How to Stop Lying To Yourself

Written by Dave Navarro on March 22, 2006

One of the things that separates us from “having the time we want” is that we constantly, blatantly, and unapologetically lie to ourselves about our scheduling abilities and our priorities. It’s like we’re all a bunch of pathological liars - present company included - I don’t deny I do it myself.

We even have a sanitized word for it - “rationalization.” It’s a cleaned up word that means, “You’re lying to yourself about how the situation really is.” And it kills your time, it slaughters your schedule, and smashes your plans to tiny little bits.

(Hmm … maybe I shouldn’t write blog entries right after a really intense workout …)

But in all seriousness, we do lie to ourselves - and that lying is our excuse for not taking action. For example, when you say “I don’t have the time to …”, that’s almost certainly a lie. I don’t know you personally, but from my decades of walking this earth and observing other people, I know that nobody operates at 100% efficiency.

You don’t have time, you say? Well, let me ask you …

• Do you watch television?
• Do you oversleep?
• Do you engage in conversations with people that are little more than small talk?
• Do you surf the web aimlessly, looking for something entertaining?
• Do you read anything that’s not of long-term real value?
• Do you procrastinate?

In reality, we waste time every day. We can say we don’t have the time to learn more about marketing for our business, yet we watch 10 hours of television a week, or we go out partying on the weekends. We can say we don’t have the time to hit the gym, but we have the time to go out for lunch …

I think you’re seeing a pattern here. There’s a world of difference between “I don’t have the time,” and “I choose to spend time on things that will not make a difference in my life 5, 10, 20 years from now.”

But you see, we’re cowards sometimes. “I don’t have the time” gives us the justification to not even try to change things. It’s accepting mediocrity by lying like everybody else does.

If we were to stop lying to ourselves, we would have to take action to change things - and maybe sacrifice some of the “escape activities” … and that’s not easy.

But that’s no excuse.

You’ve got to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, “What am I doing with my time that doesn’t really have long-term value? Or do I want to be at this same level in my business a year from now, saying ‘Boy, I may not be making any more money, but sleeping in and watching The Simpsons’ was sure worth it!’

No excuse.

If you’re reading this far you’re one of the few who hasn’t copped out because they don’t want to deal with something uncomfortable. I congratulate you. I know that it’s difficult, because it’s a battle I have to face every day. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose … and I win more often than not … but when I lose, it’s always for the same reason - I made an excuse.

Anything you don’t have in your life, you don’t have because of an excuse. Somewhere you haven’t been willing to give up comfort and push yourself into the land of the uncomfortable to get closer to your goal. You’ve made excuses that an obstacle is “too big” for you to handle right now.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. Lies, lies, lies.

I had to face this just this weekend. I was talking to a friend about an important aspect of my life that I had let slip lately, and I started giving all the reasons to justify and rationalize it … the day job was really busy … the kids have been sick … and halfway through I realized that it was just a load of B.S.

The real reason it slipped is because I decided to head to bed every night rather than give up a half hour of sleep to get something done … because I had let distractions at work derail me a little … because other things just seemed to “urgent.”

I’m glad I caught on before I lied to myself any further. Now I’m taking the action I need to. And I’m going to urge you to do the same.

Let me ask you something - if your doctor said you had a medical condition, and you had to do 30 minutes of exercise a day or you would die, wouldn’t you shift your priorities, make a little sacrifice to make that happen? You bet you would.

And when it comes to your business - if you knew that you had to free up 10 hours a week to devote to building your marketing skills or your business would be dead in a year, would you do it? Or would you make excuses? You’d do it. You’d get honest and start cutting out the things that aren’t important in your life.
If you want more time, then you have to summon up the courage to be honest with yourself and realize that it’s going to take honesty about where you’re spending your time and the courage to make small (and sometimes larger) sacrifices to make your goals happen. There’s no way around it.

I’m going to encourage you right now to post a comment to this entry if you feel like something’s standing in the way of you following through on this. I’ll do my best to get you an answer that can help you out. So post a comment now, get honest with yourself, and start seeing your schedule transform for the better. You’ll thank yourself for it.

All the best -

Dave Navarro