Tag: lies

How To Start Telling The Truth Instead Of Lies

Photo by h heyerlein on Unsplash

Photo by h heyerlein on Unsplash

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.” — Cervantes

 

A little-known fact is that it isn’t all that uncommon to bend the truth. People do it all the time. I know I’ve slipped and told a few whoppers. Sometimes it is to spare someone else from feeling uncomfortable. Sometimes it is to give yourself an escape from consequences you know you will encounter by telling the truth. But guess what? The truth will eventually come out, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

There is something universally appealing in this, although few would admit it. No one wants to be regarded as a liar — even though almost everyone sometimes falls into that category. The idea that little obfuscations or outright tall tales would come back to haunt us isn’t particularly attractive. While working so hard to skirt the truth — knowing full well that it is wrong, but doing it anyway — means there is some self-improvement that needs tending to.

Think of the biggest lies in history and how they eventually were unmasked. The world is flat was debunked. Men are superior was called into question. “I’ll call you” is universally discredited. Big lie or little, as Shakespeare’s quote in “The Merchant of Venice” so aptly reveals — “the truth will out.”

If you accept that truth has more value than lies and acknowledge that it is going to come out anyway, how do you begin to cultivate the habit of telling the truth to begin with? Is this something you can teach yourself to do — after years of doing just the opposite?

You can and here’s how.

Stop and think about what you are going to reveal.

Before you respond to a question, embark on telling a story, fill out an employment application or apply for a loan, pause and think what you are about to reveal. The first thought that pops into your head may be a lie, or it could be the truth, which you quickly push aside. You will know whether it is truth or lie. Being able to identify what the thought is qualifies you to make the decision what to do next. You need the time to figure out what you are going to say or do.

Prepare a truthful answer.

Prepare answers (truths) you are willing to say ahead of time so you’re not stumped when you need to say something. Let’s say you are going to a job interview and you want to appear your best. You know you will be asked about your strengths and your accomplishments. Instead of saying you saved your previous employer $100,000 by uncovering duplicate projects when you only observed someone else doing that, if it is true you were part of a team that streamlined corporate projects to maximize efficiency, say that instead. If you are not particularly innovative, talk up how you’re a hard worker that supports team efforts. If you take the time to realize your strengths, you will be able to come up with talking points that are true, not false.

Give yourself time to think of an appropriate (and truthful) answer.

If you are uncomfortable, ask for a break. Maybe the truth you tell now would cause harm, make someone unhappy, or result in your getting fired. Instead of instantly incriminating yourself, ask for a break — literally. You need some time to frame the truth so that it’s less harmful, or to summon your resources if the blowback will be serious. It is better to say nothing than to blow it completely by telling a lie that will come back to roost.

Work on your core values.

Learning to tell the truth instead of spouting lies every time you open your mouth takes patience, time and practice. Begin by addressing your core values, identifying them and striving to live in accordance to them. If you value friendship, act like a faithful friend. If you prize family above all else, put your family ahead of everything else you do. Be the person you most admire. Adopt the traits of people you respect.

Ask others for help.

No doubt you have people in your life who are familiar with your tendency to embroider the truth, to embellish stories for effect, or to keep telling falsehoods despite your best efforts to stop. Ask for their help in supporting your quest to tell the truth. Have them call you out when they recognize you telling a lie. This might smart a bit, but you need the assistance to change your behavior.

 

This article was originally published on Psych Central.

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10 Ways Lies Hurt You

 

Photo by Matt Sclarandis/Unsplash

Photo by Matt Sclarandis/Unsplash

Who hasn’t told a lie from time to time? Maybe just a half-truth, but still a falsehood? Whether you’ve learned from experience that lying gets you ahead or destroys what you thought you had, lying will always have a profound effect. What you may not realize, however, is just how negatively lies and lying are. Here’s a look at 10 ways lies hurt you.

  1. The more you lie, the easier it gets.

Like a sled rocketing down an icy slope, repeated lies begin to spew out of your mouth without any effort. You’ve gotten away with it, suffered no ill consequences and have no governor on your tongue to keep your lying at bay. After a short time, it’s just easier to lie than tell the truth.

  1. The more you lie, the bigger the lies you tell.

What begins as a small lie never stays that way. One lie begets a slew of offspring, sometimes related, often just hanging around like ill-tempered friends. Think of a lie as a snowball, first small and accumulating in size as it rolls downhill. It’s also impossible to make a lie smaller once it’s begun to grow. Thus, the more lies you tell, the bigger they get.

  1. Lies destroy relationships.

No relationship can flourish on a foundation of lies. If you can’t rely upon a partner, loved one, close friend or co-worker to tell the truth, how can you put your trust in that person? When you know someone is a liar, it creates a chasm across which you’re increasingly reluctant to travel. In the wake of lies, relationships founder and fail or become quashed before they have a chance to begin.

  1. Lies trigger the release of stress hormones.

A lie isn’t just words that come out of the mouth. Precipitating the verbalization of the lie is a build-up of stress hormones. You get excited, releasing cortisol and readying you to combat the effects your lies might create. Long-term spikes in cortisol are bad for your health, creating a perfect stage for developing serious medical conditions.

  1. Lying uses a lot of negative physical and mental energy.

When you lie, you must constantly think of how to spin it, where there’s a nugget that others may cling to, how much they’ll be able to buy before beginning to question the veracity, how to keep others from finding out the truth. In short, it takes a tremendous amount of physical and mental energy to construct this negative and elaborate form of communication. That’s energy better spent doing positive things.

  1. Constant lying builds a false sense of reality.

It doesn’t take much time at all for you to begin to believe your own web of lies. In fact, the reality you inhabit is false. It just seems real to you. The more you lie, the more out of touch with reality your life becomes. You may not even recognize the truth anymore, let alone voice it – even to yourself.

  1. Lying creates a vicious cycle.

It’s often been said that once a lie is out of your mouth, there’s no putting it back. What’s also true is that lying sets into motion a vicious cycle. To exist, knowing that you’ve lied repeatedly, you must perpetuate the lie, rigidly adhere to it despite all proof to the contrary. Lying is a spiral that is nearly impossible to escape from.

  1. Lies are a way to avoid the pain of living.

Many people tell lies to mask the pain they feel in their lives. They don’t like that they have no or few friends, so they create imaginary friendships and boast of their connections. Pathological liars are all over social media, along with everyday fabricators who seek to maximize their made-up accomplishments to make them feel better about themselves and convince others of their superiority. This doesn’t work in the long run as constant lying is a sign of some serious deficit in the liar’s emotional well-being.

  1. You waste time covering your tracks.

While there’s much good you could be accomplishing in life, when you habitually lie, you’re going to miss out on opportunities because you spend so much time covering your tracks. This is time wasted, time you’ll never get back. It’s also increasingly impossible to cover the trail of lies you’ve told. Sooner or later, you’re going to get found out. Dreading that eventuality won’t make it go away.

  1. Lies extinguish hope and trust.

The accumulation of negativity because of lies has another life-altering effect: It destroys hope and trust. Not only is the liar incapable of trusting others or finding hope in any situation, he or she has drained all hope and trust in himself or herself. Life becomes bleak and dreary, indeed, when all there is to look forward to is a never-ending litany of lies.

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