Episode 76. Fear precedes every lie and guilt follows. Brought to you by the universal law of nature number 4. The law of vibration – harmony.

The greatest lie we ever tell is the lie we tell to ourselves. But sometimes there’s nothing we can do about that because we face a fear and lying to ourselves is, surprisingly, the best way to handle that.

before we lie to somebody else, we must lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves the most surprising stories such as, it’s for their own good, or, it’s the best thing not to tell them the truth. As a business person we understand that this is in someways good leadership. There would be benefits to telling the team that you are frightened about the future of the business, but there are just as many drawbacks and those drawbacks would cause you untold trouble. So sometimes, for the benefit of the team, a leader will tell a Lie.

but first they must tell that lie to themselves and believe that it is to the benefit of the team not to disclose it. Now this can become complicated because, sometimes people become obsessed with self help and in this environment they are encouraged to be truthful. Then this person starts to wear their heart on their sleeve and tell all their friends and family that they feel either good or bad about somethin. The reason in self help that honesty is encouraged is to eliminate the subsequent guilt that comes from telling ourselves and others a lie.

but this becomes complicated. Is what we are telling ourselves the truth or a lie. In coaching I hear people talk about a situation that they have regret about and they are telling me the truth but the truth is a lie. What easily happens is that somebody else has an opinion about an event in the past and an individual can easily inherit the viewpoint of somebody else and believe that they should feel bad when they don’t. In contrast, if we have absolutely no feeling about an event we may be edging on the verge of being a psychopath. And so this complexity of what is my truth and whether I share that with another person, is not as smooth sailing as it sounds.

so I would like to suggest that trusting your feelings about something, your opinions, is an extremely vulnerable and unwise path. It is far healthier to find the absolute truth about something and then choose the side you want to play on. Every feeling we have, whether good or bad, whether it drives us completely insane or whether it’s sends us to Paradise, is a feeling we choose. We are not such victims of circumstance as we would like to lie to ourselves and say.

let me share a story.

there was once a guy who owned a very big business. Well, it wasn’t very big, but for his family and his life it was huge. Every morning this guy put on a suit of armour and went to run his business. He needed to borrow money from a bank and so in the interview he presented information to the bank that encouraged the bank to lend the money. We might call this a wipe lie because it was the truth without all the glamorous negative information associated with it. He then needed to negotiate with a German parent licensee and in presenting that negotiation he kept to himself information that might not have been supportive of the contract signature. He then leased a property and in that lease he presented information to the landlord that would encourage the landlord to make a very healthy contract. He then negotiated with the staff of the business he bought and told them a wonderful story about the future, almost painting a picture of heaven. Then he jumped on an aeroplane and went to visit factories all over Australia and sold them his equipment. In those sales presentations he presented the good news about his product and services and kept to himself any news that might not make the customer feel confident. This whole process built a very successful business. But there was a problem.

As the business grew bigger he had to make sure that other people who dealt with the clients and the bank and the lease and the landlord and his staff presented the information she had delivered to those people in the same way he had. Now if anybody had accuse this person of leadership lying there would have been a very very serious fight on their hands because he believed every single word he said. And every single word he said was true for him. Or was it?

in the study of law, there is a very important piece of law that is universal. And that piece of law is that ignorance is no defence. And so it is in life. Even though this young businessman was 100% in the belief that what he was sharing was the truth, he was also anxious that people might find the other half of the data. This sinking is called bipolar. Believing that there is a positive that lacks a business partner called the negative. This bipolar thinking inherits the mind of people even in managerial roles in business. Because we all want to believe in Disneyland. In other words we all want to lie to ourselves that we will have a relationship with and all upside, a business that is without downside, a life that is all good, etc.

going back to the story of the business man above, the way he dealt with this uncertainty of a bipolar business proposition was to overcompensate at home. His expectation of the family was to alleviate his insecurity and uncertainty about telling half the truth that there was some disbelief in the success of the business if anybody ever found that out he would be sunk. So, to compensate, I he built up an infatuation with his wife and children. In order to do so he needed to deny the negatives of his marriage. As a result, the people in his family fed him what he wanted to hear.

when the business finally sold, for a fraction of its real value, and when the marriage collapsed, this young businessman was heard to say, “I knew the business wasn’t real” and “I knew the marriage was finished along time ago.” These were not truths. These were his real beliefs. And much of what he had done was built on the fear of losing the business and the fear of losing the marriage. When we operate in a state of fear, we lie to ourselves and others to avoid that fear. But we also carry forward, guilt.

