We are not lying, we are just very good at fooling ourselves.

Photo by Tommy Lisbin on Unsplash

We will not admit that we are lying, we are just good at fooling ourselves.

 

We all know that eating one piece of chocolate cake feels really good, and eating two pieces makes us feel less good, and eating three pieces gives us a tummy pain, and one more piece we start vomiting. But we carry on doing it because we fool ourselves that “just this time” is ok.

 

Everytime we smoke a cigarette, we tell ourselves that it’s “OK” to smoke until we are 45 years old and “then” we will stop. Even though we know that smoking one more cigarette is not ok. We know that we don’t feel as well as we would be, simply because of the last puff of cigarette we have inhaled.

 

You can do a quick market survey and check it out. I would bet that no one who smoked a cigarette this morning can tell you that he feels really much better as a result of the cigarette he smoked or that he feels he is giving himself and others around him the best life he could have by smoking another cigarette.

 

Habits are built by stories we tell ourselves. Some habits have positive consequences and make us feel well and help us to grow. Other habits make us feel worse and bring our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others down. We do it because of the stories we tell ourselves.

 

To be more accurate, because of the lies we tell ourselves. But we don’t like to call them “lies” because we want to be honest and virtuous people. And accepting that we are telling ourselves “lies” implies that we are not honest and that we have to stop telling lies.

 

We prefer to continue telling ourselves that we are “fooling ourselves” than to tell ourselves “we are telling lies to ourselves”, because we like to get off the hook without guilt.

 

I am curious, how many of us would be willing to make a word change, to go back to calling lies “lies”, and give ourselves the most priceless gift………………of giving ourselves what’s best for our wellbeing and for the wellbeing of everyone we care about, HONESTLY?