You’re Lying to Yourself: Don’t Believe Everything You Think

You’re a master at fooling yourself. Your brain knows what to tell you so you can justify to yourself taking the comfortable path through life. Your capacity to deceive yourself is almost unlimited.

Unfortunately, these lies come home to roost eventually. There’s a price to be paid for believing a lie. You’ve been paying it for years.

Free yourself from the lies you tell yourself:

1. I must wait for the perfect moment to act. This is just an excuse to procrastinate. When this lie runs through your head, ask yourself what you’re afraid of. You can be certain you’re avoiding something. It may be the fear of failure or the fear of hard work. Ask yourself what you’re avoiding and why.

2. I don’t feel like it. This one might be the truth, but it’s irrelevant. If it needs to be done, it needs to be done. If you only do things when you feel like doing them, many things will never be completed properly.

• If you wait until the eventual time crunch forces you to act, your results will be poorer than if you had acted sooner.

3. I lack the right personality to do what I want to do. Perhaps your dream is to be a standup comedian but you feel you’re too introverted. There are successful people in every possible field you can imagine with completely different personalities. You can be an extroverted librarian or an introverted politician.

• It’s easy to find successful people with the “wrong” personality for their field.

4. I’ll do it tomorrow. How many times have you told yourself that one? How many times were you wrong? In most cases, you’re putting it off because the thought of doing it now makes you uncomfortable. That’s unlikely to change tomorrow.

• Have the courage to tackle it right now and get it off your back. Think about how much better you’ll feel after it’s done.

5. I must follow the rules. There’s a difference between laws and rules. Breaking a law can land you in jail. Breaking a rule might make someone upset. The most successful people have managed to break the rules in a positive way. When everyone follows the rules, nothing changes.

6. People that care about me should agree with me. Do you always agree with them? You should be able to expect the people that care about you to support you. There’s no reason why they should always agree with you. Be confident in your decisions.

7. Being busy means I’m getting things done. We’ve all lived days full of activity where little was accomplished. Accomplishing a lot requires spending time and effort on the right activities. It’s easy to spin your wheels and wear yourself out with little to show for it.

8. I should always be able to enjoy my life. This might be possible in theory, but most of us aren’t enlightened enough to live this reality today. Bad things happen and must be managed.

• Enjoying your life doesn’t excuse the need to take care of your business. You’ll have days without enough time to enjoy yourself. You might have to give the dog a bath even though you’d rather watch the ball game.

Everyone lies to themselves. Fooling yourself is one of the easier things you do each day, but when you deny your own truth, you limit your potential. Recognize the damage done by the lies you tell yourself. They might bring you comfort today, but you’ll pay for them tomorrow with your discomfort.