Being honest with yourself doesn’t mean being cruel to yourself. Facts, not insults.

Harshness often gets mistaken for honesty, as though the most brutal description is the truest. Usually it is not even accurate: calling yourself lazy explains nothing, while noticing that you put the hard subject last every evening explains quite a lot. Insults also end the thinking, because once you have a label there is nothing left to examine. Facts leave you somewhere to go.

Catch the next sentence you say about yourself and ask whether it describes an action or hands out a verdict. Rewrite it as the action, in neutral words. The useful version usually tells you what to do tomorrow, which is how you know it is honest.