Our life is designed in such a way that we are constantly in contact with the fact that we are being lied to. Why does this happen and why is it dangerous?

Lies have become an integral attribute of modern man. A person constantly notices lies around him and catches someone in a lie. What is a lie anyway? According to the dictionary: a lie is a statement that is obviously not true and expressed in this form deliberately.

Wherever there is life, there is danger.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

People lie for different reasons. Some lie “for the good,” trying to protect a loved one from something bad or unpleasant. Others lie out of selfishness, for their own benefit. But whatever the reason, a lie always remains a lie.

Lies sooner or later become obvious

No one can predict the consequences of this.

Although no one shows it, for every person a lie is a negative phenomenon, it causes pain, suffering, and sometimes kills something in a person.

Every lie discovered changes a person. It changes little by little, imperceptibly. With every deception, some part of the soul dies inside a person. The man is growing stale. It’s just that faith in one’s neighbor, faith in good things decreases every time. The understanding comes that you can’t trust anyone, you can only rely on yourself. This very often leads to the occurrence, which can have a detrimental effect on health.

The worst lie is betrayal. If a person betrays someone, then he will betray another time. They begin to treat such a person with caution, with “wariness.” He loses trust and building a good relationship with someone becomes a very big problem for him.

What happens to people who are deceived and betrayed?

People who are constantly lied to become hardened in soul, lose faith in people, and lose hope in the help of their neighbors. This, over time, leads to the fact that a person becomes a loner. Especially if a person is betrayed in the best of feelings, then such a person, as they say, “dies his soul.” He stops trusting anyone and suspects everyone of everything.

For such a person, colors are lost, the world becomes black and white. A rating scale is formed inside a person: black below, white above. Such a person’s people are divided into two categories: on the white side or on the black side. There is no average.

What to do?

Don't lie to the other person. Don't hurt him and make it worse for yourself. Everything will open up sooner or later anyway. You may lose a relative, a friend, or gain an enemy.

Always tell the truth, no matter what it is. Let the person know everything at once. Yes, they will be offended by you, stop talking, and disappear. But after thinking, any person comes to the conclusion that he was told the truth, nothing was hidden or concealed. Then your communication will resume and become stronger.

Do not hurt another, because by doing this you free his hands to do the same to you. In such cases, the “boomerang law” comes into play. It is not for nothing that it has been said since ancient times that any truth, no matter how bitter it may be, is always better than a sweet lie.

Respect yourself and others. Live with the truth in your soul.

It has happened more than once in my life that I spent months, or even years, on projects that simply had no future. Not least of all, I wasted a lot of effort because I didn't hear honest feedback about my work. It also happened: thanks to timely, frank criticism, I quickly changed course and avoided stressful and unnecessary work in time. The difference between these two situations is huge. Yes, sometimes it can be unpleasant to hear that we wasted our time or that the quality of our work is not at all what we thought it was. But justified criticism helps us find our place in the world.

I have a friend who is a very successful writer. At the beginning of his creative career, he wrote a script that I considered terrible, which I did not fail to tell him about. It was not easy for me to decide on this criticism, because my friend had been working on the script for almost a year. But that was the truth (as I saw it). Now when I praise his work, he knows that I really like it.

Case in point: “Does this dress make me look fat?” According to most people, the correct answer to this question is: “No.” It clearly demonstrates why white lies are so attractive. Indeed, why not cheer up a woman with the help of an innocent lie and give her that
most self-confident? But if a person does not get into the habit of telling the truth in such situations, then it will soon turn out that there are too many exceptions to his rule of honesty. And he will suddenly discover that he is easily and naturally acting like most people: hiding the truth or even outright lying, without thinking much about it. So the price of white lies is too high. What is the truth? Maybe the woman really looks fat in this dress, but it’s not her figure that’s to blame, but the cut that makes her look fat. By telling the truth, you will convince her to choose a more suitable style that hides flaws and emphasizes advantages.

