Tag: lies

They Taught Us Wrong Here are Some Examples and Tell Me More

They taught us wrong. Is it just me or are you upset that as young tender minds we were taught to believe many things to be true, that later we discovered were just not so. (Not to mention the stuff they throw at us as adults that they think we would believe just because it was released as “news” which is always true [sarcasm intended].)

Here are Some Examples and once you’ve got a start tell me more. (In comments below.) I’m sure you can think of some good examples as well.

    1. The Food Pyramid Previously, we were instructed to limit fat intake to only 1 gram per day and adhere strictly to the conventional food pyramid. However, we now understand that fat is essential for our bodies, particularly the brain, to function optimally. The one-gram fat limit is not sufficient for our body’s needs.

Moreover, some argue that the recommended amounts of dairy and grains may be influenced by the dairy and grain industries, potentially conflicting with a genuinely healthy lifestyle.

    1. Columbus Discovered America: It was traditionally taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. However, this disregards the indigenous peoples who were already living in the Americas. Historically, Norse explorers and possibly other civilizations reached the continent prior to Columbus.
    2. The Five Senses: We were typically taught that humans have five senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. However, research now suggests that humans have more than just five senses, including senses like proprioception (body awareness) and vestibular sense (balance and spatial orientation).
    3. Humans Only Use 10% of Their Brains: The belief that humans only use 10% of their brain capacity is a common myth. Brain imaging techniques have shown that various regions of the brain are active and involved in different functions throughout the day.
    4. The Great Depression Was Solely Caused by the Stock Market Crash: While the stock market crash of 1929 contributed to the Great Depression, it was not the sole cause. A combination of factors, including unsustainable economic practices, income inequality, and weak financial regulations, played significant roles in the economic downturn.
    5. The Three States of Matter: In school, we often learn about the three states of matter—solid, liquid, and gas. However, there are other states of matter, such as plasma and Bose-Einstein condensates, which exist under specific conditions.
    6. Earthworms Become Two Worms When Cut in Half: It was once believed that if you cut an earthworm in half, it would regenerate into two separate worms. In reality, only certain segments of the earthworm have the ability to regenerate, and the process is more complex than a simple division into two organisms.
    7. Different Sections of the Tongue Detect Different Tastes: Along with the tongue map, it was commonly taught that certain sections of the tongue were responsible for specific tastes, like sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. However, all taste buds are capable of detecting all tastes, although some areas may be more sensitive to certain flavors.
    8. Hair and Nails Continue to Grow After Death: The notion that hair and nails continue to grow after death is a myth. What actually happens is that as the body dehydrates and shrinks, the skin retracts, giving the appearance of hair and nails growing.
    9. Bats Are Blind: Contrary to popular belief, bats are not blind. They have excellent echolocation abilities, which allow them to navigate and locate prey in complete darkness. However, many bat species also have functional eyes and can see.
    10. Seeing the Great Wall of China From Space Contrary to what we were taught, the Great Wall of China cannot be seen from outer space with the naked eye. While it is an impressive structure, its width is not significant enough for it to be visible from space. If it were visible, other structures like highways and freeways would also be observable.
    11. Cracking Knuckles Causes Arthritis The notion that cracking knuckles leads to arthritis has been debunked. The sound we hear when cracking knuckles is simply air bubbles popping within the fluid surrounding the joints.
    12. We Won’t Always Have Calculators Previously, it was valid to say that calculators would not always be readily available since smartphones were not yet a reality. However, this statement has become outdated as smartphones, which essentially serve as calculators, have become ubiquitous.
    13. Mercury is the Hottest Planet In the past, it was believed that Mercury held the title of the hottest planet. However, this misconception has been corrected, and Venus is now recognized as the hottest planet in our solar system.
    14. “I” Before “E” Except After “C” The rule that “I” comes before “E” except after “C” has been widely taught but is not consistently applicable. Many exceptions exist, rendering this outdated guideline less useful in today’s language.
    15. The USA Will Be Using the Metric System There was a time when it was anticipated that the USA would transition from the imperial system to the metric system. However, this change never materialized, and the imperial system remains in common use.
    16. Blood is Blue in the Veins Contrary to what we were once told, blood in our veins is not blue. This misconception likely arose from observing blue veins through the skin. In reality, blood is always red, whether it is oxygenated or deoxygenated.
    17. Everyone Has the Same Stress Response The belief that individuals respond to stress with either fight or flight is an oversimplification. People react to stress in a variety of ways, including feeling tired, rather than strictly exhibiting these two responses.
    18. Animals Don’t Use Tools We were taught that the ability to use tools distinguished humans from animals. However, many animal species, such as chimpanzees, monkeys, crows, octopuses, and sea otters, have been observed using tools for various purposes.
    19. Don’t Swim for 30 Minutes After Eating While it is true that swimming immediately after a heavy meal may cause discomfort, the idea that it makes a person so heavy that they will sink is a myth. This cautionary advice likely originated from an attempt to prevent children from vomiting in pools.

