Go Ask Sawyer
Go Ask Sawyer
Why We Lie and What It Costs Us
We explore the beginning of our eight-week series on emotional honesty, examining why we lie to ourselves and others, and how these deceptions impact our physical health and emotional wellbeing. Uncovering the roots of dishonesty reveals how we've been conditioned to prioritize deception over truth in certain situations, creating misalignment between our authentic selves and the image we project.
• Speaking truth is more powerful than lying, though we often believe the opposite
• We lie to avoid facing consequences or when we're not ready to take action
• Half-truths allow us to feel partially honest while still being deceptive
• Physical consequences of lying include weight gain, skin problems, hair loss, and sleep issues
• Mental effects include forgetfulness, irritability, and developing unhealthy coping mechanisms
• When we withhold information, we manipulate others' ability to make informed decisions
• Identifying specific relationships or topics where we tend to lie reveals our patterns
• Living aligned with our truth reduces stress and creates authentic connections
This week, journal about where in your life you're out of alignment and where you're in alignment. Look at your patterns honestly and consider what it would feel like to live without masks.
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Hello and welcome back. Happy Sunday everyone. This is Go Ask Sawyer. I appreciate you pressing play, I appreciate you listening and I hope you appreciate yourself for taking a few minutes out of your day to pour back into you, which is what this series is all about Pouring into who you are and discovering different parts of yourself, healing different parts of yourself, letting go of things that you need to let go of so you can live your best, shiniest, healthiest life you can, because, like I always say, you are worth it. Welcome If you are new here.
Speaker 1:This is a journaling series I am doing. What you will need is a journal and something to write with or a notes app whatever you are most comfortable with and to start each podcast, I ask that you sit for three minutes and just write, dump out your brain. You may write song lyrics. You may write about different things that you see around your house. You may write about the biggest dreams you could ever imagine. You can write a letter to yourself. You can write a letter to someone, but for three minutes. I'm encouraging you to not stop. So, to kick us off and get us started, let's do our journaling. I'm going to ask you to press pause. Set your timer for three minutes and meet me back here. Go ahead, welcome back. I hope that felt good today.
Speaker 1:My journaling has been a way that I have worked through things in my life, that I have worked on my healing, that I have uncovered things. Last week we did or two weeks ago, sorry, we did a podcast on anger, and anger is the most basic emotion and we all know there's more under that. So when I journal about things that I'm going through, a lot of times I start to uncover what is actually going on, instead of just being like I'm angry but all of a sudden going on, instead of just being like I'm angry but all of a sudden things come up like I felt abandoned, or I abandoned myself, or I really trusted this person, or I knew I shouldn't have done that, but I did it anyways. The anger kind of turns into other things maybe shame, maybe embarrassment, maybe even frustration, and it gives us a chance to look inside. So, speaking of, we are moving into a mini series about emotional honesty. So I was going to do a whole podcast today on lying which I still am, but when I was writing about lying and doing some research about why people lie, I so much came up about it. So I'm going to do a eight-week mini-series on getting honest with ourself and we'll look at different aspects of why people lie. I want our listeners to be able to take their masks off, uncover their emotional patterns and reconnect with their most honest selves in relationships meaning with themselves and with others. Side note if you hear some weird huffing in the background, my animals are fighting. I've tried the treats already today and they're ready to go outside and play. So if you hear that the fighting in the background, that is them To start our podcast off today.
Speaker 1:Why do we lie? Why do we lie to ourselves? Why do we lie to others? And I think a very simple answer could be because we don't want to get caught. Like, we know, we've done something wrong and we don't want to get caught, which is completely like yeah, of course, but going deeper than that, like thinking about who taught us we had to lie to get what we wanted. Who taught us that we had to lie maybe to be liked or to be accepted? Who taught us that speaking truth is less powerful than lying, when, in reality, those that really speak truth, or their truth or whatever it may be you know what you're getting with them, right, there is no question, you know exactly what you're getting with those people. So if you want to be a person that others look to and they're like, oh yeah, when I talk to so-and-so or when they speak, I know what I'm getting, if you want to be a person like that, how can we get there?