But let's imagine a situation in which telling the truth is much more difficult: a woman looks fat in this, or any other dress, because she is fat. She's, say, a 35-year-old single woman who desperately wants to get married and have a family. And you think that most men are not eager to date her because of her weight. Marriage aside, you know for sure that she will be happier, healthier and more confident if she gets in shape. When we choose to lie for the benefit of others, we take on the responsibility of deciding for them what they should know about their own lives—appearance, reputation, or prospects.

How to keep secrets

A commitment to honesty does not obligate you to disclose personal information that you would prefer to keep private. If someone asks you how much you have in your bank account, you have no ethical obligation to share that information. The truth in this case will sound like this: “I would prefer to remain silent about this.”

Thus, there is no conflict between honesty and secrets. It should be noted, however, that many secrets - especially those that other people trust us with - force us to choose between lying and revealing confidential information. Agreeing to keep a secret means taking on a difficult burden. At a minimum, you need to constantly remember what you cannot talk about. This may not be easy and may involve clumsy attempts to get out. If you are a doctor, lawyer, psychologist or representative of another profession related to confidential information, but are not obliged to keep other people's secrets, then it is better to avoid them altogether.

What to do if you need to lie

And although the rule “Never lie” clearly calls for virtue, in practice it can result in completely inappropriate behavior.
An absolute ban on lying is only advisable from the point of view of a convinced pacifist. If you consider it possible to kill or injure a person in self-defense or in defense of another, there is no point in refusing to lie in similar circumstances.

Even as a means of preventing violence, lying often interferes with honest and open communication that could produce more tangible results or bring about important moral change. In situations where we see no other way out but to lie, we, as a rule, justify ourselves this way: the person we are deceiving is dangerous and the truth will not help us. In other words, we are convinced of the complete impossibility of establishing a sincere relationship with him. Most of us rarely find ourselves in such circumstances. And even if this happens, lying seems the easiest
(and far from ethical) option.

Why is it harder to lie?

Liars face one serious problem - the need to constantly remember their lies. Keeping in mind when, to whom, and how you lied is hard work. Some people do it better, others worse. Psychopaths endure the burden of “mental accounting” without any apparent strain. This is not surprising: that’s why they are psychopaths. They do not think about the feelings of others and easily break off relationships if they consider it necessary.

Some people are real self-centered monsters. But ordinary people pay for lies with their spiritual comfort. One lie begets another. Unlike a statement of fact, which does not require any
additional efforts on our part, lies must be continuously protected from collision with reality. But if you always tell the truth, you have nothing to worry about, you don’t have to remember who and what you told: it’s like the whole world becomes your memory.

If you lie a lot, then eventually you simply won’t have enough strength to keep others in the dark. You may be able to avoid direct accusations of dishonesty, but many people will come to the conclusion that for some reason they simply cannot trust you. To them, you will be a person who ignores the facts all the time, and liars, in fact, do just that. Many of us have probably interacted with such people. No one catches them in outright lies; those around them perceive them
as “dreamers” and begin to slowly move away from them. And the “dreamers” most likely don’t even understand why.

By the way, suspicion usually arises on both sides of the fence: according to research, liars themselves have little trust in those they deceive.
And the more destructive their lies, the less they trust and even sympathize with their victims. That is, by protecting their ego and justifying their own behavior, liars condemn those to whom they lie.

The book is provided by Alpina Publisher

As children, we were all taught that lying is wrong, but who can argue? However, there are situations in life when you just have to lie a little - and, as they say, everyone is immediately happy. The portal has already written about why, all that remains is to figure out how to avoid exposure. The correspondent, together with family psychologist Olga Sharandikova, compiled several simple rules for the ideal lie. Use only for good!

Rule #1: Believe your lies.

The best way to lie plausibly is to believe in the truth of your words.

You should carefully prepare for a conversation, even the shortest one, in which you want to be disingenuous. It does not take a lot of time. Imagine in your imagination all the events, already in a distorted form, several times in the smallest details, feel the fiction. It’s the nuances that are important, since mentioning them during a conversation will make your interlocutor trust you like nothing else. In general, become an actor and play your role brilliantly!

Rule #2: Lie by half.

