Do you believe that the arguments that support your decisions are true? Do we make a decision based on reasoning or do we start reasoning from a decision to justify it? What is voluntary and what is unconscious in your thoughts? In this article we will tell you what self-deception consists of, what its consequences are and why we lie to ourselves, in order to identify what we are lying about and find a more adaptive way to face reality.
Enric Closer – The deceptions of our memory
In this closer Enric, we will address how to detect the deceptions of our memory and make them aware in order to be able to reinterpret our experiences, rewrite our past and transform our present.
The concept of “sincerity” understood only as telling the truth is incomplete. What does it mean for something to be true? What leads us to lie? In this video, the teacher Curro Aguilar defines what sincerity is and what attributes must accompany it to really form a virtue.
What is self-deception?
self-deception is a mechanism that the brain performs automatically, and usually unconsciouschoosing from among all the possibilities an interpretation of reality that is easier for them, based on , of the person.
Why does it work like this? For saving energy, since it makes the interpretation that requires less effort.
What does he do it for? To avoid change, and what we believe will be most unpleasant on an emotional level, our brain protects us by filtering out the aspects of reality that cause us concern and conflict, thus allowing us to continue our lives as we know them.
“Nothing deceives us as much as our own judgment.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
However, through explanations and justifications, self-deception can become the biggest obstacle to our developmentpreventing us from making the changes we want and creating the life we want.
The art of lying to yourself
To be believable, a lie must be organized in our minds in a way that makes sense to us.
With this objective, our brain selects certain stimuli from the environment and create a story from the data you haveThat is why it is said that lying is an art.
The act of lying, both to others and to oneself, is natural and inevitable.
This is due to our perceptions are always interpretations of reality and, therefore, do not reflect “the truth”.
We believe that we deceive the other by lying, but who we are truly deceiving is ourselves. What is your mask?
— (@ECIinstitute)
The lie is not unfavorable in itself, but rather has an energy saving function and helps us adapt to realityprotecting us in situations that are more difficult for us to manage.
Thus, self-deception helps us to keep the .
Nevertheless, if practiced excessively and repetitively, it can be harmfulsince by preventing us from seeing reality, we cannot manage our lives and we are at the mercy of events.
How self-deception works: Beliefs
We perceive and we interpret reality – to others and to what happens to us – based on our beliefsabout how we are, how people are, how our relationships with them should be and, in general, how the world is.
“Reality is nothing other than the ability of our senses to deceive themselves.”
– Albert Einstein
Our belief system is influenced by the experience we have had and by learning, especially in the first years of life, and this includes the value system from which we experience and direct our lives.
In such a way that the justifications and explanations that we give ourselves convince us that reality is how we would like it to be and not how it is, influencing our actions and decisions.
Thus, self-deception clouds our conscience and interferes with our personal will, turning us into what surrounds us.
Self-deception in social relationships
A study carried out by Festinger and Carlsmith in 1959, and which is still valid today, consisted of the following: the participants were asked to perform a task that they found very boring.
When they finished it, they were asked to tell other participants who were going to start it that it was a fun task.
Given the discomfort of having to deceive their classmates, the subjects ended self-convincing and justifying why the task was interesting to them, thus resolving the internal contradiction that caused them to have to lie to a classmate.
The results supported the hypothesis that, given the discomfort produced by a contradiction between what we do and what we thinkwe resort to self-convincing, interpreting the information and considering only that part that coincides with our previous beliefs.
In this way we generate arguments that create the false illusion of having acted coherently, to avoid the discomfort of questioning our valuesour and, ultimately, what we believe to be.
For this reason, when we do not make this strategy of our psyche conscious, we recommend formulas that have not made us happy, as we will see in the following example.
In order to feel better about ourselves, having decided to take these routes to our happiness, and in order not to create that dissonance, we remember them as positive or convenient.
The same happens with the that we give to our children, co-workers, students, clients, or those that we receive from others.
