Lying. Convenience or self-esteem issue?

In a society where we are attracted to convenience, and time means money, wouldn’t it make better sense to tell the truth in the first place? Logically speaking, yes, but, it’s a matter of self-esteem we are really talking about.

Self-esteem may very well be the biggest contributing factor when it comes to lying. When someone feels their self-esteem is threatened, they protect themselves by lying. After all, who favors being a recipient of insults or discord?

Small lies are the most common, they avoid conflict, right? Avoiding conflict is a big motivator for deception. “No, you don’t look like you’ve aged a day,” or, blaming traffic in place of the real reason you were late to work…you slept in! These are the “make life easier” types of lies.

Most of us are so hard on ourselves, we are unable to actually see ourselves the way others view us. As long as we look down on ourselves, we will try to raise the bar up from our own personal reality and that might mean being dishonest. Difficult train of thought to follow, but, so is the complexity of lying.

The most common type of lie is the old standby, “No, I’m fine, nothing’s wrong,” when in actuality you believe the bottom is about to fall out of your world. Whether, you may misrepresent yourself, or your realistic situation for convenience, lack of self-esteem, or what you perceive as kindness…a lie is a lie and there is tremendous value in having the ability to raise your own self-esteem through good old fashioned honesty. Chances are if we were all more honest with ourselves, we’d discover we are much more awesome than we had been gifting ourselves credit for.