How do you tell the truth w/o sounding like and a$$?

How do you tell the truth w/o sounding like and a$$? –@socialhotchoco

In my post, “Seven Things Happen to You When You Are Honest” http://bit.ly/roqech I advocate, obviously, honesty, but not “radical honesty.”

Radical honesty is when you have no filter between brain and mouth and is advocated by many as the right way to live. For instance if you want to have sex with your wife’s best friend you just blurt that out to both of them. No good!

Most people don’t know how to do what I call “constructive honesty.”

I always view honesty as Rule #2, rule #1 being don’t hurt anyone. I try to make it a discipline not to even have bad thoughts about someone  (very hard for me! Particularly at three in the morning or with random bank tellers.)

I definitely don’t want to say something that will hurt someone.

Let’s say a friend asks me to look at a blog post. I look at it and don’t like it. I will take the time to think about it and then say, “do X, Y, and Z and this will be a good post.” That’s an honest answer, it helps them, and it helps their readers.

Let’s say someone asks me about a business idea they have. If I don’t like it I will say, “A lot of things have to happen to make that idea work. I think there;s a few ways you can simplify it to make it easy to do and still valuable to you.”

In other words: put effort into your honesty. Honest without effort is like shitting on the floor in the middle of your house. Nobody will visit you after that, and before long, you won’t even like yourself.