We deceive ourselves due to the judgment we make of ourselves and the decisions we have made.
Self-deception prevents us from being happy
There is a popular parable in which it is said that a son asked his father what I had to do to be . “You must finish your studies”said the father, the boy nodded.
Years later, he asked the same question again and the father said: “now find a good woman and marry her”, the son obeyed and, after a while, asked again. “Now you must have a stable job and start a family with that woman”.
A few years later, and seeing that he was still not happy, he asked his father again, now an old man. “Now what am I to do?” to which the father, looking at the ground and with some resignation, replied: “Now? and what do I know…”
This story reflects something that happens to us or has happened to everyone. We try to model our referents, to follow paths already traveled so as not to feel lostthinking that they will take us to the places where we need to go.
We even do the same with those who ask us: we recommend decisions that we made one day or, just the opposite, we vehemently advise against certain paths based on our own personal experiences.
However, in both cases, expectations and conditioning are generated that, in reality, come from our beliefs and .
They are forms of self-deception that, more or less consciously, we decide to share with others.
“I don’t want you to believe what I say or trust what I do,
for my words are nothing but your own thoughts,
sound facts, and my facts are your own hopes in action.”
Gibran Khalil Gibran
Definitely, deceiving ourselves makes us live in a distorted realityillusory and subjective in which we do not have the capacity for action and transformation.
Becoming aware of how and where we lie to ourselves is key to taking back the reins of our lives and becoming an active part of our experiences.
Examples of self-deception
There are many ways to lie to ourselves in a harmful way. For example, as we have seen, we deceive ourselves when without connecting with ourselves to discover what we really want to do.
Also, when we refuse to “see” or accept a fact that emotionally destabilizes us we create a protective shield that distances us from the experience and prevents us from managing it from our true feelings.
“The the and fear are the immediate motives of .”
–Daniel Golemman
In other words, we invent a fictitious reality in order to feel safe, valued, loved, etc.., which leads us to live a false reality, disconnected from ourselves, in which we can never achieve emotional well-being because we are not allowing ourselves to enter our experiences in order to choose how to live them.
Examples of frequently used self-deception phrases:
“I’m fine. Now he treats me better than before.”
“He doesn’t do it to hurt me.”
“I can quit smoking as soon as I want to.”
“Actually, he still loves me.”
“I can end the relationship at any time.”
“At least I have a job.”
“I can start working whenever I want.”
“I know what I do.”
“The teacher has a thing for me.”
Example of self-deception in the workplace
To better understand how self-deception works, let’s see an example that shows Why is it so hard for us to make major changes?as in which we are not satisfied.
Imagine a person who has spent a few months feeling that his job is no longer good, he has two options:
- The first is to deceive yourself, say to yourself something like: “This job is not so bad, there are worse. The way things are, I better stay, who knows what would happen if I left.”
- And, the second option is to say something like this: “I am demotivated, I know that I can do something more to take advantage of my abilities, evolve and continue learning. Here my possibilities are limited. I’m going to make changes”.
Faced with this dilemma, the person’s brain evaluates the consequences of one response and another:
- If your answer is the first, all the person has to do is continue as they are currently, living moments of discomfort that you already know. And his mind will tend to interpret each situation in a way that allows him to confirm the belief: “My work is not bad and it gives me security.”
- However, if the person chooses the second option, they will be prompted to change, to question their beliefs, since they will lead them to experience unknown and, therefore, uncertain situations.
When this happens, and if fear does not prevent it, the person will take action to change jobs: research how your job sector is doing, write your resume, continue training, prepare for interviews, etc.
As we see, the second answer is much more expensiveso the most frequent answer tends to be the first one, precisely because of what we said at the beginning, for saving energy, mainly emotional energy.
Consequences of lying to yourself
We resort to this mechanism to avoid seeing certain aspects of our own or of the environment that we find uncomfortable, difficult to assume, and that impel us to make changes and .
The intention, usually unconscious, is avoid situations that we think will be more challenging to…