This rule will help you out if someone suddenly finds out the truth about you that you tried to hide. For example, if you go with a friend to dinner at a specific restaurant, say that you had dinner there. If you do not want to talk about the place in advance, in order to avoid unplanned meetings, do not forget to communicate this truth afterwards. If you are traveling with a friend not on a business trip abroad, but to relax for a couple of days outside the city, be sure to warn everyone that you are traveling with Nikolai, Yuri, etc. If you met your ex-lover by chance and went into a cafe to sit and talk - to avoid an attack of jealousy, tell your wife that you met your ex and her husband and went to the nearest cafe for just ten minutes, where all your neighbors and friends saw you. In the event of a scandal, it will always be possible to retort - they say that there was no deception, I said that I would be there/with that, it was someone else who misspoke, noticed me when they approached me, etc.

Rule No. 3. Don’t give in to your emotions and don’t get nervous.

When lying, always try to be as natural as possible and not violate your typical habits. You should not run your eyes all over the person or, on the contrary, look closely at him without taking your eyes off. Also, you should not make meaningless nervous movements with your hands near your face and especially near your mouth. No need to fiddle with your hair, the end of a napkin, tear off the label from a bottle standing on the table and wring your fingers. Calm down, try to relax and begin your fascinating story. If you always wiggle your leg a little during conversations or tend to look out the window while talking to someone, continue doing so. Talk in your usual manner and “press for pity” a little: “understand me,” “imagine how tired I am,” etc. But most importantly, be yourself and remember rule #1.

Rule #4: Describe a real person

Choose from your old acquaintances with whom you hardly communicate, a man or a woman, and always describe their appearance. This will help avoid many incidents. By always mentioning the same person in a conversation, you confirm a hundred times that this is not a fictional character with whom you supposedly see each other while you are actually watching football with friends in a bar around the corner, but a real new employee of yours, whom you need in Introduce yourself to the company's affairs every day for two weeks, so you stay late at work.

Rule No. 5. Do not deceive very close people

You should try to lie as little as possible to those people with whom you communicate most. Firstly, we love and respect our loved ones and relatives, so it is still not good to deceive them, based on moral considerations. And secondly, the more often we communicate with a person, the more mutual acquaintances we have, the greater the chance of letting it slip, “getting confused in the testimony” and giving ourselves away.

Rule No. 6. Never confess.

Until someone grabs your hand, never admit anything. Stand your ground and that’s it, it’s true, how could it be otherwise? There can be no options. Any photo/video evidence can always be refuted. Even if the discussions drag on for long hours and days, don’t give up. The brain of your interlocutor, maddened by processing the same information, will get tired and, according to the principles of its work, will want to sort everything into pieces, build a logical chain of ordered events based on the available data, and you will, in the end, be acquitted.

By the way, according to statistics from Russian sociologists, 70% of people lie about, 57% about the price of an expensive purchase in one direction or another, 51% about love victories, giving compliments - 38%, about the reason for being late - 28%, about the amount of salary - 13% of people.

What do you think, is it sometimes possible to lie or should one always remain crystal honest? How to tactfully tell the truth? Is it even possible to live in the modern world without lies? Let's discuss in the comments.

Natalia Nazarenko

Want to learn to lie like a spy? Then these tips will suit you.

Believe in your skills

One of the easiest ways to give away that you are not telling the truth is to lose confidence in yourself and convince yourself that the person you are lying to knows that you are not giving them truthful answers. In fact, there's a good chance he doesn't have a clue, and if you believe in yourself, you'll be able to lie successfully. On average, people correctly identify lies only 50 percent of the time.

Stick to your story

This may seem obvious, but even the smallest change you make to a story on the fly is likely to arouse suspicion in a skeptical listener. If you change anything in your original story, you will create a controversial situation and also undermine your credibility. Even the boldest lies can be accepted as "possible truth" if you are consistent with your story.

Make your lies believable

In most cases, people automatically assume that you are telling the truth, but only if your lie is one that can be believed. Make sure your lies are realistic and you'll be more likely to convince the person you're talking to that you're not lying. Lie about your age within five years, your height within five centimeters and your salary within five thousand, and no one will ever catch you.

