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hey this is leo for asklized.org and in this episode i'm going to be talking about how you are a sneaky manipulative snake yes you are we're going to talk about how you lie how you manipulate your self-agenda and self-deception the concepts that we're going to be covering here are going to be very foundational for all of your self-actualization efforts as you go forward this is a very very important episode and i should start off by giving you a warning that some of the things you're going to learn about yourself right now are going to be quite disturbing these revelations may shock and disturb you rouse you awake but it's very very good and the more something disturbs you in personal development work the more benefit you know that it has for you long term so let's get going the bottom line the gist of what i have to tell you is that you are a snake that's what you are you're a sneaky manipulative snake you're a liar you lie through your teeth all the time and what's really bad about this is that you lie to yourself about how much you lie and this whole thing is so bad that you might think you understand what i'm talking about right now but you don't even know the tip of the iceberg yet you haven't seen anything yet we need to go into some depth you need to unravel the various layers of lies manipulations and self-deception that are going on in your mind this is one very huge theme that personally has just amazed me this is a huge theme of life all of life in any area of life where you're trying to get results or success and when it comes to understanding your mind is that the name of the game is self-deception that's what's going on self-deception is going on in a multitude of ways it's ingenious the degrees to which your mind can deceive itself and it takes some effort some real honest looking on your part to start to notice the self-deception and this self-deception when it's happening in all its multitude of ways it really blocks you up and prevents you from getting the kind of results you want in your life emotionally in relationships in business and everywhere else there's no area of life that it doesn't affect in a very impactful way so the bottom line here is that you lie you manipulate and you self-deceive and to help us to understand this i want to introduce a concept called the self-agenda this is something i learned from a peter ralston workshop the self-agenda really important concept the self-agenda what you're doing in your whole life is you're running based on self-agenda the self-agenda is basically what you want and what promotes your health well-being and your survival simple enough except you don't yet understand and you're not conscious of yet just what self-agenda really means because self-agenda is not just literally your survival and it's not just literally your health it could also be your unhealth or your lack of survival that's still part of self-agenda fundamentally what self-agenda is about is it's about preserving your image of yourself not just your body not just literally your health but more to the point it's about preserving your self-concept who you believe you are not who you really are who you believe you are and most people don't make this distinction between these two things but the thing you think you are you i'm pointing at you right now that entity that you think is sitting there looking at me listening to me you think that's the real you that's not the real you that's the self-image that's the self-concept and it's that thing that's trying to survive that's what the self-agenda is ultimately about protecting that it's not about protecting the body it's not about protecting you as a human being it's about protecting you as an ego as an identity as this entity that lives in your head so here's the first profound insight that i want to share with you and it's this is that truth you know how much we like to pay lip service to loving truth and honoring truth and living our life according to truth as though we really value truth well here's the insight truth is not your operating principle in life truth is not your operating principle in life you don't live your life valuing truth that's not what runs the show what do i mean by operating principle i mean like the central driver of what motivates you in life why are you doing the behaviors and actions that you do why do you have the thoughts you have why do you have the beliefs you have we like to tell ourselves it's because well leo they're true they're accurate i know they're not all accurate but i do my best to find the truest ones and so i'm living according to truth right i'm relatively honest and relatively uh good human being no that's a lie your chief operating principle is self-survival and self-survival here means survival of the self-image not survival as you as a body in fact you could shoot yourself in the head because you're so depressed and that would be an example of self-survival you would kill the body but you actually are in a kind of weird twisted sense what you're doing there is um you're kind of uh defending your ideas defending your self-image now it sounds weird because you're thinking like well leo if i kill myself then my ideas of myself are gone but see it doesn't feel that way from the inside it doesn't feel that way from the inside when people die for their beliefs when people do crazy things for their beliefs when people feel guilty because of their beliefs and their worldview and all this kind of stuff that's all them defending their ego defending their world views that's what that is that's self agenda that's self survival for you self-survival of course probably means the survival of the body for most people it does especially what it means for you is comfort and security these are huge your self-concept needs comfort and security it needs certainty you love your certainty you need to be certain about everything and as soon as you're not certain about something what happens your mind goes crazy you can't stand it you need to go find a solution you need to go find the certainty that you want all of that really what that is this is all that you're doing in life there's nothing really that you're doing in life other than these two things comfort and certainty that's all you seek comfort and certainty think about how deep that is think about all the stuff you do in life that you tell yourself well i do all this noble stuff you know i'm in a relationship i'm raising my children and i'm going to church and i'm going to school and you know i'm going to hang out with my friends and i go do some charity work all this stuff that i do but if you're really self-honest really self-honest and you take a look at what is it you're actually doing with all those things why are you doing them we're going to discover is that oh [ __ ] if i'm not lying to myself i'm not deceiving myself i have to admit that i'm doing these things for comfort and for certainty not out of love not out