They Taught Us Wrong Here are Some Examples and Tell Me More Comment Below

 

Are You in a Relationship with a Chronic Liar?

What can you do when you are in a relationship with a chronic liar?

Michelle seeks out her brother for advice because she caught Tom, her fiancé, lying, yet again. Her brother, Andrew, affirms to her, “He would never tell the truth. You could not beat it out of him nor threaten his life, or that of a loved one.” But Michelle is in love with Tom, wants to marry him, and spend the rest of her life with him, she says, “But I believe in him.”

Michelle and Tom have been together for three years, just celebrated their first year of engagement, and she catches his lying about his whereabouts, and private communications with ex-girlfriends again.

This has happened before, and they had an important talk not long after their engagement. Michelle tried to understand that Tom might feel awkward about continuing to communicate with exes and other women, so in his mind, it was easier to lie about it than to tell the truth, even though he had nothing to hide.

They agreed that he would tell the truth because it was important for Michelle to marry a trustworthy, honest, and open man. Her brother Andrew’s advice to her was to leave him, because he is a pathological liar, and will never be truthful or honest, “Men, like that, can never change.”

To be fair, there are many types of chronic lying, and pathological liars have clear intentions to defraud, deceive, or gain in some way from their often wildly exaggerated lies. Compulsive liars, on the other hand, are motivated by fear of what other people might think. They tell fictional stories to avoid making other people feel uncomfortable or awkward or to avoid being uncomfortable or awkward themselves. Lying is one thing, intention is also important.

In the therapeutic environment, the best way to help someone is to fully understand them, to feel what they feel, share in their suffering, have an idea of their life, and how they became the person they are today. That is longtail understanding, a long-haul approach to understanding why someone might have a tendency to lie instead of feeling open and honest enough, to tell the truth consistently.

Your first reaction to being lied to is understandably rooted in anger and likely followed by a sense of betrayal. You feel like you have been victimized by a perpetrator. While this may be true if you have been lied to by a psychopath or pathological liar, this may not actually be the case, even though you feel that way, and have every right to feel as if you have been stabbed in the back.

As soon as you are starting to notice this as being a pattern of behavior, you would be well advised to start keeping notes of all the incidents of inconsistencies, times you felt your intuition telling you that something wasn’t right, or when you caught him or her in a lie. This will be helpful to keep your own sanity intact and will come in handy later if you feel as though confrontation might be necessary.

In most cases, lies are told to spare your feelings. This is an important distinction when evaluating the motivations of the liar because it makes a difference whether someone is lying because they want to exploit or harm you or they are lying because they care about you and are trying to protect you. Right?

Chronic liars may lie more often than not, they cannot help it, but they are not being malicious about it. They are commonly also diagnosed with personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder or narcissism.

Mediation is used in the process of confrontation, though I am not convinced that intervention is not the best method due to its being shocking, assaultive, and combative, which victimizes the person who is lying. How many victims do we need, here?

If you are feeling like an intervention is your only hope for sanity or wellness, it may be healthier just to end the relationship as soon as you are able to do so with as little drama and trauma as possible. Because holding on to the hope that your liar will start telling the truth out of his or her love for you, is not the most likely outcome.

Perfect liar's response, "I'm not lying. And if I was lying, you would never be able to tell because I am the best liar in the world."
Perfect liar’s response, “I’m not lying. And if I was lying, you would never be able to tell because I am the best liar in the world.”

If you are feeling victimized by your partner’s lying, it is far more likely that your feelings will be hurt even more, and the relationship will end. Your feelings will be hurt, your heart will be broken, you will feel incredibly betrayed, angry, sad, and depressed.

It is extremely rare that a liar is willing and able to do the deep work of resolving all the life issues, drama, trauma, and learned responses that have resulted in his or her compulsion to not tell the truth, but it is possible.