Try not to know what you don't want to tell

Professional poker players often limit themselves to information so as not to accidentally reveal any secret. For example, a professional poker player might not even look at the cards until it's his turn, so that players who have to go early won't be able to see his subconscious reactions to the cards and use that information. Likewise, they may not look at the cards on the table until it's time for their turn, concentrating instead on observing the other players.

Keep your mouth shut

Another effective way to avoid getting caught lying is to cut down on the amount of what you say. Communicate only what you absolutely need to communicate, thereby reducing the likelihood that you will say something suspicious or that your body language will give you away. If you are playing poker with a sophisticated opponent, you should try to keep the information you give him to a minimum. Instead of trying to deceive someone, you should minimize the amount of information you give out.

Repetition is the mother of learning

Body language is often a much stronger indicator of lies than any words you speak, so just as you should try to minimize communication, try to do the same with your body language. Act naturally, but limit your movements. Overall, poker is a game of information, and the more information you give your opponents, the more likely they are to make a good decision.

Build a foundation of truth

If you are going to lie, you should try to make sure that as many details in your story as possible are true. The basis of your story and most of the facts should be true, and also something that you know very well yourself.

Lightness is the key to success

Getting defensive is the easiest way to give away that you have something to hide. If the person you're talking to asks you questions about your story, try to respond in a light, cheerful, and light-hearted way. If you are asked questions, smile. This instantly reduces tension and makes you completely innocent in the eyes of other people.

Breathe

Fidgeting in place, swallowing frequently, or showing general tension are typical nonverbal behaviors that reveal liars. What is the easiest way to take control of all such reactions? Breathe evenly. Breathing slowly and deeply can help relieve anxiety. It will also help you with your sweaty palms and dry throat that causes you to swallow frequently.

Be present in the moment

By being present in the moment and concentrating on the conversation, you can lower your blood pressure and stop your eyes darting around the room. If you can maintain full concentration on the person you are communicating with, without being distracted by other things, the information you convey will seem more congruent and believable.

Stick to the topic

Liars often begin to change the subject when they are caught in a lie. People who tell the truth do not stop communicating on a specific topic until they convince the person who accused them of lying that they were not lying. Liars change the subject and end the conversation, citing that they, for example, do not want to talk about it.

Avoid categorical statements

Just as with changing the subject, liars tend to either oversimplify or make blanket statements. For example, “I would never lie” or “I'm not that kind of person” are defensive phrases you may hear from someone who is not being honest with you.

Make sure your details cannot be confirmed to be false

Do not offer facts that can easily be verified to be false. For example, if you say you were late due to a traffic accident, a couple of questions and a check of the road conditions along your route can instantly reveal that you were lying.

Maintain eye contact

You need to be able to “sell” your lies. To do this, you should maintain eye contact and also maintain correct posture. If you look away, your shoulders droop, or you fidget, this can be interpreted as a sign of nervousness or a lack of confidence.

Control your facial expression

Likewise, you shouldn't change your facial expression too quickly or too radically if you want to be believed. It's best not to change your facial expression at all. If you yourself believe that the person you are talking to believes your lie, and smile about it, this may give away your lie.

Studies have shown that lying has a detrimental effect on relationships, and even harms your health. Many people cheat without thinking, out of habit, and to stop ruining your health and relationships, you need to realize why you are hiding the truth and what it ultimately leads to.

Truth for health

The habit of telling the truth when you are tempted to lie can significantly improve both mental and physical health.

Anita Kelly and study co-author Liyuan Wang, Ph.D., of Notre Dame, conducted the experiment over 10 weeks and included 110 participants—34% adults and 66% college students. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 71 years.

Participants in the experiment were divided into two groups, one of which was instructed not to lie as much as possible for 10 weeks, and the second served as a control group. Both groups came into the lab every week to have their health checked by researchers and also tested on lie detector tests on the number of lies they told during the week.

During the research it turned out that there is a connection between lying and mental and physical health. For example, when study participants from the “honest” group lied three times less, they were less susceptible to melancholy and depressive moods. In addition, people in this group suffered less from headaches and sore throats.

