Nobody wants to be perceived as a liar. Liars are thought to be untrustworthy at best and unethical at worst. Despite this, we are quite willing to lie to ourselves all of the time. “I’ll have this sleeve of Oreos today since my diet begins tomorrow,” I would persuade myself. “I enjoy my work; who cares if I grumble about it all the time?” “I am always honest with myself,” for example. It makes no logical sense to deceive oneself. After all, lying is telling someone something you know is false. When you are both the liar and the one who is lied to, you must both know and not know the truth. In practice, this entails deliberately ignoring essential information in order to reach a conclusion that is more convenient than what the facts appear to support.
Everyone deceives themselves, but it doesn’t make it harmless. It is related to poor mental health at high doses. At modest levels, it can insulate the self-deceiver from negative emotions for a short time, but it remains a barrier to the profound well-being that comes from living with integrity. We must learn to be entirely honest with ourselves if we are to be truly happy. Few people are totally truthful with others. During a 10-minute talk, 60% lied at least once, and many lied numerous times. It’s possible that distorting reality inside your own imagination is even more widespread. Accuracy in perception is a prevalent aspect of depression, which is sometimes referred to as “depressive realism.” Life is merely a series of hard realities.
Consider the last time someone left a room in which you were present and you cracked a joke at his expense. He knows this is occurring since he presumably did the same thing when you left the room, but he needs to ignore this information in order to continue on with his day. Self-deception is sometimes used to defend one’s ego or to gain bravery. On Saturday Night Live, former Senator Al Franken notably personified that concept as Stuart Smalley, an unpleasant, syrupy self-help television programme presenter who used the slogan “I’m good enough, I’m clever enough, and doggone it, they like me.” Similarly, if speaking in front of large groups isn’t your strong suit, you may try to build your confidence before a nerve-racking presentation by proclaiming, “I am a wonderful public speaker!” At a higher level, the entrepreneur convinces himself that his illogical concept is a brilliant idea. Fake it till you make it is one thing; fake it forever, even to yourself, is quite another. This is true if your success at work or school is the consequence of cheating or preferential treatment, but you choose to attribute it to your own efforts. In a 2020 experiment, psychologist Paul K. Piff and his colleagues demonstrated that individuals value the role of luck more when they are losing than when they are winning. For example, your coworker may believe that her recent promotion was completely due to her good work; others may observe that she is also the boss’s niece.
Lying to oneself about your worth excuses undue advantage while making genuine merit more difficult to recognize and reward. That’s bad enough, but self-deception gets hazardous when it ignores painful but necessary facts, such as an abusive relationship or a lethal habit. Denial can be used to perpetuate dependency and delay the unpleasant process of recovery in persons who struggle with drugs. These self-falsehoods both postpone and exacerbate the adjustments we need to make, as well as our lies to others. In reality, self-deception is a basic manipulative persuasive strategy. “It’s not a lie if you believe it,” as the old adage goes. All of that self-deception, whether about your abilities or your connection with substances, requires a lot of effort to keep up. Consider procrastination, a type of self-deception that might be minor (“I’ll empty the dishes later”), or disastrous (“I’ll contact the doctor about that chest issue next week”). This type of self-deception is costly not just because avoiding issues might exacerbate them, but also because the procrastinator must repeat the mental labour of a job without receiving the benefits of actually completing it. Why put “Change banks” on your to-do list for months on end when you can do it once and be done with it?
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The self-deception formula may appear to be “just a bit to protect your feelings and make life simpler” in order to optimize your near-term satisfaction without causing undue harm to others. Perhaps you convince yourself that people adore you, and you indulge in some harmless procrastination here and there, but never reject facts that are detrimental to you and others, or lie to yourself in order to manipulate others. The self-deception formula may appear to be “just a bit to protect your feelings and make life simpler” in order to optimize your near-term satisfaction without causing undue harm to others. Perhaps you convince yourself that people adore you, and you indulge in some harmless procrastination here and there, but never reject facts that are detrimental to you and others, or lie to yourself in order to manipulate others.
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If this scares you, ask yourself the following questions:
Do I want people to laugh at me behind my back or alongside me? Do I truly desire something I didn’t work for? Will it be easier to stay sober if I ignore my drinking issue for another year? The honest route is not simple, but you may be confident that day by day, you will be able to state with confidence that the person in the mirror is not a liar. That will be the case.