Few things are easier to lie about than the future. And few people are easier to lie to than ourselves.
It is therefore not surprising that people spend lifetimes lying to themselves about where they’re going and why. It’s easier to put off doing something difficult, and it’s comforting to tell ourselves that we’ll get around to it later.
But lying to ourselves about our goals is like paying off a loan by taking out an even bigger loan. It makes today easier, but it makes tomorrow much more difficult.
Greg invested his life savings in the start-up costs of a handmade soap business in Oregon. There was only one problem. His handmade bars of soap turned to green mush when wet.
He’d already rented a booth in the mall and at an open market. He’d already had the labels printed. But his secret recipe for handmade soap was nothing short of a disaster.
Desperate and out of time, Greg bought soap from a wholesaler and slapped his label on it.
Greg told his customers it was handmade Oregon soap, though it was neither handmade nor from Oregon. He knew he was violating the terms of the lease for his market booth, which required him to sell only his own handmade merchandise, nothing else.
Although it would have been hard for him to be caught in the act, ultimately the fraud ate him up inside. He shut down the operation and faced, among other consequences, a ban on signing future leases at the market. Still, Greg’s happy to be out of the deception. “If you have to lie about a fundamental aspect of your life, that builds an enormous complex in you and makes it seem like what you’re doing is not even real.”
People who consider their careers to have been successful are 81 percent less likely to have exaggerated their career plans when they were younger.
Ingram 1998