Quit Lying to Yourself
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his new podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.
No one wants to be seen as a liar. Liars are considered untrustworthy at best and immoral at worst. And yet, we are perfectly content to lie to ourselves all the time. “I’ll enjoy this sleeve of Oreos today because my diet starts tomorrow,” I might tell myself. Or, “I love my job; who cares that I complain about it constantly?” Or even—ironically—“I am always honest with myself.”
Deceiving yourself shouldn’t make logical sense. After all, lying involves telling someone something you to be untrue. When you are both the liar and one lied to, this means you have to both know the truth and know the truth. In practice, that means to arrive at
