It’s come to my attention, in leu of recent events, how much people lie. It’s human nature to lie. I read an article once that said people tell an average of 4 lies a day. That really made me think… 4 times a day- and that’s an average, which I think is pretty believable. I mean, we all know that one person in our lives who seems to lie about everything, from the time they get up in the morning until the time they go to bed at night. They lie because they need to and even when they don’t. Right now, I’m sure the name of someone is popping up in your head and your like… “oh ya, Bob doesn’t stop lying ever”, or “Mary?! Hell, you can’t believe one thing that lady says”. And while I’m sure people like this drive the national lying average up quite a bit, these aren’t the type of lies I’m talking about. The constant type of liar becomes evident fairly easily and reveals themselves quickly in the grand scheme of things and so I view this type of offense, although annoying in its ridiculousness and consistency, not nearly as insidious as the lies we use to manipulate others, and ourselves. Constant liars tend to lie to make themselves more relevant, while the lies that work to manipulate or coerce a certain emotion or outcome, tend to harm not only our own integrity and thus how we view and trust ourselves, they harm others in the process as well.
There’s so many ways to lie. You can lie in 100 different ways and for 100 different reasons. You can lie to yourself about who you are, you can lie to others about who you are. Of course, we all know in the end that true colors always show. We lie to get things we want and we lie to deflect the things we don’t want. I think the worst kind of lie is one that’s told over and over and even when the opportunity to just tell the truth is there, the professional liar will just keep going. But we all know at the end of the day- we’re stuck with ourselves. Stuck with that suck feeling of being a little bitch for not being real- or authentic, or even worse- maybe not feeling in the wrong at all. Because at the end of the day, some people just aren’t trying to grow or be real and this message will miss them entirely. But to anyone who’s searching for a way to show up in a world full of so many lies, to those who feel empty and lost and aren’t sure why- this will maybe resonate with you. To the people who want the real friendships, the loyal partnerships, and to live a life that feels right, I hope this can help to in some tiny way, validate the work you’re most likely already doing. There are two lies in particular that can impact us so deeply because if left unchecked, they can leave us in a life that feels hollow and surrounded by relationships and people that don’t vibrate on our level. But first, a story to let you know where this journey to be aware of how much I lied, all started for me.
About 6 years ago I had something really awful happen to me at work. It was they type of thing that forced me to step back and look at my whole life and ask myself “what the hell am I doing”? It was the type of event that makes you sit down, shut up, and re-evaluate everything. I was a VNA nurse for underprivileged clients, most with mental health disorders on top of multiple chronic diseases. I would go into 8-14 homes a day and educate, give meds, injections, lab draws, create care plans and bring in support when needed. Basically, we did everything in our human power to keep them out of crisis, emergency rooms and hospitals. I loved my job. I loved getting to help people that much of society didn’t want to admit existed. I was, however, becoming extremely burnt out by very long hours and some very, very difficult situations. Until one day I had a patient attack me in his home, and knock me out cold.
Without going into too many details, it’s true what they say happens when you think you’re going to die. My whole life sort of flashed before my eyes. In just a few seconds I thought about how much I was going to miss my kids and my husband, and I wondered how much it was going to hurt when he got a hold of me. I pushed the bathroom door shut with all my might as he continually bashed it in over and over again. My senses went into overdrive and the hyper acute thing that people tell you about-when you’re in danger, it’s real. I remember the sound of my breathing, frantic and short. I remember screaming for someone to help, screaming from my guts and with all my might but in my memories the scream is muffled- it’s in the background as if I was hearing it from two apartments over and under water. It’s the breathing that sticks the most in my memories. In and out I breathed sharply. I was SO scared. And yet, while trying to keep that door shut, I couldn’t help but think about all the people I loved and how much I was going to miss them.
It turns out, a scary experience like the one I went through and what so many people go through every day in this thing we call life, can push you into an existential spin that we never anticipate. We suddenly have this immense amount of gratitude for life. We realize in the moment of the worst fear we’ve ever experienced, that we spend the majority of our days worrying about things that just. don’t. matter. I found myself looking in the mirror and saying “who am I and how do I fix me”. I started to look at myself, and I mean, I looked hard and long at all the things that had pushed me toward that very moment. While I couldn’t have predicted the event itself, I had made lots of choices that had led me there.
