Do You Know When You Are Lying to Yourself?

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In a recent post, I stated that my new posting schedule would be Monday and Thursday.

As it turns out on Thursday, I had to take my baby boy (who I have written about before on the blog) to the vet after work. It was a distressing experience for both of us.

During the day, I kept telling myself that I would publish a post when I got home from the vet. Considering there was no post on Thursday, I think we all know how that turned out!

In essence, I had been lying to myself.

Deep down even as I said the words to myself – I knew they were a lie.

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With a post still to write, I turned my attention to Friday evening. It was a simple enough plan – go grocery shopping, come home after work and publish the post. I might even have a relaxing glass of wine first – how much harm could that do?

Clearly, my willpower had deserted me to even be thinking about a glass of wine before work!

An interesting thing happened as I turned on the computer, checked my blog stats and had a quick look at my Write Change Grow Facebook page – I was honest with myself.

I admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to write the post tonight. I knew it wasn’t going to get done and I stopped lying to myself about it.

Have an honest think about this. How often do you lie to yourself?

Here are just a few of the lies we tell ourselves.

I will stop smoking.
I will start eating healthier
I will start exercising more
I will get out of a bad relationship
I will work less
I will spend more time with family
I will spend more time writing and creating (yes that one came specifically from me)

One good way to tell if you are lying to yourself is by checking yourself for an excuse. Often without realizing, we will already have our excuse lined up and ready to go for why we didn’t deliver.

You can imagine how endless our excuses list can be. When we are good at lying to ourselves – we also become an expert in excuses.

The odd thing about lying is that many of us can easily spot when someone else is lying but are completely oblivious to when we are lying to ourselves.

So how do we stop lying to ourselves?

We start with awareness. We can’t actively stop a behavior if we are not aware of what we are doing in the first place.

Admit when you are lying to yourself.

Challenge yourself for a week. Listen to your thoughts and words and really start pulling yourself up on them. Understand the difference between when you are lying to yourself and when life genuinely gets in the way.

I recently finished reading a great book, The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard. This book covers 9 declarations, one being We Shall Not Break Integrity which deals with lying to others as well as lying to ourselves. It’s an excellent read, so grab yourself a copy.

I knew waking up this morning, I was going to get this post done today.

This time I knew it wasn’t a lie.

Lying to yourself eats away at your happiness. Know when you are lying to yourself and adjust your behavior. Do your best to phase lying to yourself out of your life.

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