Masters of Self Deception

“To thine own self be true” said Polonius the deceiver, in Hamlet.

Sometime in the 90’s while I was living in Tucson, AZ, I decided to become  an independent insurance agent. Someone had shown me an opportunity to make money and get residuals and all that good stuff, and since I had no clue what to do with my life at that point, I signed up. 

I went through the training and started going to the sales meetings. I thought the guy that had signed me up was a knucklehead but he seemed to be making money. I took the insurance test and got my license.

However, I had yet to make an appointment to see someone to sell insurance. This was an in- home deal where you go to people’s houses and check out their policies. I just never got around to actually calling someone and going to their house.

 I would go to the team meetings and the other agents would ask me “So, when are you going to get your first deal?” “Soon” I assured them. I told the team leaders not to give up on me, but never made a single appointment to see someone to try to sell them life insurance. I started to feel like a real loser.

Eventually I had to stop my self deception. I said to myself “Self, this is not going to happen. The truth is I have no intention of ever selling life insurance.” I said adios after wasting a lot of time beating myself up.

 Richard Feynman, the American physicist said: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Have you ever

• Been in a relationship that you knew would not last but tried to convince yourself it would?
• Been in a job you knew was not right for you but kept hoping it would get better?
• Kept putting of taking action hoping a situation would resolve itself until it got so messy you had to do something?

If so, you know what self deception feels like.

Why are we such masters of self deception?

Why is it so easy to fool ourselves? It’s because we have a tendency to believe what we think. But there is often a vast difference between what we think and what we know to be true.

Deep down inside, I knew I was kidding myself about being an insurance agent.  If I had stopped and asked myself “What am I doing?”,  I would have been able to see my self deception: that I was just going through the motions with no intention to see it through.

So how do we figure out that we are involved in self deception?

We don’t figure it out. Because it’s your mind that wants to deceive you in the first place. Bob Dylan said “You cannot depend on it to be your guide, when it’s you that must keep it satisfied.” We can’t count on the thing that’s deceiving us to reveal our own self deception. It’s like seeing your own eye. Not gonna happen.

We can identify self deception by the way it makes us feel. If we give ourselves the opportunity, we will feel our own self deception. Chances are, others around us are feeling it as well.

We’ll use logic to justify our actions in spite of what we feel. This way we can ignore the voice inside that is asking us “What the hell are you doing?”

Feelings come and go. But when they come and refuse to leave, than it’s time to pay attention.

Here is a good rule of thumb: if you are caught up in self deception, you will experience struggle and conflict.  You might be getting sick a lot, feeling tired and ill at ease. The bigger the self deception, the bigger the lie you are telling yourself, the crappier you will feel.

If you are true to yourself, stuff just seems to flow. There may be challenges, but we can meet them with grace and ease.

Are you getting the feeling that self deception has you blind, fumbling and stuck?  Here are some things to do that might shed light on that dark corner.

• Ask someone. This takes a rare kind of courage. You walk up to someone that knows you well and you ask them “I get the feeling that I’m fooling myself about this situation. What do you think?” If there is self deception that has been festering and is getting stinky to others around you, they won’t hesitate to gleefully point it out to you and possibly smack you side of the head.
• Write in a journal. Sit down with a pen and paper and ask: “Please tell me what I need to know.” Then just start writing. Anything. Sometimes what shows up is kind of like a smack side of the head.
• Ask your subconscious mind before you go to sleep. Just ask a question like “Give me clarity to see what it true” or “Allow me to know if there is self deception here.” Sometimes you’ll get a dream, sometimes you’ll know upon waking, sometimes it will come to you out of nowhere like a smack in the head.
• Go take a walk. Again, ask for clarity with a sense of calm relaxation. Go walking without trying to think or figure things out. I did this once while thinking about a business associate who I was trying  to convince myself I could trust. All of a sudden, bits and pieces of information came together for me that made it clear to me that I could not. I was so astounded that I had not seen this before that I walked into a street sign. It was very much like a smack in the head.
• Go see a professional like myself to help you figure it you. I promise I will not… well, you know.

Doesn’t take much to see truth. The first step is to acknowledge that we are all masters of self deception.

Ted