If you decide to take the chance of working with your partner on their compulsion to lie, it will require a commitment to a lengthy and probably painful process for you and your partner to get to the place of your partner’s epiphany and resulting breakthrough. It will require a great deal of compassion and understanding on your part while you endure the roller coaster ride through recovery.

You must decide if you are ready for this kind of torrential commitment, and ask yourself, will your sacrifice be worth it? Whether it works or not?

If this process and the person you deeply care for is too toxic for you? You may have to let go and walk away. You have already given and endured more than would be expected from anyone.

You deserve to love and be loved, to experience reciprocal truth, openness, honesty, and happiness.

Any advice?

Honesty Dishonesty and Lies

Honesty means telling someone how you think or feel about something knowing that there may be at risk of disagreement from the recipient of your honest statement.

To the degree that you can be honest plays a big part in your ability to be trusted. While honesty can be a one-way street, alternatively “trust” is a two-way street. We are honest with someone, then step back to review how our honesty was received, responded to, or revered it was. Based on the results, we determine if someone can be trusted or not.

If we can be open and honest with others, we are promoting our trustworthiness. Over time we can gain people’s trust by representing ourselves as being honest. Vulnerability and honesty build trust.

Why would you lie?

  • Fear of hurting someone’s feelings
  • Fear of retribution or punishment
  • Fear of not being accepted
  • Fear of risking your reputation
  • To protect yourself
  • To protect someone else
  • To defend yourself or someone else
  • To bolster your image or the image of someone else to others or among the community
  • You want to present yourself as on par with someone else
  • You are communicating with someone with whom you have little or no respect
  • You want something from someone, but do not have anything of equal value to trade

And potentially a million other reasons why you might lie, though the reason you are most likely to lie is due to fear or some perceived threat. Fear can be disguised as many things, and hiding behind a shield of fear can prevent you from having all the best things this life has to offer.

You lie because lying is an effective tool that protects you from discomfort or pain.

There is a huge contrast between being honest (which makes you vulnerable) and lying (which protects you).

When you are dishonest, it implies that you cannot trust the person you are misrepresenting yourself to.

You are afraid they will misunderstand or hurt you. Alternatively, you may fear they will not like what you have to say or might get their feelings hurt by your being honest.

When you lie, there is the hopeful expectation that your deception will not come to light. But for most of us, lying comes with some form of guilt. A part of us desires to be open and honest in all things, so when we lie, we feel bad or at least, regret not feeling safe enough to tell the truth.

Often if you have negative habits or addictions, you are likely to lie to present others from seeing your weaker side.

It is exceedingly difficult to feel safe with someone who you cannot trust.

What about the lies you tell yourself?

  • What does your lying to yourself say about your relationship with yourself?
  • Do you trust yourself with your most intimate details?
  • How about when you think, say, or at out in some way that is not congruent with who you really are?
  • Do you lie to yourself to cover up or justify your indiscretions?
  • If you want to feel competent or confident, are you apt to lie to yourself to make yourself feel better?
  • Is it possible to be truly open and honest?

If you have lied about a thing in the past and felt uncomfortable for doing so, you will experience a great sense of relief from being able to tell the truth, to essentially “come clean.”

Why Would My Partner Lie to Me?

It happened again. You caught your partner telling another lie, and you ask, “Why would my partner lie to me?” Basically, your partner will only lie to you for one of two reasons: (1) To deceive you (2) Because your partner loves you.

As in any crime in criminal court, intent plays a huge part in sentence determination. It doesn’t erase the crime but may mitigate the damages by considering a lesser sentence or exonerate the offender.

If your partner is lying to you with the intent to deceive or defraud, then you may have an unhealthy partner who may be a psychopath, sociopath, narcissist, or at the very least a toxic person who may be a pathological liar (which means they could not tell the truth if they tried or even if their life depended on it).

But if your partner lied to you because he or she loves you so much, then that is a completely different deal. Right? It doesn’t excuse the fact that your partner lied, but there should be some credit offered for intention or motivation.

In its simplest form, your partner might ask you how this new hairdo looks? Because you love your partner loves you, knows you’ve invested a lot of time and money on this new hairstyle, he or she is compassionate, cares about you, and wants to be supportive, might respond, “Oh, it looks so good!” but you really didn’t like it. You know you lied, but you did so with the best intentions.

Beyond that, it gets much more complicated.

What if you’re at an event with your partner and you run into someone your partner knew and you were introduced to this person who you’ve never met and your partner introduces him or her as an old friend, classmate, or coworker. Then you later discover that this was actually an old boyfriend or girlfriend.

