The Biggest Lies We Tell Ourselves

Hi there,

When I was 19, I thought I’d be the kind of lawyer who delivered fiery courtroom speeches that made jurors cry. A few years in, the only thing to cry about was that I’d mastered the posture of a shrimp. Turns out, I didn’t want to be a lawyer so much as I wanted to feel intimidating and powerful.

Then there was the time I decided every negative emotion was evidence of some buried “trauma” I hadn’t yet unearthed. If I just journaled more, dug deeper, and processed harder, I’d discover the magic root cause that would make me whole. Spoiler: sometimes you feel bad because… you feel bad.

And then there was the season I became absolutely sure that the reason I couldn’t find peace was because of the people around me. If only they changed, I’d finally feel better. (I laugh now, but back then I really thought I could turn someone else into a new person.)

What do these all have in common? They were lies I told myself. Convincing ones. And the kicker is they weren’t accidents. They were features of how the human brain works.

We’re Wired for Self-Deception

At the 100th floor of The Edge in Manhattan, there’s a glass floor that lets you see straight down to the city below in dizzying detail. People look like ants.

Tourists know it is safe. But they can’t help but feel that it isn’t. They approach, recoil, then refuse to take a step onto it.

Philosopher Tamar Gendler of Yale University saw the same thing when he observed visitors at the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

To describe the strange conflict between what people know and what they feel, Gendler coined a term: alief. Alief describes a primitive response based on how things appear or feel rather than how they actually are.

Alief helps explain why our emotions can overpower our reason. Its the same reason we jump during a horror movie. We know it’s fiction, but our hearts race and we tense as it were real. The reaction is genuine even though we know that the threat is not real.

Psychologist Justin Barrett calls it “hyperactive agency detection device” which is our tendency to assume there’s something lurking in the shadows, someone watching us, or some plan behind random events. It’s evolution’s “better safe than sorry” hack.

And it worked back when missing a rustle in the grass could get you eaten. But now It just means our brains lie to us constantly. We think our boss hates us when she’s just tired. Ot that our life will finally make sense after the next milestone.

We know better. But we still alieve otherwise.

This gap between what we know and what we feel is the heartbeat of self-deception.

Our Favorite Lies

We don’t just lie to ourselves when we’re scared of glass floors or horror movies. We lie all the time, quiet little cover stories to make life feel easier. Half the time, we don’t even want what we think we want. We just want relief. So we lie.

And we do it for the simplest reason in the world: to feel a little less uneasy in the moment.

The cost is we trade long-term clarity for short-term comfort. We mortgage tomorrow’s peace for today’s quick hit of certainty or comfort.

That’s why I think personal growth isn’t about enlightenment or self-mastery. It’s about lying to yourself a little less often, and catching your own BS a little faster.

And over the years, I’ve noticed the same patterns cropping up again and again, both in my own life and in the people I work with. Here are three of most common lies we all tell ourselves:

#1. “Once I Get X, Everything Will Finally Fall Into Place.”

X could be anything: the promotion, the relationship, the perfect home with crown molding, six-pack abs, a bigger savings account, or finally switching to oat milk because apparently that’s what “healthy people” do.

The fantasy is always the same: once you get X, then life will click. Then you’ll relax. Then you’ll feel complete.

But here’s the problem: that mechanism never shuts off. You hit the milestone and, within minutes, your brain is already dangling the next one like a carrot. It’s not broken. It’s designed that way.

From an evolutionary standpoint, permanent satisfaction would have been a death sentence. The primates who weren’t content with their patch of berries, who kept scanning for more, were the ones who survived and passed on their genes. Restless dissatisfaction is baked into us. Great for survival, garbage for happiness.

So what do you do with that? You stop treating “arrival” as the goal. Satisfaction isn’t a finish line, it’s a practice. You don’t wait until after the chase to feel content; you find a way to enjoy running on the wheel.

The biggest lie in self-help is that being content with the present and working toward the future are opposites. They’re not. The trick is learning how to hold both: to enjoy the stretch, the striving, the climb, while knowing there’s no summit where life finally makes sense.

