How little white lies turn into a lifestyle
I once had a client who explained to me in colorful details the reasons she was late in attending two sessions with me in a row. When I asked her what she thought might be going on, she told me that she told me “little white lies” because she didn’t want to look at her perpetual self-sabotage that we had been delving into in a previous session (the irony didn’t escape her).
It didn’t occur to her in the moment that she could be honest about her experience and how it might be beneficial to work with that resistance.
These lies might be little and sometimes they might simply be omissions, but they impact our lives in profound ways. It’s almost like it’s baked into the cake of human behavior.
Have you ever said “to be honest …”.
Why do we even use those words?
How many times a week do you say “well” or “great!” when someone asks you how you are doing? How often do you answer “sure” when someone asks you whether you want to participate in something? The “sure” might mean “until something better comes along”, or it might mean “no” but you prefer not to tell the person that.
Before we know it, we have built a life full of these lies. We all do it.
But we might not necessarily see the effect it has on the way we live our lives. How every little lie needs a supporting cast of more little lies to different people, in different circumstances. How every time we tell a lie, we are out of integrity with ourselves and our values. Of course, I assume that lying is not in the top 5 of your values list.
Lying impacts our emotional health – trying to keep all those balls in the air – and it cultivates our feelings of shame, self-doubt and insecurity. After all, you can’t possibly be a “good” person if you’re lying, but only you know that and you need to make sure nobody else finds out. Right?
Here are a few ways in which you can start to experiment returning to integrity with yourself:
Before anything: take a breath.
Become present in your body. What are you feeling? What is beneath that feeling? Ask yourself: what do I need in this moment, and how can I express that with kindness to myself?
1/ This week, practice tuning in when someone asks you how you are.
The check-out person at WholeFoods might not need to hear how you had a fight with your friend, or how your car broke down on your way to work, or how you fell yesterday and really hurt your ankle. But at least, there seems to be an intention to connect with you.
You might experiment with saying: “It’s been a rough day, and I need some self-care tonight. I appreciate you asking. How are you doing today?”
How much better does this feel, rather than forcing a smile and lying to the person in front of you? How much more connected do you feel to that person, even if they don’t reciprocate? How do you think they might feel when you look them in the eyes and genuinely mean it when you ask how they are doing?
2/ Stop using emoticons.
Do you love using emojis? I know I do. I seem to use them more when I tell myself I have no time to check in with my feelings and I want to convey something to another person.
How about actually saying the thing you want to say to the person you are exchanging messages with?
Here’s a handy graphic of all the feelings that you might be experiencing, which really lead back to a few major feelings (the Feeling Wheel was created by Dr Gloria Willcox). It is useful to be able to identify your feelings, especially so that you can find which ones are helpful in your daily life and which ones are not.
3/ Say what you mean, mean what you say
This is the natural outcome of practicing points 1 and 2.
Words matter.
It’s simple, although it may not be easy: if you want to get to know yourself better, if you want to cultivate self-awareness, if you want to connect with yourself and the world around you in an authentic way, express how you really feel.