Overcoming Dishonesty

As promised here are some guidelines to overcoming dishonesty, if this has become a habit in your life. Now if you are trying to change someone else this probably won't work because the person that is dealing with the dishonesty habit has got to admit it is a problem and work on these areas themselves.

Again, I want to give credit to William Hartley's Lovebusters book for this information.

Step 1: Identify what type of dishonesty or lies your are using (protector, trying to look good or avoiding conflict or trouble.

Step 2: Understand why you have been dishonest. What motivates you to be dishonest. Ask your self these questions:

• What are the most important reason that you are dishonest with other?
• How does your dishonesty hurt your relationships (ask your spouse this)
• If you have tried to overcome this in the past, how did you try?
• If you were to decide that you could be totally honest with the relationships in your life, could you do it? Why or why not?
• Are you willing to be totally honest? Why or why not?

Step 3: Create a strategy to overcome dishonesty. Create a plan to achieve your goal of honesty. To do this ask these questions:

• Describe your dishonesty, the way you are dishonest.
• Describe the conditions that seem to trigger your dishonesty. Include the physical setting, people, behavior of those people and any thing else that is relevant to the trigger
• What changes in these conditions would help you avoid dishonesty
• Which changes can your spouse help you with?
• Describe you plan to change these conditions. Include a deadline to make the change complete. Have an accountability person to help you.
• How will you measure the success of your plan?
• If your plan does not succeed within your time limit will you make a commitment to seek professional help with this problem?

Step 4: Document your progress. Indicate day, date, time, type of dishonesty and circumstances. If your strategy is working you will find yourself listing fewer instances of dishonesty and seeing yourself more often choosing to be honest.

Our next post will be dealing with the lovebuster "Annoying Habit's" That one should be fun!