Truth and Lies

Is it bad to lie?

In my practice I coach people to delve into who they really are and what they really want. It’s the core principle of my work because frustrated desires cause innumerable difficulties in people’s lives. Invariably I end up dealing with the ways that people are lying to themselves about what they want.

All in all people are nowhere near as honest as they think they are. When they cannot make sense of their lives it is generally because they have gone unconscious about the true nature of their motivations.

There’s the woman who thinks she doesn’t love her husband anymore because the passion is gone, but when she identifies with her real desires she realizes that she too wants to run a business and provide service to people. When she lets go of the limitations she believed she had to accept and actively chooses to tone down being a housewife and go into business, suddenly the passion returns.

Then there’s the female executive who can’t respect her husband because he’s an artist who makes little money, she builds up resentment toward him because she is providing the lifestyle that he is so addicted to. When she let’s go of the belief that she has to provide that lifestyle and stops believing her fears that he is only with her for that lifestyle she can see that he would be happy just as long as he was with her.

The most destructive lies we tell ourselves are about how big a compromise we have to make in order to get what we really want. At the core of it we all have some basic desires that are universal, we fulfill them in different ways of course but ultimately we all want to be safe, secure and free to express who we are and be loved for it.

Do yourself a favour and stop lying about whether you can or can’t fulfill your desires. You can, otherwise you would not have them. You may not be able to fulfill them in the way you first concoct but there is always a way. Sometimes our impossible desires are there to make us grow. Perhaps it is impossible for us, as we are, to fulfill our desires but perhaps our real desire is to become more than we are.

Who will you have to become to have what your heart wants? The truth is you can be whatever you want. The lie is that you have to do it in a predictable and acceptable way. If you want to be a movie star, perhaps your real desire is to be welcomed by lots of people who really love you. If you want to be a successful business person, perhaps your real desire is to employ people and contribute to their lives by giving them direction.

There are a myriad of ways to get what you want once you connect to the real core and essence of what it is. This is because the form is often not what we first expect. I always thought I wanted to be a adventure novelist but what I really wanted was to inspire people to make their lives an adventure of self discovery. If I had tried to do this through being a novelist I would have been doomed to failure, but doing it as a coach is incredibly fulfilling.