What do you lie about?
What do you lie about? No seriously, what do you lie about? Maybe I should be a little bit more specific about what I’m asking here. I’m not looking for the big lies that people tell, such as fraud or living a double life with 2 families (although if you do have such lies maybe you do need to have a think about things). The lies I’m trying to identify are those lies that people tell because they are embarrassed about certain behaviours that they have.
It’s when you tell your friends that you only drink once or twice a week when you know that you are actually going through a bottle of wine every night, or you lie about how much fast food you have to your partner or, you hide chocolate in the house which you eat when no one else is around. Do you have any of these types of lies in your life?
If you have read my articles for a while now you will know that my one weakness in life is Coke Zero, it’s the one temptation I have where I have no stop point once I start. Due to this I’ve determined that it’s best to not allow it to be an option for me in my day to day life. I do however allow myself one day a week where I can have it but other than that I have come to realise that it is best for me to stay away from Coke Zero because I will consume unhealthy levels.
I had an experience a while ago, before I had put these boundaries around my consumption, where I was drinking Coke Zero every day, I would drink at least 1.5 litres but often up to 3 litres. I knew that I was being unhealthy and that it wasn’t good for me on a physical level but I also felt that I was weak on a mental level because I knew that I should stop. My partner Jo is very accepting of my behaviours but I knew that she would be concerned if she knew that I was drinking that much, so I found myself starting to hide this from her. I would make sure there was no evidence of my coke drinking by removing the bottles as soon as they were finished and I’d drink it at times of the day when Jo wasn’t around. I was slightly embarrassed of my behaviour which lead me to lying to Jo. Although it wasn’t straight out lying to her face, as she didn’t know it was a problem, my behaviour of hiding this from her was allowing me to remove the concern that I know she would bring to the situation.
This went on for a couple of weeks and once I became aware of my dishonesty I knew I had to address it, not just because I didn’t want to be dishonest to Jo but I knew I needed to head towards healthier behaviours and so I set my new boundaries and got back to a place that I like to be within myself.
Hiding unhealthy behaviours from those around us can come at a huge cost, there’s the obvious health cost and the sense that you are losing yourself due to your dishonesty but there’s also the fact that you aren’t allowing those who can help you be there for you in a supportive way. It’s understandable why we feel embarrassed, we feel like we are letting others down and we like to paint the best picture of ourselves to the world - what would they think if they found out about this side of us?
If you know you are hiding certain behaviours from those around you maybe it’s time for you to address it, it could be an area of your life that you need to work on. The first step my be opening up about what you have been doing and from there you can get support, develop good strategies to move forward, and then start the work on improving in this area.
Ultimately you’ll achieve a healthier place for yourself but more importantly you’ll be living in a way where you can be true to be yourself and your world, a place where you don’t need to hide anything.
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