This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Good news: If you’re worried you might be a phony, there’s a good chance you’re the real deal. “The true phony is convinced they’re not one,” Arthur C. Brooks explained earlier this summer. But no matter what the facts, your experiences, or other people tell you, it can be hard to believe that your own talents and strengths are genuine. Brooks lists a few ways to beat the strong pull of impostor syndrome, starting with an important one: Don’t talk to yourself like someone you hate.
Today’s newsletter explores how to be honest with yourself—and, by extension, with other people.
Oh Honesty
How to Know You’re Not a Phony
By Arthur C. Brooks
Impostor syndrome can certainly harm your happiness. Here are three ways to get over it.
The Club Where You Bare Your Soul to Strangers
By Taylor Prewitt
An evening with the “authentic-relating” movement, playing games designed to build intimacy (From 2017)
Quit Lying to Yourself
By Arthur C. Brooks
Real happiness starts with telling yourself the truth, even when it hurts. (From 2021)
Still Curious?
- You’ve been lied to about lying: The conventional wisdom about how to spot a liar is all wrong.
- Honesty is love: Sharing hard truths might be uncomfortable, but it’s a surer route to happiness than hiding them, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2022.
Other Diversions
P.S.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “Bird watching, in our backyard and while traveling, never fails to instill a sense of wonder in me,” Becky L., 54, from Santa Fe, New Mexico, writes. “Such beautiful creatures capable of vast migrations and aerial acrobatics! Recently, on a hike with our son in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in our new home of Santa Fe, we watched a young Cooper’s hawk alight on a tree right above us as it stalked something nearby.”
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Isabel