of concern for others not out of the well-being and preservation of society i don't try to go out there and you know wage a political campaign because i want to improve society that's not why you do that the reason you do that is for your own personal self-survival to serve your self-image that's why you do it which is why people go and you know kill themselves slaughter millions of other people in the name of religion or politics or some ideology or whatever cause they're fighting for it's this right there they're trying to defend their own comfort and security and most importantly their self-concept they need to keep that whole and integrated because as soon as it starts to fracture literally your identity starts to melt away and that frightens the [ __ ] out of you so you scramble you go into action mode and you take action to defend this self-image of yours low awareness serves your self agenda it's not really good for the self agenda for you to be too aware of your surroundings and what's actually happening in life which is the whole problem in life which is why we have all the problems personally and socially is because we have low awareness low consciousness this isn't an accident this is by design this is how the mind is designed it has to be this way because if you actually had high awareness this would require high responsibility this would also require facing the pain of facing all of the lies that you've been living throughout your whole life all the crafty little lies you've constructed all the manipulative ways in which you behave and i'll give you a whole list of them so you know exactly what i'm talking about in a few minutes but all of this see to start to face these lies that's real painful it's real painful because you have a story part of your self-image includes the image of you as not being a liar but being an un a noble honest decent human being non-manipulative human being an altruistic human being who really cares about his children his wife and his family and and whatever whatever you care about but see all of those things really those are all deceptions the only thing you care about is your self-image that's issue number one for you and as soon as that self-image is ever threatened oh man everything else gets thrown under the bus and how quickly it happens is shocking but because it does happen so quickly what happens is the mind can't handle it the mind has to hide it sweep it under the rug so low awareness is your natural state raising your awareness this is painful challenging difficult and produces cognitive dissonance for you it jostles the various notions you have about how reality works and who you think you are it challenges your identity literally your old self has to die for you to raise awareness sufficiently high you can't keep your old self your old self image and still have high awareness it doesn't work what do you think is the best way to hide a lie if you really wanted to lie real good how would you do it if you were like a system that wanted to be a really good lying manipulating system well what it would do is it would tell itself that it's not lying and this is exactly how your system functions how you function as a system this is called self-deception when you tell yourself that you don't lie no leo i don't know what you're talking about i'm not a liar i don't manipulate people i don't know you maybe you're talking about my neighbor or my mom or my dad uh or my ex but you're not talking about me right oh this is all about you it's all about you be really careful when your mind starts to point fingers at everybody else except yourself point the finger right at yourself here as i'm talking because all this is applying straight to you the best way to hide a lie is to have zero awareness then you can lie with impunity you can serve the self agenda without even knowing that you're serving a self agenda which is exactly what you're doing in life this is your whole life is the serving of a self agenda without really knowing that you're serving a self agenda unless you really studied up on this stuff and you really done a lot of inner work what i would suggest to you is that the human mind is wired for self-deception why is this the case there might be many reasons evolution plays into it survival of the fittest plays into it and so forth uh you know well-being of society to have a well-functioning society this might be helpful but fundamentally this is most fundamentally you have to be wired for self-deception because the self is itself a lie i'm not just saying that some piece of you is a lie i'm saying that all of you is a lie your entire identity who you believe you are as a biological organism is just a complete fabrication of your mind and all the beliefs you have about how life works and what reality is this is a complete fabrication of your mind these are just concepts in your mind now they don't feel like concepts they feel like they're real they feel very solid they feel like reality they don't feel like beliefs yes that's exactly why low consciousness is required to hold a belief and not recognize it as a belief requires low consciousness you can't really effectively serve a self-agenda when you recognize that it's [ __ ] evolution and survival of the fittest can't really happen unless there's this core deception going on inside the organism the organism has to tell itself that it's special i'm special my life matters more than every other life my well-being and my kids and my family's well-being matters more than my neighbor's kids well-being my wife or my husband is more important to me than my neighbor's wife or husband this is a complete lie we know it's a lie there's no reason why your wife is any more important or special or valuable than your neighbor's wife or your children there's no reason only the self-image says so only the ego says so from a selfish survival standpoint right because we want to spread our genes and that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective but notice that there's something else going on in life besides survival of the fittest and evolution you might say well leo that's how it's supposed to be wait a minute there might be something else going on in life besides that and that would be truth see one thing you might have not considered before that i want you to open your mind to is the possibility that your self agenda in life and truth are two totally different things see it might be the case that honoring and serving truth actually damages one's chances of survival and reproduction and vice versa to increase one's chances of survival and reproduction one might be benefited by lying or living falsehood because it gives you a reproductive or a survival advantage and this presents an interesting dilemma for us as human beings living our ordinary lives what do we honor do we honor our survival and our reproduction or do we honor truth which one do we honor when the two come and start butting heads with each other when we have to choose