Your lie radar sounds, a huge red flag pops up, and you start to panic, and you start to recoil from the idea that your partner has lied to you.

If you follow the linear path of your emotions, you might come to the conclusion that your partner cannot be trusted at all, because if he or she lied about this, what else is your partner lying about?

This can send you on a downward never-ending spiral that could be unhealthy and subject you to wild imaginations which will affect not only your relationship but your emotional and physical health as well.

Your best course of action is to talk about the lie as soon as possible, not to accuse, but to determine the intent or motive.

When you are talking (not confronting) to your partner about the lie, try not to accuse and remember the purpose of this conversation is to determine the motive.

In the case of your being lied to about the nature of the previous relationship with the person you were introduced to, you may find that the “lie” was told out of love. The introduction and the time spent in what could have been a tremendously awkward situation was side-stepped by telling what your partner determined was a “little white lie.” (I know, it doesn’t feel as insignificant as your partner thought it was.)

You could determine that your partner was looking out for your best interests and did not want to induce undue suspicion. Also, he or she may have thought that the relationship was so insignificant that it was almost as if there was nothing to tell (nothing good anyway).

Still the breach of trust happened, you will have talked it out, and you can deal with the outcome in the best way that is appropriate for you.

If it turns out it was deliberate deceit and an effort to cover up character flaws that could affect you and your relationship, then this partner may not be as well-suited for you as you might have thought. I’m not saying to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What I’m saying is, talk it out, and be more attentive and aware. You could accumulate enough data to find out that this person is toxic to your life and not a good match for you. You might be the next person who is introduced as an old friend, classmate, or coworker.

Repeated deception to exploit you is better cut off sooner rather than later.

What Can You Do if You Catch Your Partner Lying?

Everyone lies. We do it for all kinds of reasons; to make life easier on us, on those we care about, on the behalf of someone else, to be polite, and to outright deceive and defraud on purpose. But what can you do if you catch your partner lying?

You love and trust your partner. Without trust, where is the love? When you catch your partner lying, you feel as though you’ve been stabbed in the back, punched in the gut, or so disrespected or disregarded that you don’t know if you can think straight. What can you do?

Nobody will deny you your right to feel bad about being lied to, that’s a given. We’ve all been in the same boat, for who of us has made it through life without being lied to of deceived. Sometimes people can be harmfully deceitful without saying a word, as is the case of lying by omission.

Yes, even not saying anything is in order to cover something up or avoid being truthfully honest (lying by omission) is a venial sin. It doesn’t mean you have to be rudely open and honest, just to tell the truth, and if you love someone, be honest lovingly. Tell the truth in a way that respects your partner. Be gentle and speak your truth with grace and love, even if it is difficult. Nobody expects you to be perfect.

If you’ve caught your partner lying, don’t sweep it under the carpet or try to gloss it over. Dishonesty in a relationship will cause your trust to rust, and leads to the erosion of your love, especially if you’re harboring the truth about your knowledge of the deceit or dishonesty and not saying anything about it (lying by omission). Even you are a guilty enabler by engaging in the dishonesty.

Get it out in the open. Relationships go through periods of varying levels of comfort and discomfort, it’s the nature of two people sharing one life. It is all part of the growth process. If there is no conflict, there can be no growth, which leaves you with stagnation. Where is the life in that? You might be able to get by, but you can forget thriving in a relationship which is a cesspool.

Grab your grown-up skivvies and get ready for some gentle conversation about your awareness that something’s not adding up. As in all difficult conversations, create a safe space to frame the conversation and avoid being accusatory. This is about creating an environment where its safe to be honest. Avoid jumping-in, interrupting, or otherwise preventing your partner from fully sharing. Take notes on paper, if you have to, but let them speak their truth in peace.

Let them say whatever it is, without interruption, or else he or she will get defensive, and the flow of open communication will stop if your partner feels like he or she needs to take the defensive position.

Once you’ve actively heard what your partner needs to say, and you’ve affirmed that you’ve understood the key points by paraphrasing them back to him or her, now your partner owes you the same respect to hear what you have to say about it.

Check with your heart and center yourself. Take a cleansing breath, then speak your heart in love. Again, be honest, but try to avoid being harsh. If your feelings have been hurt, say so, but try to use words that are not abrupt or frightening. Remember you are expressing how you feel, so start your sentences with “I,” or, “I feel like,” and avoid starting any statement with, “You.”
Trust your intuition. When you feel like something just isn’t right. In most cases, something isn’t right. If your partner gives a perfectly good explanation, and it doesn’t feel right, you probably know by experience that something has most always been amiss when you’ve had feelings, like that, in the past.

