Don’t Fool Yourself
Are you still pretending to like a job you loathe? Are you more focused on your partner’s faults than you are your own? Do feel defensive or threatened when people offer you constructive feedback?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the above, you could be falling into the trap of self-deception.
Self-deception is the act of hiding the truth from yourself. It can be expressed as denial, minimizing painful matters, or projection of fault onto others.
It’s often used as a defence mechanism to protect ourselves, or build us up, and we ALL do it. It’s not necessarily going to result in long-term harm – in fact, it might contribute to the positive wellbeing of those who are overly hard on themselves. But for the rest of us, the costs of frequent self-deception can be high. We can:
Lose sense of our mental and emotional clarity
Make bad decisions because we’re working off of faulty data
Inhibit our personal growth because we aren’t willing to accept ourselves and our flaws
Weaken our relationships
Stay in bad habits and patterns
Fail to see beyond our own opinions and priorities
Self-deception typically derives from low self-esteem, fear of judgement from others, wanting to impress people, wanting to avoid painful thoughts, or people pleasing.
Engaging in regular self-reflection and asking for feedback from others is a good way to keep on top of self-deception. But you must be able to accept your flaws and learn to love your authentic being. This takes time, patience, and confidence. But as you start to move away from self-deception and towards reality, you will learn to trust yourself again.
If you think you’re up for the journey, take the first step and book your ‘Wake-Up’ call here.