Speaker 1:We are going to start off with a Bible verse, proverbs 15, 3,. The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good. I came across this the other day when I was doing some uncovering for myself and just realizing that, like, every time we think A we're getting away with something bad, he is always watching or she is always watching. And anytime we do things good and we're like dang, no one sees this ever. No one ever pays attention. He or she is watching and listening and the gifts or I don't know if you want to say punishment the gifts or the consequences will come, but maybe not always exactly when we expect it. So, thinking about when we're lying, and just because we're speaking on that today, when we lie and we think like, oh good, we got away with it, spirit's always watching. Right, they remove you from places. Spirit's always watching right. They remove you from places. They remove places from you, people from you. They're always watching and listening. So then we have to ask ourself we go back to.
Speaker 1:Why do we do this? A part of uncovering ourselves which is the series, the big series that we're in our worth, shame, anger, settling is also uncovering where we are not being truthful with who we are. We lie to ourselves when we do not want to face what we have done or when we're not yet ready to take action. That's the other thing. Like, if I don't actually want to change something about what I'm doing, I will also lie, because once I speak the truth to, let's just say, friends or family or whatever, then it's called out. Then it's like dang, now I really have to face it. And it's also why we lie to ourselves.
Speaker 1:We lie to cover up our actions, hide something we're ashamed of or continue getting something from someone or a situation, knowing that if they knew the truth it will be taken away. And I've thought a lot about that because we think about when people are deceitful toward us. Sometimes it's also because they're getting, you know, an energy from you, or they're getting a payment from you or they're getting I don't even know gifts from you. And they know that if they were truthful with whatever was happening maybe something they're doing behind the scenes or whatever that you would then get to make the decision to leave their lives. And since they don't want that, that's when the deception comes in. How many times have you done that? I don't know. If I've, I'm sure I have. I can't think of anything off the top of my head.
Speaker 1:I know I usually lie or tell half-truths which we'll talk about in a second when I don't want to be called out and when I'm not, again, not in alignment and I know I'm not in alignment but I don't want to yet stop or face the consequences. We can lie full out or in bits and pieces. So I recently had an experience with someone where they told a lot of half-truths. Instead of saying the one person they were with, they would say a group of people they were with. So they were still telling me where they were and they were still naming one of the people, but because they named five other people, I didn't question it. So again, the half-truth I'm going to tell you half of this. So then maybe they would feel better Like, oh well, I mean, I did tell the truth-ish. When have you done that before? I know I've done that before, when I haven't wanted to be questioned.
Speaker 1:I'll say parts of things that are true so that other questions don't come up. But that still is deceit not being transparent. Because as soon as you have to only say part of it, you got to ask yourself why can't I say all of it? What am I scared of? What am I worried about here? Anytime you're not giving someone a full picture, you're not allowing that other person to make their own decisions about you know, stay, leave, stop talking to you, whatever the decision may be. So then, in a way, you're controlling their decision based on what you're telling them. And what do we call that, friends? Manipulation, right, manipulating the situation or the person so they can't actually make a real, truthful decision.
Speaker 1:Lies, deceit, hurt all of us in different kind of ways, but specifically the person that's saying it. I'm not even going to talk about the consequences of the people that receive it right now, but the people that are putting them out there, the lies, the half-truths. We'll say what can happen. First of all, the stress that the lie has as it sits on us. We gain weight, the stress that the lie has as it sits on us. We gain weight, we break out in rashes, pimples, zits, we lose hair, we lose sleep. Right, so physically, your whole body will start to show that. I have seen that firsthand on myself. So, physically, emotionally, lies can cause forgetfulness. Right, you forget what you're doing, you forget what you're saying. You're irresponsible, you might get more irritated with other people, you can't think straight or keep conversation straight and you might even start to isolate yourself because of lies that you're trying to keep up.