Deciding whether you can live with this or not is only something you must decide for yourself. Everybody’s different, and we all can tolerate different degrees of what our partners are allowed to do or not do within the confines of our relationships.

Even though magazines and tabloids will gibe you a list of do’s and don’ts in black and white, there really is no strict guideline for what is and is not acceptable in a successful relationship. Each couple must figure out for themselves what works for them.

Forgiveness in a loving relationship goes a long way. For the repeat offender, you might think about negotiating new paradigms for the expansion of your relationship, or if you are unable to come to a workable compromise, it might be time to look for a better match for your true love to emerge.

It’s your love life. It’s up to you.

Love, love, love. Love like it’s all that matters because it is. And if you dare, think about loving unconditionally.

I love you no matter what.

No Such Thing as a Lie

When someone lies to you, if you feel as though someone has hit you in the stomach or stabbed you in the back, you’ve bought into the lie which asserts that there is such a thing as a lie. What if there is no such thing as a lie?

The idea of promoting the idea that there are lies, and that there are fewer crimes more offensive than lying, is the single most effective tool used against us to keep us fully separated from each other.

This obsession over the difference between truth and lies keeps us at war with each other and keeps us constantly on the defensive, ever wondering, “Who will lie to you next?”

This begins and perpetuates the endless cycle of looking for lies, and as you know, you will always find whatever it is you are looking for. If you are looking for lies, you will find them everywhere you look.

What if there was no such thing as a lie?

What if everything anyone says (in spoken word or print) actually is true one hundred percent of the time?

This is the essence of my Truth Continuum which purports that everything is truth. If history teaches us anything it is that everything which has been widely accepted as truth is subject to change and that one person’s truth can vary wildly from that of someone else.

Truth is subjective. And if truth is subject to influence and personal interpretation, then the antithesis, lies, must also be subjective. Which puts these concepts on par with each other, for if someone’s truth is another person’s lie, they are one and the same; all within the Truth Continuum.

As much as you might like to assert your truth is based on facts or sound science, we know that these things are not as black and white as we might like to believe.

Truth more adequately stated might be, “The truth as I see it,” which reasonably must allow for the truth of others as, “The truth as you see it.” Therefore, all truth, past, present, and future (including other dimensions and places in time and space) resides within the truth continuum.

Lies are a little trickier because there are two kinds of lies, the lies which are contradictory to one’s perceived truth (these may reside within the truth continuum), and lies which are purposefully spun in an effort to deceive someone or to avoid some potentially undesirable consequence (excluded from the truth continuum).

To express a lie which is known to the deliverer to not be true in an effort to deceive may be spun in such a way as to be believable or potentially true is a lie which has no truth within it, even though there may be truths hidden within the details of it, to make it appear to credible or truthful.

Lying with intentional deceit is not the same as declaring something that is believed to be true but may not be perceived by others to be true.

The possibility exists that many of the popular beliefs purported by social engineers and leaders of certain factions may have intentionally spun to deceive a particular populace but with the intention to benefit the purveyors of the lie or the greater part of the population.

Those who use lies to control people may have concocted the most masterful lies with no truth present as a method to manipulate peoples, and even so, because these lies have been believed to be truth by someone, these ideas can also be found in the truth continuum.

So, what if someone lies to you intentionally to deceive you?

Ask yourself, “Does it matter?”

If you can wrap your mind around the idea that people just are, and you honor their ability to be who they are, to say what they say, without judgment, maybe what they say to you, even if intended to defraud you in some way, doesn’t really matter.

This is your life, and you can manage it any way you see fit.

Think about being an unconditional lover who believes in the idea that everyone has the same rights as you to be right or believed, no matter what.

Consider having the courage to believe there is no such thing as a lie, and to say, “I love you no matter what you say, no matter what you do.”

If there were no such thing as a lie, you could easily stay in the frequency of love’s vibration and your countenance would be unshakeable.

You Are Called No Lies

There are two versions of yourself trying to express themselves in your world today. Most of us are allowing the pre-programmed slave of the flesh to dominate our existence. That’s not to say that you’re expressing yourself as a bad person, just that you’re more yielded to the social programming you’ve been subjected to ever since you took your first breath.

The other part of you which remains hidden for the most part is that highly sacred part of yourself that has come to this planet to express itself fully, adding value, sharing and caring for others in expansive growth and change, ushering in increased human performance and evolution.

