“The most confused we ever get is when we try to convince our heads of something our hearts know is a lie.” ~ Karen Moning

If we can lie to ourselves we might be able to go through life believing we have it all figured out.

We might be able to believe that we are on the right track, working the right job, in the right relationship, and living the life that we should be.

At times it seems that it’s easier to lie to ourselves than it is to simply face the truth of whatever our heart is trying to wake us up to, because sometimes it remains elusive for our own protection of the status quo.This bleak middle ground of greys is a comfortable oasis from ambition, and the effort it takes to create a life of our own design.

So sometimes, the best choice to make is to lie to ourselves.

First we have to make sure that it’s one we can really believe, so the bigger it is, the more unbelievable and the more complicated—the better. Don’t bother starting off on something small, like what you were really doing on your lunch break, instead go right for the heart—lie about how happy you are about your life.

The important thing to do though is never let your poker-face fall. Keep smiling even when you hear that voice inside tell you that you’re wrong—even when you feel the pressure of keeping up the lie. Sometimes it may help to actually shake loose the doubts from your head while talking so that you can try to forget what it is you’re lying about.

Whatever you do never admit the truth, even to yourself.

Even on the darkest of nights, when it seems that you’ve taken a major wrong turn and you’re beginning to wonder if you are on the right track—keep lying to yourself. Keep repeating how happy you are, how this is the life you should be living, and most of all tell yourself that you don’t deserve any better. One of the biggest aspects of being able to successfully lie to ourselves is the ability to believe that we don’t deserve any better.

Because once we think we deserve better, we begin to see things as they really are.

This is the worst type of catastrophe because this type of vision will begin to eat away at the castle of lies that we have built until we are left with nothing but an illusion of our own making. In order to keep our lies up we have to be committed to living them out, we have to convince ourselves that the lies are, in essence, our truth.

We have to build our defenses up from fear.

There is no way to be happy with the life we have settled for if we aren’t able to convince ourselves that it’s the best we can get. In order to do this, we have to convince ourselves that the fear of the unknown is too great a challenge, and that all that we need is wrapped up in all that we know.

So we lie.

We lie to ourselves, to our heads, and to anyone and everyone who will listen to us. We spin tales of opulence, love, success, and adventure as we go home, settle into bed, and feel nothing but the empty ghost from (of not from) a life we wished we were brave enough to live haunting us.

And that’s when the mistake happens.

The moment when we begin to wonder if it’s worth it, if all of these lies are bringing us happiness. This is the undoing of all of our lies. It’s the slow steady stream of truth that will begin to trickle into our consciousness until we are submerged in everything that we had been hiding from. It’s the letting in of all of our doubts, insecurities, and issues over self-worth— and we crumble.

It’s here we will begin to realize that we don’t have it all figured out.

This life and why it happens, how to go about it in the best way possible, and what it means to be happy. But now, we won’t be able to shove it all back in as if it never happened, because like Pandora’s Box, all it does is keep coming.

The regrets from living only half a life, the questions that we never dared to ask ourselves, and the hope that maybe someday we won’t have to lie in order to be happy.

It’s scary to think that we’ve done it all wrong, and even more terrifying to think that another life exists—entirely different than the one that we’ve talked ourselves into accepting. But still, we will stumble, yet there is no other choice because now that we have slipped up and admitted that our entire life is a lie, we have nothing to do but go in search of the truth—wherever that may lead.

It’s the choice to dive into the unknown, the mystery, and the passionate, where anything can happen and anything is possible—-the risk that we run of actually having it all, but only once we admit that we don’t.

Yet, we can pretend, many of us for years, or even decades. We can lie to ourselves and say that what we have is all that we have ever wanted. We can smile, shrug, and keep our eyes from glancing up at the racing clouds across the sky—but all it takes is that moment.

That one instant where we let down our guard, and let the truth in.

Not our truth, not the truth we have come to believe, but the actual truth, and once that happens going back becomes a stern impossibility and our only option is to continue on into whatever is waiting for us.

Our only option is to accept the lies we’ve told ourselves, so that we can finally begin to experience the truth of a life that we never imagined. Yet somehow, it tastes sweeter than anything we’ve experienced.

And it’s here that we will have, blissfully and thankfully, failed at lying to ourselves indefinitely.

Now anything becomes possible—even true happiness.

~

Author: Kate Rose

Image: Megan Tedrow/Flickr

Editor: Lieselle Davidson