Speaker 1:It's exhausting and again, I am speaking from firsthand experiences on this it can get real exhausting to keep certain things up because you can't just face it. Also, once the lie gets too big, it's just so scary and terrifying. It's like standing on the edge of a cliff thinking like, should I? Just? It's like so big and so scary that, like, once I jump, it's all going to come out and I have to face all of it mentally, right? So we're standing on the edge of this cliff and we're just not ready to jump. We're not ready to face everything. What do we do? We pick up bad habits to cope drink way more than we should, smoking, sleeping around spending lots of money, anything we can do to kind of like numb ourselves or hide from ourselves so we don't have to face it.
Speaker 1:As I'm talking about this, is this hitting anyone out there listening? Like, oh man, I have done that, or I just went through that and I have noticed in my life there's been big moments and small moments, like I wouldn't consider myself a liar, like I don't live a life of lies, but I know there's been moments in my life where I have lied for various reasons. I also notice I'll get to this in a minute Can you go through life not lying? So, as we think about this, I recently so whenever I do my podcast, I will reach out to friends. Sometimes if I'm out at the bar, like I'll ask strangers around me.
Speaker 1:And there was this group of people sitting by me the other day and I asked them if I asked them first of all, why people lie, and then I asked them if I thought there were any good reasons to lie, and one of the guys said, well, I never lie, I'm a Christian. And I was like, okay, well, now, whether that is true or not, if that is true, I love that for him, but whether that is true or not. It got me thinking about can we go through life not lying? What would that look like to be so transparent that you just didn't ever have to hide anything? Or are there times that we lie for a good reason? Is there a good reason To protect someone's feelings? Would it be okay To shield someone from hurt? Would it be okay I think, any lie that I've ever found out about like on the other end, I always wish, like why didn't you trust me enough to just say it as much as we've all heard that saying right, the truth can hurt, but the truth will always set us free, something like that.
Speaker 1:Why sometimes are we more scared of just speaking the truth than building up a whole hill of lies, when just saying it would bring or take so much stress off? So I would love to know from you do you think you can go through life without lying? And if yes or if no, when is lying acceptable? When we lie, we're. We are out of alignment, and that's what I have realized for myself. I know for myself.
Speaker 1:Whenever I've lied, it was again like I said in the beginning, to keep something from someone that I did not want to have to face either the consequences or I did not want to have to stop Also like just feeling so ashamed, like to go to someone and have to say the real thing. To go to someone and have to say the real thing, you also have to take on all maybe the sadness that they are about to feel. You might feel extreme shame and embarrassment, but how beautiful could that be for you to sit across from that person and just kind of be like I'm going to accept this because I respect you, because I love you, because I want whatever if it's a friendship or a family ship like I want to make sure this is repaired Would you be able to sit and really speak your truth this week? I really want you to look at different parts of your life that you have noticed like I always lie in this area or I'm really truthful over here, and think about why that is, or even certain people. That's what I was going to say before.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's certain people you lie to more than others and, if so, why. I notice I lie to people that I know are going to call me out more than people in my life that are. What do I want to say? Not people pleasers, but friends of mine that are just like yep, that's a great idea. Yep, that's a great idea. Yep, that's a great idea.
Speaker 1:Because a part of me feels like, well, they're never going to tell me I'm wrong or they're never going to call me out, but people in my life that might call me out I may lie to a little bit more, because I'm not ready to face that consequence. I may lie to a little bit more because I'm not ready to face that consequence. So when you lie, you are out of alignment. This week let's look at where in our lives are we out of alignment and where in our lives are we in alignment and how can we move some things around. When you journal this week, write that stuff down it's just you and your journal. It's just you and your words. It's just you and your thoughts. Next week, we look at the ways we lie to ourselves and what it would feel like to live without a mask. So till then, stay cute, stay loud, keep dancing, even when everyone is watching. Peace.
