When I first encountered the concept of muscle testing as a lie detector, I was both fascinated and skeptical. The idea that I could use such a simple technique to cut through layers of deception in my life was tantalizing. With little training, anyone could learn this skill, provided they cleared themselves mentally and emotionally beforehand. So, I dove in.
At first, muscle testing felt like unveiling a superpower. I could test almost anything—advertisements, political speeches, news stories, even conversations with family, friends, and romantic interests. The results were astonishingly clear. I was on a mission to see what was true and what wasn’t, and I felt like a detective peeling back the layers of lies surrounding me.
The clarity was empowering until it wasn’t. After several months of testing everything in my life, a harsh reality set in. I started to realize that a surprising number of people around me—people I admired, trusted, and held in high regard—weren’t telling the truth. In fact, I found that 96% of the people I interacted with regularly were, at least occasionally, deceptive.
For the 4% who were honest with me, I quickly realized honesty doesn’t always come with kindness. About 75% of them were blunt or even rude when speaking the truth, with only a fraction being gentle or neutral. Of the majority who were deceptive, they seemed to mix a small percentage of truth (around 10%) with the rest being various forms of BS. After seeing this pattern repeat across countless interactions, I felt disillusioned.
I was living in a reality where the people I interacted with, day in and day out, were either masking the truth or delivering it in a way that felt harsh or inconsiderate. Eventually, the question that kept coming to mind was, What’s the point of muscle testing if everyone is full of it? It was exhausting to confront the inconsistencies, embellishments and outright lies at every turn.
It took me a while to process and accept this new understanding of the world around me. My initial fascination with muscle testing as a lie detector had soured into a disheartening awareness of the pervasiveness of deception. I reached a point where I simply accepted it as the norm—truth and deception were layered intricately into everyday life, and it seemed this wasn’t going to change.
These days, I’ve chosen a different path. I now reserve muscle testing for specific situations, mainly health-related decisions, like testing foods and supplements. I’m careful not to dig too deeply into others’ personal truths or embellishments. After all, we all have the right to our version of reality, even if it strays from the objective truth. In the U.S., freedom of speech protects the right to embellish or lie—it’s part of our First Amendment rights.
So don’t worry—I’ve found my balance again. I no longer need to test everyone around me. I trust in my own center, and unless a situation affects me directly and significantly, I refrain from using muscle testing in personal affairs. It’s a relief, really. Knowing the truth about everything may sound empowering, but it’s a heavy burden to carry. For now, I choose to let people be themselves, and I choose to muscle test only where it truly matters.