Why It’s Important to be Honest as a Person and Creator

Honesty is a virtue and the question of why it’s important to be honest as a person and creator comes up in the journey of content creation and creating an audience. Honesty is what builds trust and to be a successful content creator, you need trust from your audience as that ensures your audience cares and listens to you.

The Meaning and Importance of Honesty

What is Honesty?

Honesty is the act of being intentionally truthful. Honesty is the conscious move to exercise truth to its full extent without holding anything back or implying lies. That means without any white lies, gaslighting, or suggesting falsehoods.

The 5 Attributes of Honesty

1. Courage.
2. Truthfulness.
3. Loyalty.
4. Godliness.
5. Reliability.

The Characteristics of Honesty

The importance of honesty can be broken down into key characteristics including the following.

Honesty Builds Trust

When you’re honest you build trust.

Trust fuels relationships and a trustworthy individual is likely to have more fruitful relationships long term. Trust builds self-esteem.

Honesty Builds on Your Self-Esteem

When you’re honest with others and yourself, you build on your self-esteem and self-love. You accept who you are and accept others, making it easier to be yourself around them.

Honesty is Simpler

Honesty is simpler even though not always easier. When you keep your interactions honest, you will avoid confusion and not contradict yourself, thus having a simpler way to communicate without having to dodge lies that you made before or double down on them. It is very difficult to lie, on the other hand, as you have to remember the lies and factor them into what you want to get across.

Honesty Shows that You Care

Honesty is a great indication that you care. In all relationships, when you’re honest with others it shows that you care and are mindful of not misleading others.

Honesty Shows Respect

Honesty also shows respect. I’m big on this myself and I have said time and again that I hate liars. Lying shows disrespect. You should respect someone enough to tell them the truth no matter whether it will make them feel bad or not. When you lie, it’s like you don’t think the person is capable of handling or taking the truth and I find that to be very disrespectful.

Honesty Increases Your Reliability

Honesty makes you more reliable. For instance, if you’re a content creator and I, as a member of your audience, know that you are honest, it’s easier for me to rely on what you say. Your reliability shoots up because you can be trusted and held to your word that everything you say is true.

Honesty Strengthens Relationships

Honesty strengthens relationships and vice versa. Healthy and long-lasting relationships are built on trust and that’s why most times people break up out of distrust or dishonesty. However, being honest and trustworthy cements the relationship and provides a strong foundation of trust, care, and reliability.

Honesty Allows Others to Open Up to You

Honesty also encourages others to open up without fearing being vulnerable around you. You may have a friend who is going through a lot without you knowing it and if you’re not honest, then they may not open up to you and give you an opportunity to help. You may also be a creator who is dishonest and members of your audience may not feel comfortable opening up and saying what they want to see more of or what you should change.

What is the Importance of Honesty?

Honesty is most important as a builder of trust. Even in relationships, your partner will only trust you if you’re being honest with them and they are being honest with you. For instance, I used to have a girlfriend who would easily lie until it got to the point I couldn’t trust anything she said because I couldn’t tell whether she was lying or not. Even if she mostly lied as a joke, over time, it eroded trust and culminated in a breakup.

Why is it Important to be Honest and Trustworthy as a Creator?

As a creator, you have the responsibility to not mislead your audience. For instance, if you ask your audience to attend an event, then ensure that the event is well planned because if it’s not, like TanaCon wasn’t, then they may never trust you again to attend another event. TanaCon was an event organized by a content creator where the attendees ended up being locked out of the venue as the tickets were oversold and there wasn’t enough space to hold everyone.

The event was so poorly organized that there wasn’t even food for those who managed to get into the venue after hours of waiting in line. Most people ended up being so sunburnt and not even managing to get in. The huge crowds also led to safety concerns. There were worries that the safety of the attendees could be compromised and the fire department had to be called in to evacuate everyone.

The Hype Without Putting in the Hours

Some creators will just hype something up and then not go through with putting in the work to see it become a success. Others will script publicity stunts in a selfish move to drum up their numbers without realizing that the trust their audience has in them erodes significantly when they figure out certain things or actions were just publicity stunts.

The single most important thing to a content creator is trust and they acquire this from their audience by being honest. When a creator is honest to themselves and their audience then they build a mutually beneficial relationship that is based on trust and both parties can benefit long term.

The Benefits of Honesty

Honesty in essence is generally beneficial as it is an invaluable trait to have as a person. The benefits of honesty can be broken down as follows.

Honesty ensures that you build tight-knit relationships that are built on trust and truthfulness. If people know that they can truly trust you then they get closer to you and you form lifelong bonds.

Honesty helps you maintain good mental and physical health as you don’t have to worry about keeping up lies or a facade. For instance, if you’re a creator and lie about eating junk, then you may be more inclined to eat unhealthily while not in public to keep up the lie. The result would be overall poor health.

Honesty builds on courage. When your conscience is clear that you are being honest with yourself and others, it builds courage and boosts your self-esteem.

Honesty builds confidence. The confidence you have in yourself to achieve and the confidence others have in you to succeed and be reliable go up significantly when you’re honest.

Honesty helps develop better judgment and choose friends. When you’re honest, you will easily stay away from dishonest and toxic people and can always tell when someone is taking you for a ride.

Honesty is a boost for your reputation. Even as a creator, you build trust by being honest, reliable, and a person of your word.

Honesty builds on authenticity. People find you more authentic and natural when you’re being honest. The same is true for yourself, you can reconcile what you know and what you believe about yourself easier. Honesty breeds authenticity and vice versa.

For instance, if Donald Trump said that his latest lawsuit is a witch-hunt, would you outright believe him? The truth is no. At least I wouldn’t, as when you cry wolf so many times, people stop believing you. That’s why it’s important to be honest to ensure authenticity.

Honesty is an indicator of maturity and self-acceptance. When you’re honest, others find you to be mature and to be accepting of yourself. These attributes are important as they make it easier for others to take you seriously and to see you as someone who is being themselves. That, for a creator, is crucial to your success in creating in whatever medium you create.