The participants had noticeably improved relationships with loved ones, which reduced the amount of stress and had a positive effect on their health. After the experiment, the participants realized that they can do without deception and exaggeration, they can not lie to justify their lateness or the fact that they cannot do something.

So, telling the truth means maintaining your mental and physical health and getting rid of unnecessary stress. The participants in the experiment realized that they didn’t have to lie, but why did they lie before? There are several reasons why people often tell lies, poisoning the lives of both themselves and their loved ones.

Reasons to become a liar

It is common for people to tell only part of the truth that they consider appropriate, or the information that they think the other person wants to hear. The rest of the truth is hidden. People can lie “to save themselves” or regularly come up with white lies that won’t harm anyone, but it still has a detrimental effect on both their sense of self and their relationships.

Even a white lie leaves a bitter aftertaste, because if you tell a lie, you will never feel like a truly strong person.

By telling lies, you will never feel like a truly strong person, a person who is not afraid to say what is, and not what they want to hear.

Here are some reasons why people often tell lies and the consequences this leads to:

1. Response management

When you tell your best friend about your relationship with your co-workers or your loved one, are you telling the whole truth or just one side of it? Do you keep silent about small but significant details, change your opponent’s phrases? If so, think about how these changes might affect your friend's view of the story and its participants?

Most often, such lies are needed in order to get the desired answer from the interlocutor. so that he does not objectively evaluate your story, but simply confirms that it is so, you were right. As a result, you are simply manipulating his opinion. By moderately hiding the facts, you are leading your friend to the necessary conclusions; what kind of objectivity can we talk about here?

Remember that by doing this, you are depriving yourself of sincere friendly advice, who could help you, a person's real opinion about the situation and an exchange of opinions. It turns out that you need not a friend, but a listener.

2. Lies for replacement

Every person sometimes misses some details that are better not mentioned. Sometimes you do this to spare other people's feelings, but very often the details mean a lot.

For example, your partner asks you what you did today, and you don’t mention that you stopped by your ex-lover’s for tea. Maybe you have only friendly relations left between you, and you don’t want your partner to be jealous, but imagine that he will see you together. What will he think then?

Lying creates a shadowy atmosphere, makes you feel guilty even if you haven't done anything wrong, and lies multiply lies. On the other hand, if you can tell your partner everything, it creates a feeling of mutual trust and peace of mind.

3. Exaggeration

Lack of self-confidence often forces people to create and maintain a particular image in order to gain approval from other people. This is a disastrous idea - when you exaggerate your strengths, the feeling of self-doubt only grows, and if the deception is revealed, everything only gets worse.

Another reason may be to justify feelings of guilt. For example, when your refusal upsets a person, and you lie, but do not fulfill your promise. Gradually, for this person, your words will lose all meaning. An honest refusal is many times better than a fake promise that you had no intention of keeping from the very beginning. Your feelings of guilt will only grow, and your relationship will deteriorate.

4. Protection

Too often people give in to their inner critic and don't say what they really think. In order not to look stupid, they feign indifference to something that is important to them.

If you continue like this, you may save yourself from a couple of awkward moments, but you won’t achieve what you would like in life. So, if you have found your reason for lying and decided to give it up, you should start with the simplest thing.

How to stop lying?

1. Lies are for cowards

Stop listening to your inner voice, which is trying to protect you from momentary shocks. This inner voice does not necessarily express your point of view, it is dictated by the fear of trouble, and by giving in to it, you are simply going against yourself.

The courage to tell the truth is a real reason to respect yourself.

2. Don’t lie to your loved ones

The next step is to be more honest with those you love. It won't always be easy to handle the truth, but in the long run you will gain much more trust and respect from people whose opinions you care about.

If you are thinking about whether to tell the truth, think about whether you want to be trusted, so that your words are always supported by actions? As you learn to tell the truth without hiding parts of it, you will gradually develop more trusting and honest relationships.

By giving up lies, you take a step towards freedom from fears, get rid of additional stress and help your health.

Do you often hide the truth and why do you do it?