#2. “If I Had More Time, I’d Finally Do ...”

No, you wouldn’t. You’d scroll, binge, or reorganize your sock drawer. The “not enough time” excuse is just a fancy way of saying, I like the fantasy of this thing more than the reality of doing it.

I love the idea of being one of those people who wakes up at dawn and runs half-marathons for fun. But when I actually lace up my shoes, ten minutes in, I’d rather be horizontal. Same with painting, yoga retreats, or trying to meditate longer than two minutes, I like the image of it, not the actual grind.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you want something, you’re already making time for it. Maybe it’s your career. Maybe it’s your kids. Maybe it’s Netflix. Time is just a mirror of what matters to you, not a barrier keeping you from it.

So when people say, “I don’t have time to write, to get fit, to build that business,” what they’re really saying is, “I don’t want it badly enough to tolerate the boring, painful, unglamorous parts.” And that’s fine. Own it. Just don’t lie to yourself.

At the end of the day, your calendar and how you spent your hours doesn’t lie, even when you do.

#3. “I Can’t Live Without ...”

Yes, you can. Humans are absurdly adaptable. You think you can’t live without your morning latte, your bedtime routine, or whatever else you cling to, but give it two weeks and you’d adjust. We always do.

I learned this the hard way while living and working in some pretty unsavory places. No hot showers, no Wi-Fi, bomb bunker drills. And yet, after the initial shock, I adapted. We all do.

The same thing when I gave away nearly everything I owned. At first, it felt like amputation. But within weeks, the nostalgia faded and I realized I didn’t miss any of it. Not a damn thing.

The truth is, we’re far more adaptable than our consumer-driven culture wants us to believe. Psychologically speaking, we already have everything we need to survive and we possess an incredible ability to adapt to what’s available in our environments to get all of our needs met and keep ourselves happy.

If these beliefs are so flimsy, why do we hold on so tightly?

Because they serve us.

Believing “I can’t slow down right now” lets us avoid the scarier truth: maybe we don’t know who we’d be without the chaos.

Believing “I’ll finally be happy once I prove myself” gives us a noble-sounding excuse to avoid the discomfort of already being enough.

Believing “I’m broken” might be the most toxic comfort blanket of all because our brains crave meaning, even in misery. If we decide our suffering makes us special, then at least we’re not anonymous nobodies. We get to play martyr.

In other words: self-deception isn’t stupidity. It’s self-preservation.

Final Thought

We like to think of ourselves as rational, but our minds are more like PR agents always spinning a story, rarely telling the truth. And that’s fine.

The goal isn’t to become some perfectly self-aware, illusion-free version of yourself. That person doesn’t exist. The goal is to stop buying every story your brain sells, to live lightly with your own nonsense, and to keep choosing action over your alibis.

The bad news for self-help junkies is that you can’t outwit millions of years of evolutionary wiring. No amount of affirmations, vision boards, or trauma excavation will eliminate self-deception.

But the good news is you don’t have to.

Growth isn’t about never lying to yourself. It’s about lying less. It’s about spotting the BS faster, laughing at the absurdity of your own brain, and stepping forward anyway.

Which brings me to one last lie we love to tell ourselves: “I Know What I’m Doing.”

Sure you do. And I’m a morning person who loves networking events.

The truth is none of us know what we’re doing. We’re all just spitballing, improvising, and raw-dogging it.

Life is nothing but a string of best guesses… educated when we’re lucky, desperate when we’re not. We stumble forward, adjust, and pretend hindsight was foresight.

But the truth is, nobody’s got this figured out. The path reveals itself once you start walking.

So walk boldly into the unknown because certainty is a myth.

We all know this. But we still alieve otherwise. And that’s the human condition.

See you next week,

Shakila

P.S. Know someone who lies to themselves in creative ways? Send them this newsletter as a subtle hint… 😉

👉 https://www.newsletter.shakila.me/