I had to finally admit to all the lies I had told myself over the last several years and I had to face the music of my own life that was my own making. I flashed back to all the times my husband had told me he hated my job, and that I worked way too many hours, and how worried he was that I was going into unsafe situations every day. Every time he would look at me worried, and try to tell me how overworked I was and how I was constantly neglecting myself, I would justify why he was wrong in my head. Tiny little lies, nothing overt but just bending the truth to fit my narrative was my usual response to him. This foundation of tiny lies kept me in a situation that wasn’t healthy for me anymore. I tell people it took the universe quite literally knocking me out cold to wake me the f&*k up. I was forced to face my lies as I sat at home, bruised and shaken with a horrible concussion that was so bad I couldn’t look at a screen for more than a few minutes without feeling like I was going to be sick. So instead of busying myself as I typically would do or numbing myself out with distraction and social media, I got really quiet. I let myself be uncomfortable. Instead of reaching to scroll I took the time to actually look at my life. My life. I was suddenly and acutely aware of how quickly everything can change and I didn’t want to waste one more second being any type of fake or ignoring all the things inside of me that were desperate for living a more authentic and meaningful life.
That was the moment I took my finger and instead of pointing it at everyone else, I took the onus off of them and pointed it at me. That was the time I took back a part of my life I’m not sure I ever fully had. It was really rough. To look at myself, when I already felt so defeated, and ask what part I played to get to this place... Oof. Not fun. But with each rough realization I started to know myself better. I started to feel lighter and more like who I was always supposed to be. The process isn’t linear- I made progress and I regressed. I’m human and our process is staggered- it’s two steps forward, one back and so on. But once you start to feel the sense of personal control that comes with holding that level of integrity for yourself, it’s something that you don’t want to let go of. I realized that these lies, most of them tiny- and many of them lies we tell ourselves to hold ourselves in patterns that simply don’t serve us anymore, created a sort of prison and an illusion of a world that holds us out of the real spaces we’re supposed to inhabit.
Here are two lies that I’ve found in my life and experience have been some of the most harmful to self, and to others;
#1: The “This isn’t who I am” lie. You have a new passion, or an old one that you’re brushing off. You find this hobby, sport, craft (fill in the blank) just amazing and it lights your fire in a way that you can’t explain. But the thing is, this isn’t who you are. You’ve worked a certain career or done a certain thing or stayed a couch potato for years and so you tell yourself “this just isn’t me” or worse, “who do I think I am?” You literally tell yourself this lie as some sort of self-sabotaging effort to keep things status quo. And so, you sit on it. You put yourself in your place.
“Stay in your lane” is something we not only tell ourselves, but we put that BS on other people too. We remind ourselves, this isn’t who I am, so much that we don’t even hear it anymore, it’s like a subliminal message that becomes part of a script that dictates our entire lives. Because of this lie a dream dies, a healthier life is never pursued, and new possibilities get snuffed out, and life goes on without ever knowing what could have been. You need to forcefully remind yourself that you’re dynamic and in a world with infinite possibilities. You are many things and all at once. Stop trying to fit yourself… or anyone else, into a neat and tidy box. That isn’t how it works. If you feel it, think it, if it keeps coming to you, this is who you are… along with a lot of other traits.
#2: The “It’s them, not me” lie. Honey, I know it sucks to hear it, but it’s you too darlin’. As much as we would all love to live the delulu life where we think everything is everyone else’s fault, this is simply just not the facts. To grow in yourself so that you can sit back and not just take jabs but ask yourself, what did I do to get myself in that situation, is a major accomplishment and growth of integrity. It’s a habit that’s born despite our human nature to want to blame anyone else but ourselves. And YES… many people out there are known to be excessively problematic in many ways that cause hurt and harm that no one ever deserves and I do NOT mean that we should own peoples nasty, selfish and harmful behaviors, but hear me out… When we look at such situations and we realize that yes people have acted in awful ways but also take ownership of what made us susceptible to, or, delulu enough, to stay in that situation, this can give us a major sense of control in our lives. We will never have control over other people’s actions, ever. So to focus on people’s shitty behavior, well it won’t get you anywhere- or fix anything. It’s a waste of time and energy (although a bitch-fest with good friends can be SO healing). There’s so much growth that happens in knowing we are stronger and more resilient for learning the lesson, and in turn, staying away and ahead of toxic people and places.
