When You Stop Fooling Yourself

Our brains are so big that we can think up all kinds of clever schemes to fool ourselves and so we do just that.

Maybe we don’t want to face failure or a good thing went bad or there’s something about ourselves we don’t like or the inevitability of death or whatever.

I'm not convinced it even matters what the thing is we are avoiding.

I just know that self-delusion causes a lot of suffering, more than whatever the underlying fear was and more than the reality.

It’s like that old saying, it’s never the crime that gets you, it’s the cover up.

So the question is, what's your cover up?

I have a client who loves bread.

He’ll buy a good loaf and quality meats from the Pork Store, make himself a nice sandwich and then when he finishes, he will go in on the rest of the bread right off the kitchen counter, tearing a small piece and then another until only the heel remains.

We walked through this whole dance and every time his thinking in the moments before he makes the purchase was, I’ll just use that bread for the sandwich and then wrap the rest for another time or maybe somebody else will eat it.

He was deluding himself to get the bread, making up a fantasy of what would happen that never really happened. 

Some people don’t recommend that you weigh yourself every morning. They don’t want you to get obsessed with your weight.

I’m not a big data guy. I don’t wear a watch or a ring and I don’t sleep on a computerized mattress. I’m a right data guy. I want the right data.

I do weigh myself every morning. I wake up, pee, and I weigh myself.

It’s a simple reality test, because it tells me exactly where I am and I also know from my own experience that my weight relates directly to how I feel.

Plus, it tells me a lot about how my behavior the day before affects my body weight and hence how I feel. I am the chief scientist of my own body and so it’s important that I know how the things I do affect me.

And the scale does not tell lies.

My client started weighing himself every day and he learned after a couple trials, that when he gets the Italian bread and winds up eating most of it, he weighs more the next day. Even when he exercised!

He reality tested that fantasy talk about just making one sandwich and after a couple false starts, he exorcized the cover up.

Shedding fantasy and embracing reality fuels success and happiness. If you are fooling yourself and you kinda know it, I can’t recommend it enough.

Weighing yourself daily is good for some people. Writing your self-delusion out diary style or talking with someone you trust can also help a lot.