You are only ever as good as your word, and that’s why honesty is a critical part of our character development program.

As Sensei Cody Diesbourg says, at its simplest, honesty means telling the truth. Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because we want other people to believe us and have faith in us. This means having the courage and honesty to recognize when we get something wrong, and make efforts to correct it.

Honesty is not just towards other people. We also want to be honest with ourselves. “Lying to yourself is the worst,” Sensei Cody says, “because then you’re making it so that you can’t improve, you can’t grow from anything.”

As one of his instructors once put it, “you can either make excuses, or you can make progress. But you can’t make both.” Be honest with yourself, be honest with others, and you have the chance to grow into something awesome.