Guilt blocks memory. Fear blocks imagination.

there are four words that are use over and over again for the state of mind that is inspiring and inspired in life. Those four words are: gratitude, presence, certainty and love. The reason these four words are the ideal state of mind for any leader or family participant is that they detect lies long before those lies manifest into sabotage such as you can experience in the story of the young businessman above who ended up selling his business for a song, and collapsing his own marriage. Lies manifest into sabotage.

gratitude. Gratitude means thankful for the past. If we cannot be thankful for the past we are witnessing guilt. All disappointment, all frustration, all judgement of the past, adds up to the word guilt. In opposition to that guilt, is gratitude. It is a acid test. Are you thankful for the past meaning yesterday, last month, last year, your ex, your behaviour last year and the decisions you have made. If you can’t be grateful for the past, you will carry guilt into the future and it will manifest in the form of fear. So that is checkpoint number one. And if there is anything that you are not grateful for in the past I would suggest you bring it to your coach, hopefully me, and we will deal with that very quickly.

Presence. Presence means turning up in this current moment in time. To turn up in this current moment in time you cannot be guilty, and grateful for, the past. It also means you cannot fear the future. So turning up in this moment in time, called being in the now, is the most powerful place we can be provided that it is not just a way of avoiding past guilt or future fear. If turning up in the present moment through stress and anxiety, making you work really hard, is to avoid fear then you have started down the path of being a psychopath. But if the past is clear and you have the tools to deal with it and the future is clear and you have the tools to deal with it, you will automatically turn up very present in this moment in time and that, in most teachings in the world, is called happiness.

Certainty. Certainty of the future is a very very powerful human condition. It means, simply, beyond fear of the future. If we invent a vision of the future, if we make it up but don’t really resonate or tune into that vision of the future, then we cannot have certainty. As an example of this, I have absolutely 100% confidence and trust in the future I have mapped, I have more certainty about that than any other thing in my life. I am not sure how it will happen, when it will happen, why it will happen, who is involved in it happening, but I am 100% certain of the future. Nothing is ever missing it just changes in form and so the ability to reinvent myself to adapt to the changing world around me means that I can have a very certain vision of the future and know that there is only my ability to adapt to the changing world that could impede me. If I have certainty that I will speak to the world, and my spine becomes broken, I will simply reinvent speaking to the world from the wheelchair. Certainty of the future is not certainty of how which is all too intellectual. Certainty is when you know that you know that you know that you know that you know that you know your purpose and vision in life.

Love. When that businessman we spoke about above started his business, he did it because he loved it. There were no lies. The love for something transcends duality. There is no sense in the love for your work or your family of them being bipolar. But love can sometimes wear thin and as it does we might start to become resentful or over ambitious. And in many paradigms in the world this resentment is cause for counselling and the ambitiousness is celebrated. In the case of the guy above who started his engineering business, it started off with passion and love and inspiration for the work he was doing for the world in the environment, but it ended up being a profit making machine. The love for the vision slowly became eroded by the necessities of paying bills. As this turned into over ambitious investments in property and cars and luxury the business became a machine to fund a lifestyle. This is the way most people end up at work not doing what they love but more in a pair of golden handcuffs, chained to a fence and fearful of losing the income to support their lifestyle. Love of work and people therefore has a competitor. When expectations rise up to challenge the love of something, the question will be who wins? If love doesn’t win then a new pass is taken and the consequences are fear and guilt.

that’s the end of this episode. Have a beautiful day.

with spirit

Chris