Honesty helps to overcome fear

I’m the executive director for the West Plains Chamber of Commerce. My job is to connect people, businesses and communities together with the vision of making our West Plains area a better place to live, work and play. I had the opportunity to attend the West Plains PACE awards ceremony last May and I think PACE is such a great program to honor students for demonstrating the traits that are in all of us and when practiced make our world a better place.

For February, the character trait of the month is honesty, which is sincerity and reverence or love for the truth. What I’ve learned throughout my life is people connect with those they know and trust, and the initial step in the process of being known and trusted is choosing to be honest with yourself and others.

Honesty isn’t about being perfect but more about not having to hide from our imperfections. Many of the times I feel the urge to lie or exaggerate the truth about myself come in seasons when I’m worried about people rejecting me if they really knew me or worried about people finding out about one of my failures.

Very clearly, I remember a conversation I had with a man I didn’t know that well but I wanted to impress. I told him of a trip I made to South America which was true but then started to exaggerate about my time there. It seems silly looking back but I made up a story of trying to buy a llama to add intrigue to the trip. Truth is I had never tried to buy a llama.

Then, not long after this conversation, I read in a book about the importance of honesty and how our lies always start to slowly unravel and ruin relationships. The book asked me to think back of any times I had lied or exaggerated to someone about myself and challenged me to call the person I had lied to and apologize. I was so afraid to make the call but I felt convicted.

I finally called the man and simply said, “Do you remember my story about the llama? Please forgive me but I made it up to impress you. I respect you too much to lie to you.” Then he forgave me and put my fear at ease. What I was afraid of never came to be. I wasn’t rejected but instead that man has become one of my most honest and authentic friendships and today we look back on that llama story and laugh.

I don’t think it’s common to admit when we’ve lied about something because we fear being found out and rejected. Telling the truth and being honest takes courage. Also, being comfortable in your own skin takes courage as well. The truth is we might follow the leaders who seem impressive today but overtime everyone can see them for who they really are. The lies we tell and the exaggerations we make slowly unravel the relationships around us. It’s the leaders and friends that are honest and don’t pose as someone else who we follow to the ends of the earth.

Toby Broemmeling is the executive director of the West Plains Chamber of Commerce.