How to break the habit of lying to yourself
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i totally met my dream girl a few years
ago
and i wasn’t even expecting it i just
come off of a previous relationship
just wanted to get to know a few of the
ladies and i jumped on the dating apps
and i
happened to match with a particular
special girl on bumble
one date turned into two two turned into
four
and within a few months you can say we
were falling for each other
you could even say we were falling in
love that’s a powerful feeling
but you know what else is a powerful
feeling knowing deep down inside
that was lying to her i told her a lie i
told her
that i was divorced and i wasn’t
yeah awkward right it’s usually one of
the
uh precursors you need in order to date
somebody else but the reality was
i hadn’t even started the paperwork yet
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and so as i had this lie in the back of
my brain and the more i got to know and
to
love this individual the more
i was afraid of telling the truth
a few months later she happened to be
going through my phone
and she found a particular text from my
wife
and then it was revealed to her that we
hadn’t even started the divorce
process yet
she was hurt betrayed i was embarrassed
shame what am i supposed to do
i hated it i hated myself
i just wanted to crawl in a box and
start over
i’m sure you can imagine how that story
ended the reality is
we are all liars
have you ever been caught in a lie
before
yeah have you ever been afraid of being
caught in a lie before
yeah it’s a horrible horrible feeling
clearly
i know what that feels like
but the reality is is every single one
of us is a liar
i’m a liar you’re a liar all
liars and i want us to do something i
want to you to turn to your neighbor
and say i am a liar if you’re watching
this online
turn to the person and say i am a liar
good i am glad we are now i feel better
now because now we’re all
on the same page now i know i’m not the
only one
but even saying it out loud is a really
uncomfortable feeling nobody wants to
admit
that they are a liar when in reality we
are all a liar
and the interesting thing about lying is
lying is a natural
part of survival research shows that we
learn
to lie about the 82 years old when we
can take
facts that true what we want or
what we uh what we to get what we want
or to avoid
pain if you’ve been around a
two-year-old you know you don’t have to
teach them how
to lie isn’t that right so we lie to get
what we want or to avoid
pain i was lying to avoid the pain of
loneliness
just nine months before i met this dream
girl i
had a suspicion that my wife was
cheating on me had a suspicion that my
wife was having an affair
and she kept denying it over and over
and over again
and i couldn’t take it any longer my
suspicion got the best of me and i
waited until she fell asleep i went
through
her phone and found the evidence of
her affair myself feeling
broken feeling pain feeling betrayed
and i feel like we could have worked
through the relationship if it was just
cheating but there was also the lying
that i couldn’t get through
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so we lie to get what we want or to
avoid
pain lying does not
exist in a vacuum we think if we tell a
lie
here and a lie there it’s not going to
have an impact on anybody else
right you could even ask the question if
if you tell a lie in the forest that
nobody is around to hear it is it still
a lie
is it i believe it is
because lying begins with lying yourself
and the moment you start lying to
yourself
that has a ripple effect that starts
impacting not only yourself
but the people around you and on and on
and i was caught
in the cycle of and the lie ended me
losing out on things that were really to
me
the impact of lying is significant
not only does it impact us it impacts
our health
as well research shows that
every lie you tell no matter how big or
how small that lie is
increase your cortisol levels spikes
your anxiety and stress
through the roof it doesn’t matter if
it’s a little white lie or a major lie
has the same effect on your body leaving
you with headaches
lower back pain and stomach issues
but not only does lying impact your
health it impacts your
relationships you know it doesn’t matter
even if it’s a big life
just that person who’s always late to
work right
like oh we just expect it of so and so
never of me no it’s usually of me
this is why i’m giving this talk
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religion give your word and something
falls through
that chips away at your integrity
even if you’re the person that says hey
i’m gonna come for coffee and you don’t
show up
for coffee chips away at our
relationships the third
thing that relationship impacts is our
impact relationships
impact our impact and i can think of two
popular characters
in history in near history where the
impact significantly impact by
their lives you can think of this person
president bill clinton two-term
president
had a great run great economy he had one
of the lowest employment rates but his
great run as a president was totally
derailed by
one lie he told under oath
impacting his impact you could think of
this other person lance
armstrong is another one he was the king
of cycling
he was bringing attention to the cycling
world not only the
bringing attention to help fundraise for
cancer
through his livestrong foundation
and yet all of that impact he was making
was sidelined by the scandal
of his denying the use of performance
enhancing
so lying impacts our health our
relationships
and our impact so when we lie
about lying is when we lie to get what
we want we end up
losing what we really want
it’s an oxymoron you think if we could
lie to get what we want we’re going to
be happy and satisfied but that’s not
the truth but what happens if we do in
order to
rebuild our integrity once it’s lost i
often wondered
if if bill clinton and lance armstrong
could go back and
what would they have done differently to
help rebuild
the lives that they have told now the
interesting thing is i mentioned
that you don’t have to teach a child to
lie right
but you do have to teach them honesty
and integrity
it’s like a muscle you are building over
