habit.

Disclaimer: Yes this is ‘field-tested’, I first thought of this philosophy around 3 years back and have been working on it myself to become who I want to be. Secondly, I’d bet my left testicle that I’ve subconsciously ripped off 90%+ from other places such as the other tips on this site, motivational books and discussions with people but that does not make it false and I have not done it on purpose :).
 
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