This higher part of you is the only thing that frightens the powers which seek to control and profit from all the peoples of this world. These are the social engineers who will stop at nothing to get people to believe that we are destined to just play our part in the societies which they have created for us.

They taught your parents how to think, what to believe, and their parents before them, going back countless numbers of generations, to the beginning of humanity.

But the times are a changing, and you are becoming aware of your higher self as he or she longs to be revealed and expressed in all its divinity, which is your purpose in this life, if you let this part of you come forth, answering the call of love.

Recognizing the difference between these two parts of you, you can begin to hear the distinctions which separate the inner voices you hear within. Depending on where you are in your growth and awakening, the pre-programmed inner voice which does not serve your higher purpose dominates because this is the default setting for most humans.

Your higher self will be encouraging you, even daring you to grow and change, while your programmed mind will be giving you every excuse to stay just the way you are and do not aspire toward anything above the status quo.

When your inner voice starts barking limiting excuses, stop listening to them, and start listening to what your heart has to say instead. Stop believing any of the following lies…

You can’t do this.

You can, but your critical inner voice will tell you it’s too hard, or if you try to do something different, it will never last. You’ll just revert to your former self. Maybe someone else did it, but they were luckier than you, or more entitled in some way. You will hear the myriad of excuses about why you are not good enough to see this through. You’re not thin enough, good-looking enough, don’t have appropriate apparel or an adequate car. Your house is not nice enough. You don’t belong to the Country Club, don’t have the right friends, proper pedigree, or education.

All lies, because if you look around, you will find people who are or were far worse off than you would ever think of being who persevered, pushed through and accomplished so much for themselves, their families, and helped to pave the way for others, just like you. That is the truth.

You just want to be comfortable.

Yes, you do deserve to enjoy the comforts of life, unless they are standing between you and your true calling. Let’s face it, it’s much easier kick back on the on the sofa, chill, and watch Netflix than it is to get up, get out, and do something that can impact your life and the lives of others. Who wants to go to the gym and work out, when you can stay at home and relax? Building muscle is not unlike growing outside your comfort zone where al the best things in life are waiting for you. Comfort represents the same ol’ same ol’ which represents mediocrity and complacency for those who are otherwise called to some higher calling.

There must be an easier way.

Growth necessitates change, and change can be uncomfortable. Challenges will abound as you push through to respond to your sacred calling. There will be opposition, and people who you thought had your back may no longer be supportive. There will be times when it’s hard, but there will also be times when answering your call is extremely rewarding, even easy, as your determination to move forward helps enhance your life, affecting the lives of others, and makes the world a better place.

You don’t know what you’re doing.

Okay, any uncharted territory can be scary, when you don’t know exactly what to do or what lies ahead. How many things have you done in your life that you have never done before? If you think about it, your life is full of a succession of firsts, all cumulatively leading to the full life you experience now.

Today you have tools available to you now that you live in the information age. You have access to the tools you need to familiarize yourself with the potential unknown territory, with maps, pictures, video, and lots of data to help you get acclimated to any calling which beckons you forth. There are online recordings, podcasts, vlogs, classes, seminars, summits, and webinars. This puts you miles ahead of generations which went before who were forced to go forth blindly.

Not knowing is not a valid excuse any longer.

You’re not ready, maybe tomorrow.

Procrastination is the thief achieving your highest and best. How can you justify putting off the answering of your sacred call when so much hangs in the balance? Those who are waiting to be introduced to your purpose, message, passion, and mission are neglected or suffering while you put off your taking action, claiming, and stepping into the fullness of your sacred birthright.

Taking that first step leads to taking the next step, even if they’re small steps. Every step is cumulative and brings you closer to the goodness and blessings which is in store for you, others, and the world as you answer the call.

Now is the time to take that step in faith. Don’t let any negative self-talk stand between you and that for which you were created. You are an invaluable part of the coming evolution, and we need you now.

Keeping Secrets

Unless you’re a sociopath, psychopath, or pathological liar, keeping secrets will have a negative impact on your holistic systems. Keeping secrets causes the decline of your autoimmune system and leads to a decline of quality in your mind, body, and soul. This act of withholding powerful information, which you would be better served by releasing, leaves you keeping secrets and promotes deterioration of health, the onset of disease(s), premature aging and death.

Those who are keeping secrets are more likely to withdraw from social interaction, have fewer friends, and are prone to paranoia, feeling as though potential interaction with others will put them at risk.