time now this had me thinking
how am i going to rebuild my integrity
i just got caught in a lie i was ashamed
and embarrassed that i
didn’t know what i’m going to do so i
dove headstrong
into some self-development books i was
listening to audio book i could do to
try to make myself
better i had an epiphany because when
you start to chip away
at when your integrity is starting to be
chipped away by those
around you people lose trust in you
and then you start to lose trust in
yourself and you feel
like a loser at least that’s how i felt
i felt
like a loser and one of the epiphanies i
had
is that a loser is simply a collection
of badass
and if you want to rebuild your
integrity
you must break those bad habits and
learn
new habits you must break those habits
and learn new habits here are three
habits i believe you can learn
in order to break the habit of lying to
yourself
the first one is self-awareness i said
we lie
in order to avoid pain you first must
identify
what is the pain you are running from
what is the pain you are attempting to
cover up when we spend so much time
lying to other people and we spend so
much time
lying to ourselves it’s hard for us to
know what we’re running from because
we’ve put on
so many masks and we put up so many
fronts
with so many people but the first step
is self-awareness really digging down
and taking off the mask so that we can
identify the pain
that we are running from and then once
you’ve identified
the pain you must take ownership of that
pain
and a lot of times the main reason why
we lie to people is because we want to
push the pain as far away we don’t want
anybody to know about the pain we are
going through
in our life
but the truth is there is power in our
pain
there’s power in our pain let me
illustrate i was with a group of people
there were
actors and athletes and a lot of
important people in this circle
and there was a guy who was facilitating
a conversation
and he started going around the room
asking people individual questions
and as they asked this one individual a
question he was a hedge fund manager he
went on to explain what he did he said i
went to uc berkeley then went on to
graduate from stanford
and i had this many billions of dollars
under management and the facilitator
said
stop i want you to now explain what is
the pain
that you’re going through in your life
and he went on he said okay
he said well my marriage is falling
apart my health is deteriorating i feel
horrible and he went on and on and on
and and the facilitator said notice what
happened when you were bragging about
all of your accolades
when you were bragging about all the
things you were doing the room was
sitting back with their arms crossed
not really paying attention but as soon
as you started talking about your pain
the room leaned in
this is why i believe that there is
power in our
pain and it’s not something for us to
run from but it’s something for us to
take
ownership of the third thing is is take
action what i like to call
be the buffalo be the buffalo now
i spend part of my time in cheyenne
wyoming
cheyenne wyoming wyoming is a great
place i don’t know if you’ve ever been
there before we’re recruiting people so
if you want to move
there’s plenty of room there’s plenty of
room
and one of the cool things about wyoming
is that we have buffalo
technically bison and one of the cool
things i learned about buffalo
is that when buffalo see a storm coming
up over the rockies
they actually turn and face the storm
going into the storm head on thus
getting through the storm that much
faster
now their friends the cows when they see
a storm coming up over the rockies
they run away from the storm thus
staying in the storm even
longer so when first we’re able to
identify the pain
second we’re able to take ownership of
the pain and the third thing we do in
order to
break the habit of lying to ourselves is
taking
radical action taking
radical action being the buffalo and
being willing
to go all in and do whatever it takes to
make a change i knew at that point
as i was in the midst of this
relationship with this special someone
that i didn’t want to be a loser i
didn’t want to lose out on this thing
that was so
important for me so i knew i needed to
take
radical action i knew i needed to own
this situation and i knew
i needed to take action in order for it
to
work now you have a choice
you have a choice to be the buffalo
take on the storm take on it head on
which isn’t always the easy way out
or you have a choice to be the cow and
run in the opposite direction and avoid
your problems all along i had that
choice i could have run from the lie i
told
and continued to stay in that cycle of
lying
but i decided to be the buffalo and i
knew
i had a choice that i know you have a
choice as well
to take radical action radical honesty
and to go all in now i have to tell you
these three things
might seem really simple you’re like
jeff come on i could have read this
anywhere i could write this in a
kindergartner book yeah it is simple
but in order for it to work you must be
willing to go all in
you must be willing to go all out you
must be willing to be 100 honest you
must be willing
to go you must be willing to risk
everything and lose everything
and thankfully when i went back to this
girl
and i totally laid everything out i was
vulnerable it was a horrible feeling
didn’t like it at all but it was also
healing
it was also freeing
i was free to choose and i gave her the
freedom to choose and luckily she did
choose me
and two years later she continues to
choose me
but you know what winning doesn’t always
mean you get the girl
winning to me means you have the
integrity
the courage to live the integrity that
you were meant to live and to be who you
are supposed to be
now when i look in the mirror i don’t
see a lying lonely loser that just
misses out on everything that is caught
in this cycle of hurting myself over and
over and over again
but i see a person of value i see a
person with flaws but a person who is
willing to show up
and do whatever it takes even
when it’s hard i see a person who is
here to call others like you to join me
in the journey of being real with
yourself so that we
can be real with others thank you
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you