Little White Lies

"Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies"

-Oliver Goldsmith

In my quest to become more of the person that I strive to be I started asking myself   "Why not be more honest?"  There are two types of people in the world - people who speak the truth no matter the cost and the "people pleasers" I think you can assume which category I fall into...

I decided I should do a social experiment-with myself. It was simple. Over the course of two weeks I would refrain from lying, and if I couldn't I would document the lie, who it was told to and why.  As a motivation to fess up on the spot, I vowed that once the experiment was over I would reveal the lies and potentially face more ridicule.

Sounds easy right? Sort of. At first I'm doing great, I'm telling the truth (in a gentle way) and it actually felt pretty good to just be open and honest about my feelings...but here I am a week in and I think it's already time to put a kabash on the experiment. I feel like I already have all of the data I need.

  Some people lie because that's all they know, some people lie because they don't want to be caught, and some people lie because they don't want to disappoint. As I was looking over my findings I started to notice a pattern-all of my lies were simply as to not disappoint. The fear of feeling like someone wasn't going to be happy with me  literally made me so anxious that I couldn't help myself. That fear was literally crippling to me and I had to avoid at all costs. I lied to my friends about why I couldn't do things when in all reality I was just tired. I lied to my doctor about taking my medicine when I haven't taken it in a month. I lied to my husband when I told him I didn't care if we put off something I'd been looking forward to.

So knowing that all these lies were going to come out into the open eventually why didn't or couldn't I admit the truth? Am I now just too used to making excuses or am I feeling that I don't have the inner strength to stand up and tell the truth for myself? I think maybe a mixture of both. Can anyone find a balance or are we always going to lean? Are we airing too much out or keeping too much in? I recently read something that really spoke to me and I've been repeating to myself whenever I feel unsure about something---Will this matter to me in a year?

Either way, I think it's important for us to be honest with ourselves. Once we do that we can begin to construct a plan to truly become the people we want to be..one small step, or truth at a time.