I used to blame, blame, blame… and you know what- blaming is a losing game. Ultimately mistakes and bad things happen and the only thing we ever truly have control over is ourselves. So, if we’re finding ourselves in the same bad situations or toxic relationships over and over again, doesn’t it make sense that we’re playing a role in the reality of that situation? Example: I’m loyal to a fault and used to put myself out 10 times over if it meant helping a friend. Result: I found myself in some friendships that were incredibly one sided and was often left feeling used and abused and terrible. When I love a friend, I truly show up no matter what. I was super confused as to why some of my dearest friends didn’t match that energy. I spent a lot of time hurt over what I viewed as super selfish behavior. I told myself I was a victim to bad friends, and at times I was. We all are. But when my blame-game stopped and I started getting real, I asked myself what I was doing to end up in these types of friendships.
I started to really look at the type of people I was investing energy into and I finally started to wonder, if they weren’t adding to my life in a way that felt right to me, why did I stick around? Why did I make myself available to people who zapped all my energy? I realized I had a pattern of people pleasing in almost every single aspect of my life and as a result I was over-extending myself to make others happy while ignoring my own needs. I had to also admit that I hated confrontation so much that I wouldn’t even express how certain things were hurting me and if I didn’t express it, how could I expect anyone fix it? I’ll also admit I used to be the type of person that would rather have a “nice” fake person around, than a real one who will tell you straight up. If these patterns were happening, I was letting them happen.
So, slowly I started to speak up and call out the behavior. I got brave and it was so hard and caused some super difficult situations. It meant I walked away from people I had loved and adored but in turn this pulled me toward the people who vibrate at my level. Growth and life experience have shown me the real ones typically bring out the best version of myself. I now say the hard things to people I love even when it is totally against my nature. I love selfish friends from a distance. And it all started with me owning my own shit. Looking in the mirror and saying “it’s them, and it’s me” is one of the most liberating and meaningful practices I’ve ever stuck with.
I’m a flawed human (so flawed). I tend to expect a lot from others because I expect so much from myself. But it’s no one else’s job to be who I need them to be- instead it’s my job to invest in the people who fill my cup and in turn be the best person I can be for them. I realized I was expecting people to be someone they weren’t and getting hurt and upset when they had shown me their true colors, time and time again. It started to look and sound like a “me” problem and I finally started to admit it. And all of this insight came to be when I stopped telling myself a lie that had held me in a victim mindset for years. I’m embarrassed to admit that I allowed myself to spin that type of narrative for so long and how it kept me out of the driver’s seat in my own life.
Life can bring us to spaces where the status quo and ho-hum doesn’t do it anymore. We feel stuck and like robots stepping through the motions of our lives, victims of circumstance instead of hands on the wheel driving. I think, that those tiny and insidious lies we tell ourselves and others, start to build up into a cement wall that prevents us from connection to a life that would fulfill us in ways we never knew possible. The overall message, take your training wheels off (*the lies that we tell out of fear of what really is) and grab the freakin’ wheel and start steering in the direction you want to go in (* the honesty that leads to brave moments and taking back our life in a way that makes us trust ourselves again). The lies we tell ourselves, in the long run, just make us lose faith in who we are and what we have to offer. It doesn’t matter how big or small- it all leaves a mark. You can pretend, deflect, and distract, but deep down, you can’t ever fully hide from the damage it causes.
Whether you want to admit it or not, we all lie. But do we all fully understand the effects that lying and manipulation has on our own hearts and souls? And I’m not talking about being the target of the lie- that impact is obvious- it always hurts to be betrayed, manipulated and lied to… I’m talking about the impact on our own hearts when we, ourselves, are the perpetrators. When we start to realize the habit of the lie will continue to hold us back from living a life that is fully ours, and a space feels so good to be in… it’s a wake up call to change that habit. Just like drinking more water, or working out daily, we slowly work this practice into our lives until we get to a place of consistency that brings a sense of harmony and calmness into our lives. Congruity perhaps? Or just that amazing sense of self you get when show up as you- no BS. And for me, this is something I am still very much working on and so I've realized it takes a lot of noticing your own thought patterns. It’s definitely a process and one that needs daily practice. And so the work continues, an unending work in progress, as we try to figure out what the f&^k is the point of any of this…
This is how we go through it guys, one more slightly honest moment at a time. If this post resonates with you, please know that so many of us are out here trying to become the people and change that we want to see in this world. It’s difficult, and can feel lonely when surrounded by some truly detached behavior. We aren’t supposed to feel good existing in a space and time when relationships constantly reflect BS. You’re not strange or broken because it makes you miserable. Chances are, you’re a really decent human who wants to find the real ones to invest in. We’re all just out here trying to live our lives in the best ways we know how to.
Love,
Nikki
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