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Greetings and welcome to my post. It is December 2014 and this is the time of the year in which we pause and focus on giving gifts to one another. As you know, all the big retail shops & internet shops are hoping you will buy, buy, and buy all the wonderful discounts on various items they have posted on their respected websites. So it is December and it is Christmas and it is natural to focus on buying someone an item as a gift.

So let me ask you to consider an alternative gift to someone you love or someone who is important to you this year that you cannot buy on line, at a retail store, or any other half dozen places in which you shop. This year let me invite you to consider giving these four gifts: Love, Honesty, Faithfulness, and Compassion.

As you know, Billy Joel sang a song about this topic “Honesty.” Please recall the words he had to say about this subject:

If you search for tenderness, it isn’t hard to find, you can have the love you need to live. But if you look for truthfulness, you might just as well be blind; it always seems to be so hard to give. Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue. Honesty is hardly ever heard. And mostly what I need from you.

The reason this word honesty is important as a gift to give to another person is when you are not being honest, you are being deceiving. Deception and lying damages a relationship. The act of lying is much more damaging than the things being lied about, because lying undermines the knowing of one another and the connection itself.

So this Christmas, let me ask you to consider this: Why don’t you say to the significant people in your life that starting on Christmas Day and for all of 2015, you are going to start being more honest about revealing yourself to them. Now this does not mean that you need to share your dirty little secrets or all your past sins or all the ways you have lied to someone this past year. That is confession and that is different than honesty.

Instead what I want you to do is value the gift moving forward of saying to yourself that you do want to be an honest person. A strong relationship requires a commitment to each other of total honesty. Most of the time, when people are not being honest it is due to fear as you are being dishonest for the purpose of protecting yourself. Try to confront your fears that drive dishonesty or deception. Maybe some of your fears might be fear of real closeness and being known; fear of abandonment and loss of love if they are known; or fear of being seen as bad or not good enough.

So let me ask you to give a card to your most important connecting people and announce to them that the best gift you want to give to them this Christmas and for all of 2015 are these five areas of your life that you will attempt to give in total honesty: feelings; needs, hurts, desires and failures. Just work on these five. If someone significant in your life asks you a question about any topic and you can be honest by sharing with your words, feelings and actions how you feel, what are your desires, and what you want, then this can create a change in all your relationships.

Be brave, be bold, be real, be honest. We all know how to be dishonest, lie, cover up, or pretend. But instead give the best gift to yourself and to your important relationships: work on being honest. And my hunch is that when you share or announce this to your most important people, they will be shocked, grateful, tearful, and happy. My hope is that they will welcome your announcement with gratitude and you will be a person of integrity and walk your walk and talk your talk in showing them you can be an honest person. Thanks for reading.