BS WE TELL OURSELVES

October 30 2013

9 Subtle Lies We All Tell Ourselves

Mark Manson

When I was at university, I was convinced that I wanted to be an investment banker and work on Wall Street. A year later, it took all of about three hours in the cubicle miasma known as State Street for that dream to evaporate. In hindsight, I didn’t want to be a banker as much as I wanted to feel powerful and important. Fortunately, I found other ways to meet those needs.
There was also a period of time when I was convinced that my ex-girlfriend left me because I wasn’t good enough for her and so I had to prove myself to every woman I ever met. But after a lot of over-compensation around other women, I eventually realized that I was fine and much better off without her.
Then there was the idea that every bad emotion I ever experienced was a result of some underlying trauma and that by “working through it,” I was precipitating some sort of transformation in myself. Boy, was that one delusional (Spoiler alert: Sometimes you feel bad just because you feel bad.)
What I’m getting at is that we’re often poor arbiters of our own emotions and desires. We lie to ourselves. And we do it for one obvious reason: to feel better.
We may not know exactly what we’re lying to ourselves about, but it’s safe to assume that some chunk of what we consider “truth” today, is likely nothing more than a defense against some deeper meaning which is painful to accept.
By lying to ourselves we mortgage our long-term needs in order to fulfill our short-term desires. Therefore, one could say personal growth is merely the process of learning to lie to oneself less.

FULL ARTICLE HERE