Keeping secrets in a romantic relationship causes separation and prevents a relationship from progressing or deepening.

Secret keepers are highly proficient at projecting their issues onto the people they encounter.

If you hide unexpressed anger regarding people from your past which might include parental angst, keeping these feelings deeply held within will likely cause you to see these attributes applied to the people (or person) closest to you.

Children who suffered abuse and keep these details highly regarded secrets as adults will suspect any prospective partner as potentially abusive, even when no real potential for abuse exists.

For those who actively push down their past of having been abandoned in their early years, they are likely to be clingier in relationships and fear being abandoned by their partner.

These emotionally charged memories and thoughts, even if they are deeply hidden, possibly even from the cognoscente mind of the secret keeper, will become the filter through which the keeper of secrets views life.

The keeper of secrets is likely to hide many secrets which is likely to include their own feelings. In relationships, one partner might sense emotional disconnect or psychological distraction, and query, “What’s wrong?” To which the secret keeper will respond, “Oh, nothing.”

The solution to this self-destructive withholding is to find ways to find ways to express yourself, starting with surface issues, then digging deeper as you become more adept at sharing your feelings.

If you’re in the habit of keeping secrets, you’re likely to do it all the time, not speaking up when you are disappointed, disillusioned, or feel as though your feelings have been disrespected or hurt.

Start speaking up for yourself. The next time you go out to eat, and your food arrives in a way you did not expect, do not push down your feelings and force yourself to silently eat your dish silently vowing not to come back to this establishment. Instead, note your concerns to the server, offering the dish to the wait staff who can take it back to the kitchen and make it right.

Start speaking up and asserting your concerns, while allowing others to make accommodations which would be more pleasing to you.

Nest time someone asks, “What’s wrong?” Don’t hide your feelings. Tell them what’s wrong but temper your expression with respectful compassion. Your tendency might be to start your expressing yourself with the object of what’s bothering you, which places blame and puts the recipient on the defensive.

I Feel Like

If you want whoever it is to hear how you feel, then start with, “I feel like…”

No one can deny how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. Even though you may be expressing your disapproval of something that is based on someone else’s actions, no one can deny that whatever is the object of what has made you feel bad, it’s not disrespectful to the cause.

This is a safe way to express yourself, while taking full responsibility for your own feelings.

Once you get used to the idea of being more open and honest in this way, you can consider talking about things that you have encountered in your past which you have kept secret.

Whatever has happened to you in your past is not good or bad, it just happened. It was a part of your past. You are an amazing person today, and had you not gone through all those experiences, you would not have become the person you are today.

And it is highly likely that once you get to a level about peace about your past, you can help others who share similar tendencies to keep secrets, once you realize the benefits of not keeping secrets.

What Are You Hiding?

I have had the privilege of having people confide in me, telling me their deepest, darkest secrets. I know what the “official story” is about a great many things, and I have heard the truth behind the headlines directly from the sources. I have also been massively deceived by a sociopath, the greatest keeper of secrets, only to find out the truth at great expense.

One particular psychopath with whom I’d become acquainted with who was referred to by prosecutors as inherently evil and claimed himself to be a pathological liar could wield lies like his identifying superpower. With a keen ability to defraud, counterfeit, and masquerade, he enjoyed false careers as everything from an airline pilot, attorney, mental health counselor, therapist, investment banker, real estate, precious metals, and Wall Street broker, just to name a few.

The psychopath was the embodiment of the phrase, “If his lips are moving, he’s lying,” (according to one Chief Investigator) as he committed a wide variety of crimes while bilking unsuspecting widows, and vulnerable adults, among a long list of other types of victims, left wounded, alone, and penniless. Lying, he claimed, was his form of exercising his First Amendment right to free speech, which he was entitled to by constitutional law.

Being proficient at lying is not relegated to narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, pathological liars, or evil people.

As much as we’d like to say, “I could never lie, like that,” the truth is all of us, including you and me, lie all day long, every day of our lives, albeit without any malicious intent.

What are you hiding?

You are deceptive, hide the truth, and lie every day; we all do. It’s a standard human basic survival skill.

You’ve learned from a very early age, generally two years old, that telling the truth does not serve your best interests. It usually starts with you being sent to your room or otherwise punished by a parent (or parental figure) for honestly fessing up to something that your parent(s) disapproved of. So, you learned to lie and have perfected the craft over time.

