How Lying Works

I came across this link and it got me thinking about my past failures and how I used to manipulate the truth for personal gain. . .

http://health.howstuffworks.com/lying.htm

For me, part of my problem with lying was that I never was called out for my lying, and I always used to get away with it as a child. I was taught to be responsible for my actions, and to always tell the truth, but I would witness the contradictions in both my family and society when it came to the truth, so I kind of adapted. I was for the most part of my life, a complete Bull Shit Artist. I could fling it with the best of them, and I would lie, cheat, manipulate and steal to get what I wanted in life. for those who watched Survivor, I was like the other guy from Boston. . ."Boston Rob" but better at the game.

You see, I looked at life as a game, and I would play my cards to the fullest. I stole my parents car when I was 15 years old, and drove to Boston from Maryland because I didn't want to live in Maryland. The lesson I learned from doing that? My parents allowed me to live with my aunt, and go to Swampscott High School 4 months later. They then lived in different states so I could graduate from Swampscott High School. The lesson I learned was the further over the line I went, the better the reward was, and I kept that lesson with me for a long time, it is sad to say. I manipulated people through out high school, and continued my nefarious ways. I had a math teacher who was horrible, and didn't teach us at all. Well, I used to push her buttons because I was a punk of a kid, and one day she messed up. I took the ACT math II test for college, and we were discussing the tests in class. My teacher literally said "what are you an idiot? You don't have the background for the math II test". When she said that I knew I had her. I then skipped class something like 3 days in a row (it was my last class of the day) and I was suspended. When it went to my parents, I told them that I was too embarrassed to go to class because of what she said, so my parents went to the school and had a long meeting with everyone. The results of that meeting? I was not suspended, and I was then allowed to leave school any time I wanted. Again, manipulation and outlandish behavior gave me great rewards.

As I matured through life, I never came to grips with my lying, and I would constantly tell people what they wanted to hear rather than what the truth was. I would also rigidly hold a line of truth when someone would ask me a question, even when I knew it was wrong. For example, I would say something that was true, but leave out the part that was what the real question was. It is like Clinton when he was asked if he had sex with Lewinski. No, he didn't have sex with her, because he got a blow job, so "technically" he was not lying, even though he was.

When did it all change for me? When it was done to me in and I found out about it. That was when I finally changed my ways and stopped my lying. I was not realizing how much I was hurting people by telling lies which I considered were white lies, and how much it was eroding their trust in me. Once I had the situations reversed, and I saw how much lying hurt, and how badly I felt about it, I decided that I needed to change my ways. It was not something that I could stop overnight as well, it was something that has taken time and soul searching to understand. It took a lot of psychoanalyzing on myself to come to grips of not only why I was lying, but to correct the behavior pattern.

It is all part of growing and maturing as a man. I have learned more about myself in the last 4 years than I did in the previous 34, but that is what a lot of people go through in life. Part of it was removing the blinders I kept on myself, which stopped me from seeing what I was doing, and why I was doing the things that I did. Once I started to critically examine my own issues, everything else in life became more clear. I started to understand a lot more about my personality, and the world in general. I can see why I manipulate people, and I would then look for it in others, and I saw it all too often. I would see it in work, in politics, in religion and in everything else across the landscape. It was about this time that I read Leavett and Gladwell (Freakonomics, Blink and Tipping Point) which gave me a different prospective. I also read the DaVinci Code, and started to really see how much Bull Shit in life we were taught as children, as adults, and how the reality we perceive is not the real reality at all. It is nothing more than a layer of BS overlying everything to deceive the masses about the reality of the situation.

As of right now, there are a few people who expose this layer of BS, and currently there is nobody better than Jon Stewart. He has a way of cutting through the chatter and utter lies people profess to the masses through media to further their own agendas. Gladwell and Leavett also do this through their books and their blogs. George Carlin was a master at looking at the humor of society and the BS laid on it. I like to think I am very good at seeing it as well.

Why do I think I am good at exposing BS? Because I was so good at it growing up, and I know what to look for in people's stories because I can see how they use the same defense mechanisms that I used in my life. There are any number of things people do when caught lying, they try to reverse the situation and attack you for accusing them, they lie more, they deny, and will become the most nasty person you can ever imagine when faced with the truth they don't want to admit to. I can sometimes pick out microexpressions on peoples faces, and notice how they will nod yes subconsciously when they say no. There are any number of different things people do which give the lying away, and having one time in my life been a liar, I am good at spotting these little insights.

As for me, I have left the lying as a thing of the past, I can't do that any more. It is not who I am and not who I want to be. I don't want to be the person who manipulates people for my own personal benefit, but instead just try to be a good man and a good person. I am not as much concerned about climbing the corporate ladder and being part of the game any more, as I have a great job, and a great life. I am allowed the freedom to live my life as a good person, and yes, some of this is because of the manipulation I did when I was younger which put me where I am today. The good thing is that I learned that is not the way to be in life, and instead, I have taken the opposite approach. I am honest with myself first and foremost then with everyone else in life, it is how I have to live my life to be a good person. The key for me was looking at my faults, and coming to grips with what I have done and who I have hurt in my life. By doing this, it allowed me to be honest with who I was, which in turn allowed me to be honest with everyone around me. It is a great thing too, because life is good, no life is better than good, life is great!

Peace Out,
Michael