If you want to become successful in your life, the first thing you have to do is stop lying to yourself and be honest.
Have genuine conversations with yourself about every topic. Whether it's related to a relationship, friendship, job, health or anything.
Why am I saying this? When you don’t understand your current situation, you won’t make impactful decisions.
My question is, “Have you ever lied to yourself?”
You don’t have to answer anyone. Just answer yourself, and I’m damn sure you’ll get your answer because we all do at some point. Now, the next question is how to stop lying to yourself and become an authentic version of yourself.
Well, there are a number of solutions people will tell you to stop lying to yourself, but it won’t work until you really wanna change it.
Well, there are a number of solutions people will tell you to stop lying to yourself, but it won’t work until you really wanna work on it.
For instance, you always want to believe everything is good in your life, even if it is not. This is where you have to understand that when you are talking with your inner voice, you don’t have to lie. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. This way, you’ll get to know what the real problem is, and you can easily find the solution for that.
Now, back to the question, how to stop lying to yourself. In this article, I revealed all the secrets that would help you become the best version of yourself.
Keep reading!
Before jumping into our main topic, let me tell you the benefits and harmful effects of lying to yourself.
Benefits of not lying to yourself
You can lie in front of the whole world, your parents, friends, but somehow your inner self knows when you are lying and when you are not.
But what if I tell you that there are lots of benefits to being true to yourself?
- You understand your emotions, giving you better clarity towards your emotions.
- You can predict future outcomes and accordingly take steps.
- You can make better decisions, knowing your true feelings.
- Reduce stress levels and keep you mentally fit.
- You learn to take responsibility for your own actions.
Harmful effects of lying to yourself
Just like benefits, there are some harmful or we can say dangerous effects of lying to yourself. Let’s unfold them one by one;
- You will always be confused and full of stress.
- You will never be sure what exactly you want.
- You will end up making poor decisions.
- You won’t be sure about areas of self-improvement.
If you can’t be true to yourself, you can’t be true to others, resulting in weak bonds with your loved ones.
You will never know who you are, what you want and where you are heading.
Okay. It’s time to jump to our main topic!
How to stop lying to yourself
Understand why you lie
You can not deal with the outer battle until and unless you resolve the battle that is going on within you. You might be thinking what battle I’m talking about?
See, when you lie to yourself, there must be a reflection of something which is happening within you, and you are not happy about it. And to protect yourself from that, you start lying to yourself, pretending that it doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist at all.
For instance, your boss told you, "You get confused all the time or don’t work at all", and you know that this is not true. But rather than that, what you do is you start to pretend that it never happened. This is where you are lying. What your boss said is his opinion and not a fact. Maybe he is the one who gets confused all the time.
So accept the reality and don’t let other people put you down.
Accept who you are
This is something I learned the arduous way. From childhood, I’ve had a habit of observing things, people, even the smallest act, and I used to think about who I am exactly, what I am exactly, what type of personality I’ve.
So when I was a child, I used to imagine myself as a popular girl, something like a model or an actress, and all people liked me.
As a teenager, I saw a serial where that girl was an introvert, nerd and used to wear a salwar kurta only, and I thought that this is what I’m (well, here I’m talking about Mile Jab Hum Tum, 90s kids can understand), and then I tried to become like her.
As a young adult, I watched the Twilight movie, though I didn’t like the actress, but I was fascinated by the story and thought one vampire might come into my life too (not exactly a vampire but a caring person like him). Also, this was the time when I was influenced by one of my friends' lifestyles and tried to follow her, and it was the biggest mess. So this continued till the age of 26.
However, when I turned 27, something changed in my life. Because even when I tried to pretend like other people, I was always me. And I’m an unpredictable person. Sometimes I’m shy, sometimes I’m jolly, sometimes I’m silent, sometimes I’m an introvert, sometimes I’m an extrovert, and the list goes on.
So this is when I accepted myself wholeheartedly. From then on, I never tried to become like anyone because me is me and I am unique.
So, the moral of the story is that you are unique and should accept the way you are.
Develop self-honesty
I understand certain situations come up where we have to lie a little, but even in that scenario, make sure that you are not lying to yourself.
If you do that, I’m damn sure you are hurting your inner self. To avoid this, whenever you have to lie to others, after that have a mirror meeting with yourself and explain to yourself why you lied, why it was important and if you feel that you made a mistake, go and fix it.
Writing journal
You might have been hearing this for a long time, but this is one of the most effective things to include in your daily life.
When you start writing down about your day, you will understand what you have done, what made you happy, what made you sad and so on. This will help you know yourself better. When you comprehend yourself better, no need to lie. You could be brutally honest with yourself.
Know your limitations
Don’t aim for the Moon when you can only get stars. It doesn’t mean that you can’t dream big. Dream whatever you want to achieve, but know your limitations.
Let’s understand this better with an example;
For instance, you want to start a cafe. So to know your constraints, you have to ask the following questions;
- Do I have prior experience?
- Do I have enough money to spend on it?
- Do I have enough sustainable money until the business gets booming?
- Do I have enough resources?
When you know these answers, you know your constraints for sure. This will help you set your milestones carefully, and you’ll be sure you can achieve them as you have already done your research.
Wrap-up time
So next time, whenever you try lying to yourself, colossal or tiny, remember these points and stop yourself immediately. Voila!