You learned to lie (just like we all did) to avoid punishment, disapproval, or pain, and to make life easier to manage, to make friends, to advance in careers or society, and to be attractive to others, especially romantic partners. Leaving you wondering why lovers lie?

Other reasons for lying include getting what you want, to be recognized, establish and maintain an image, to garner attention or sympathy, and to find out if someone else is lying or trustworthy.

No matter how much you know someone, how close you are to anyone, you can’t tell what’s going on inside someone else’s head, it’s just not possible. Just like no one can tell what’s going on inside your head, and you do the best you can to present yourself as the person you believe yourself to be, even if it means lying.

Those of us who might be on the autism spectrum are probably the worst liars (by that, I mean, not very believable when lying and lie the least), but the rest of us are fairly competent at lying.

The fact is, the whole world, the three-dimensional world that we all inhabit, is entirely an illusion of belief systems which are hardly based on truth, but on lies, we’re programmed to believe as truths, and we believe them so much, that we would defend them with our lives.

If we live, we live a lie to the best of our abilities, where we are surrounded by lies, but most of us do it with the best intentions.

How to Deal with a Liar

How to deal with a liar? The truth is, if you can handle it, behavioral scientists report that during a 10-minute conversation people will lie two to three times, and if we are people, these statistics are true for you and me, too.

That’s a hard pill to swallow because we don’t like to be lied to, and we don’t like to be thought of as a liar, so we try to cover it up with withholding otherwise negative information (which is the unspoken lie of a weak-kneed chicken-hearted person, or people-pleaser). I know, “But I was trying to be nice,” but it’s still a lie.

And if you’re sensitive or aware enough to know when someone is lying to you, guess what? You’re wrong 47 percent of the time, so the joke’s on you.

Think law enforcement, CIA and lie detector professionals fare any better? Well, they do. They’re only wrong 40 percent of the time. Even with all the technology and behavioral science we can muster, only a seven percent increase in actual detection of a lie.

Even so, when you catch someone in a lie, it seems like such a betrayal or breach of trust how could anyone not take it personally?

So, what do you do when you catch someone in a lie?

Well, there are a couple of ways to approach the fact that someone has lied to you (assuming you know the facts, and that there is no other option than you’ve actually witnessed a bold-faced lie first hand).

Your first option is not to do anything, understanding that people lie all the time, and this person felt the inclination or need to lie based on any number of life circumstances and situations, and who knows? If you’d lived the same life and been faced with the same options at that particular point in time of your life, you may have responded the same way. Who knows? It could happen.

On the other hand, you could just laugh it off and make a joke of it, like it’s really no big deal. In this scenario, you might laughingly hint to what they might have said as being inaccurate or an exaggeration, without having to put the person on the spot. This gives them the un-threatened time and space to review what they’ve said and maybe consider approaching a more accurate story after they’ve had a chance to work it out for themselves.

You could take the Columbo approach, another non-threatening tactic, pretending that you’ve had a memory lapse, or appear to be confused because you’ve been juggling a lot of information that has become overwhelming and confusing. With this approach, you can query the person at leisure, by playing dumb, while continuing to ask questions to clarify your confusion, you’re likely to end up with a more accurate picture after some continued communication exchange.

Then, of course, there is the more direct option, which is to challenge their lie face-to-face, eye-to-eye. While this is the most direct approach, this is by far the most difficult and there is little or no margin for error. You must have your facts in order, in such a way so as not to be challenged yourself, or you could be labelled as a liar. In this direct fashion of facing off with the liar, it might be best done in private, or with others who may have been affected by the lie. Either way, be direct, keep control of your emotions, deal with the facts, and let the chips fall where they may.

Report the lie, if you feel the need to, to the proper authorities, manager(s), employers, agency, or victim, but if you do, keep it unemotional and stick only to the facts. Don’t use conjecture, accuse or try to speculate why this person feels as though they had to lie about anything. And if you are motivated by fear, anger or revenge, do not report it – at least not now – wait until you can make a report with complete control of your faculties. Often, after you’ve given yourself time to cool down, you might think that it wasn’t as much of a crisis as it felt like at the time, and you’ve avoided someone’s thinking that you’re over-reactive.

Above all, make note that you’re dealing with someone who has the propensity to lie. Try to cover your back by documenting all communication with this person. Try to communicate by verifiable methods such as email or texting. If this person is a highly advanced liar, they will not commit their words to writing. No problem, pay very close attention to what they say, noting the day(s), time(s), place(s) and player(s), then summarize their statement to him or her in a text or email just to confirm that you understood them correctly.