BUT WE ALL LIE!
Don’t lie. Seems simple enough, right? And yet, it is devilishly hard to get through a whole day without lying at least once. And most of us can’t even get through an hour without telling multiple half-truths, obfuscations, and all-out falsehoods. As recent studies have shown.
For example, if you conduct an online survey—as a group of researchers did recently—only about 40 percent of respondents admit they’ve lied in the last twenty-four hours.1
But if you actually watch people in conversation, as another group of researchers did, about two-thirds of our fellow humans can’t go ten minutes without telling a lie.2
In fact, by one estimate, a quarter of our friends under forty lie on their resumes.3 Nine out of ten people lie on their dating profiles.4 And the forty-fifth president of the United States lied bigly 2,140 times just in his first year in office.5
Which brings us to the obvious question—why shouldn’t you lie?
Besides the obvious reason, which is that the world would be a better place and we’d all be a lot more relaxed and happy if everyone told the truth. No, even given that the world will probably not become a more honest place any time soon and everyone will continue on with their fibbing ways, why shouldn’t you lie?
Well, here are three reasons, each one backed by research.
First, lying is stressful.6 Research done over the past twenty years points to a pattern most of us are probably familiar with. It goes like this:
When we tell the truth, we simply remember what we said.7
Remembering what we said reduces our cognitive load and we can use those neural resources for other stuff, like solving problems, regulating emotions, and relating skillfully to others.
When we lie, though, we need to continually rehearse to ourselves the lie we’ve told so we remember to tell it the same way again later.
Rehearsing to remember our lies takes up a lot of headspace. And it’s stressful.
All of this is no big deal if you’re just lying one time because some grad student in a white coat told you to. But if you’re lying in real life, your lies don’t stay in the lab. They follow you. You’ve got to keep things straight, and you’ve got to remember who you said what to, and you’ve got to make sure you don’t get caught.
Second, lying kills your reputation. Again, the research has a lot to tell us here. For example, one study conducted at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management8 followed business students over the course of a semester as they learned to negotiate. During that time, the students in the class earned reputations as “liars,” “tough but fair,” or “cream puffs.” Then the researchers watched as the students entered into negotiations with one another in the final week of the semester. Far and away, the students who had earned reputations as liars fared the worst. Their fellow students treated them the most aggressively, were least polite to them, and offered them fewer concessions.
Third, lying is literally bad for your (mental and physical) health. A few years ago a group of researchers at Notre Dame conducted a study in which they split participants into two groups. Both groups came in once a week and—while hooked up to a lie detector—answered questions about how often they’d lied in the previous week. The difference between the groups? One group was given tips on how to avoid lying during the week. The other group wasn’t.
Both groups actually saw the numbers of lies they told drop throughout the study. But the first group—the one with the truth training—told a whole lot fewer lies. And the researchers found that the ones who lied less saw improvements in their physical and mental health. They also had less trouble sleeping, saw improvements in their relationships, had fewer headaches and less overall tension. They even reported fewer sore throats.
All this positive fallout comes down to what the Buddha called “the bliss of blamelessness.” Put simply, when you come to the end of your day, and you put your cell phone on airplane mode and put your head down on your pillow, if you can look back on everything you said, and everything you did, and see that you didn’t lie, cheat, steal, or kill, you’ll feel less bad.
This feeling good will make it easier to sleep. It will also make sex better (yes, really, and we’ll get to that in the next chapter), and it will be a heck of a lot easier to sit down and meditate, if that’s what you choose to do.
Okay, so just don’t lie. When somebody asks you a question, answer it straight. When you need something, ask for it straight. In fact, every time you open your mouth to say something in this great spinning world of interpersonal ups-and-downs, just say what’s true. And don’t say what’s not true. And that’s it.
OR AT LEAST KNOW YOUR LIES
Again, not lying seems simple enough, right? And yet, after just about twenty-five years of trying my level best to uphold this slippery little ethical guidepost, I am sorry to report that it certainly hasn’t been easy for me.
To be sure, I rarely tell outright lies at this point. But, still, I notice myself bending facts a little here, trimming the truth just a bit over there. And, man, I tell you, when it comes to exaggeration, I just can’t seem to get a handle on my mouth.
Like, if the fish was ten inches, I’ll say it was twelve (not that I fish, but you get the picture). Or if the traffic was backed up three miles, I’ll say it was four. And if I’m telling a story about someone I admire, their good qualities become larger than life.
I’m told this tendency toward hyperbole is because I’m a Sagittarius, and so I just can’t help myself. Everything is larger than life for me. I don’t know anything about astrology, but I can tell you it’s a little embarrassing when my wife, or my brother Mark, or someone who knows me well, looks at me sideways and says, “Really? The traffic was backed up four miles?” And then I have to think it through and realize, no, it was more like three miles. Okay, two and a half, but it felt like forever.
At any rate, exaggeration is a kind of lying, and as I’ve held this thought of say what’s true for myself over the years, I’ve noticed more and more how even this seemingly little excursion from the facts carries with it a slight loss in trust, a tiny little break in communication. And so I try to watch myself and say what’s truly true so I can have the kinds of intimate relationships I want and live a life I feel mostly really good about.
Okay. So. Lying. Is. Bad. Don’t do it. Or at least try not to do it. Now you’re just going to walk around telling the absolute truth all the time to everyone you meet, friend or stranger, bus driver or boss, right? Well, here’s a caveat.
SAY WHAT’S TRUE (BUT NOT ALWAYS)