Why You Lie About How Honest You Really Are

I want to be liked. I want to be respected. And unfortunately, I can do what it takes to assure this happens. Even at the cost of being honest. Are you honest enough to admit a reality like that statement?

Sadly, we may want to be known as an honest person more than actually being an honest person. And we’ll even lie to ourselves since we know honesty is a basic character quality. Ugh!

I’ve found the following two research studies to be fascinating to prove this point.

Researches at three universities (Duke, UNC, and Harvard) all examined the impact of “fake adornment” on our ethics. One specific study of a group of women were given expensive Chloe sunglasses to wear.

One group believed they were real and the other group knew they were cheap knockoffs. The study proved the knockoff group who believed they were real were twice as likely to cheat and steal on a subsequent study than the women who believed they were wearing the “real deal”.

A Duke professor named Dan Ariely wrote a book called The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves (wonder what THAT book is about). He was astounded by how people naturally lie and cheat due to two primary reasons:

selfish gain and to avoid pain.

Ariely tells a sad, predictable yet funny story in the book of how there seems to be an “epidemic of sudden deaths” among relatives of college students. The irony was the consistent time of deaths of these relatives: mid-terms and finals.

Guess which relative most often seems to die? Grandma.

Professor Mike Adams of Eastern Connecticut State University has found similar research. His studies have shown that grandmothers are 10 times more likely to die before mid-terms and 19 times more likely to die before a final exam! It gets worse.

Grandmas of students who are doing failing in school are 50 times more likely to lose grandma than non-failing students.

John Ortberg, in his book, Soul Keeping, responded to this study by saying, “It turns out the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs.”

But do we do similar things when it comes to honesty to get what we want and to avoid pain?

So, why do we lie about how honest we really are?

 

1. We want what we want and willing to do what it takes to get what we want 

What a sad reality but so true. We would never admit it to another person the little things we do that are dishonest and ironically willing to lie to cover ourselves.

This is SO easy in the corporate world. We want to look like we have our act together and better than we actually are and unfortunately, act accordingly.

We start out small but if we have success in being dis-honest or “just shading the truth” we move up to half lies to continue to get what we want.

We may even justify two half truths could be a full truth. But if you get to this point, you’re really deceiving yourself big time. Make the bad man (you in this case) stop (lying).

The reality is we must admit we have the ability and may be even in motion of doing what we want with the truth to get our way.

2. We want to appear better than we possibly and truly are

We believe SO much more highly of ourselves than reality would actually prove true. 

We do what it takes to be a poser and have people believe the best of us regardless if it’s actually true or not.

And this is a tough act to continue to do if we’ve been posing for a long time.

Sometimes it takes a blow-up or getting caught to bring this truth to reality. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

For example, I work a ton of technical engineers. At first, I didn’t want to appear like I was not an engineer and understood what they were doing. And to be honest, for awhile, I tried to be a poser.

But this wasn’t being honest and a few times created a mess. As a result, I’ve learned to say up front (usually in training at the very beginning) that “I’m a bachelor’s degree short of my engineering degree” (which always gets a laugh but also get the point across). It allows me to be who I truly am and honest from the start. Sadly, I had to learn the hard way.

Note to Self: don’t pack the poser mask in the carry on!

It’s more important to have integrity between who you appear to be and who you really are in your character.

Closing Challenge…

I’ve found this is a definite growth area for motivated, busy professionals. If you’re interested, here are few challenges to assist in your growth in this area:

• Notice the little things you do each day that if you were to be COMPLETELY honest, are not honest actions
• Once you “become aware” of the ways (even small ways), notice why you did them
• Each time you look in the mirror ask, “Have I truly been honest since the last time I looked at myself?”

My hope for you is that you will be or become a person of character.

Closing Question…

If you were to be completely honest, could your character grow in this area?