one at the cost of another it's a good question some of us like to be noble some of us have the self-image and the self-agenda of being the noble righteous one it's like leo i'm a champion of truth so of course i'm going to select truth but see that's actually real hard to do in practice you have no idea yet if you are fancing yourself a champion of truth you have no idea yet how difficult it is to live that the only way you can live that is by lying to yourself a lot or or by completely obliterating yourself image like completely obliterating it to the point where you don't even see yourself as a human being anymore you don't see yourself as a biological entity anymore because as long as you see yourself as a biological entity this human body standing here right now talking to you as long as you see yourself as that you got to defend that you got to protect that and that is the that's the that's the master that you serve truth is not the master you serve your ass living and your ass reproducing that's the master you really serve and then you have a little thin veneer of telling yourself that you serve truth but you don't really start to become more mindful of how you lie and especially about how you lie about your self-agenda and your manipulations of people and situations you lie in fact so much and you've been lying from almost as early as you can remember as a little child at the age of three you already started lying that it's like a fish growing up in water the fish doesn't recognize it's in water anymore and that's kind of where you're stuck so to help prop you out of that i'm going to give you a lot of examples of very subtle and sneaky ways in which you lie but before i even do that let me um connect all this kind of lofty up in the air kind of philosophical discussion down to your practical life what does this mean for you why should you care well here you go here are some examples of the problems that are created by lying these things make no mistake the following list i'm going to read off are conditions that are destroying your life which are created by lying some of these might surprise you there's a lot of them i'm gonna go pretty quick stress the chief cause of all stress is lying anger the chief cause of all anger is lying anxiety the chief cause of all anxiety is lying cheating cheating on your spouse or your girlfriend or your boyfriend lying abuse comes from lying theft comes from lying neediness with other people in relationships comes from lying codependency comes from lying back pain can come from lying not all back pain but some of it can skin rashes if you have eczema or some other kind of skin condition like a skin rash those are often caused by lying depression oh man depression is just a hornet's nest of lies that's all it is it's just lies upon lies upon lies overeating being fat being overweight this is caused often by lying heart attacks often caused by lying of course also by eating terrible food but eating terrible food is often caused by more lying panic attacks caused by lying feeling like a victim in life like you have no power like everyone is against you like no one is your friend like society is against you like the whole world is [ __ ] that's all lies bankruptcy is caused by lying hating life if you hate life if you're not in love with life that's because of lying headaches migraines not all of them but good amount of them are caused by lying fibromyalgia can be caused by lying drinking and drug addictions are caused by lying in fact all addictions are caused by various forms of lying chronic fatigue syndrome caused by lying sexual dysfunctions like you can't get it up in the bedroom or you don't have the hots anymore for your girlfriend or boyfriend caused by lying suicide the ultimate lie divorces caused by lying primarily loneliness caused by a huge lie high blood pressure lying insomnia inability to sleep caused by lying so see what happens is that you're living your self-agenda and you might say to yourself well you know what's wrong with self-survival and what's wrong with defending me and my family am i reproducing my genes and all that sounds pretty good well the problem is that it gets so bad that it backfires on itself and all your lies and your scheming manipulations and all your snake behavior uh backfires on you in all the ways that i just listed and many more this is just a small list so now what i want to do is i want to share another very profound insight with you which is that most lying is not obvious lying most lying is very very very subtle very subtle remember that to lie effectively you got to be subtle about it you got to lie to yourself about it in fact ideally you don't even know that you're doing it which is exactly what low consciousness is you set the bar very low so that anything below the bar uh you're not conscious of most lying is totally unconscious you don't know how you're doing it i'm not just talking about verbal straightforward like a verbal lie like someone comes to you and asks you something like did you have breakfast today and you lie to them and you say no i didn't have breakfast today that would be a very obvious black and white type of lie you know you lied in that case you can't deny that those are not the biggest problem the biggest problem is all the sneaky [ __ ] you do all the manipulative stuff you do and to help to get you to see that i want to give you a list of just a random assortment of examples this is a tiny list but it'll start to get your mind to register what i'm actually saying here here's a list of lies saying that you're honest is the lie think of yourself as being an honest person that's a lie a fake smile when you're meeting someone you're greeting your friends you don't feel like smiling but you smile anyways that's a lie notice that a lie doesn't have to be verbal a lie also doesn't have to involve other people it could just be you by yourself another lie is fake politeness another lie is eagerness to please you really want to please somebody but the only reason you're doing that is that they think well of you that's a lie acting cool or stoic someone gives you some bad news then you just kind of pretend like it didn't really affect you that much even though it kind of did on the inside it jostled you a little bit but you know you just kind of play macho that's a lie asking for things indirectly this is a huge one this is a huge this is a whole category of stuff notice how you do this when you want something but you don't have the balls to just go ask for it and instead you come up with some kind of excuse like you bump into the person or oh hey how you doing you know i didn't i didn't know i was going to meet you here or it's like oh by the way by the way you know we were just talking but by the way could i ask you for for this or oh let me just let me just nudge that person and maybe help remind him of what i need from him that sort of stuff or the way that you indirectly ask for sex in a relationship you don't just come up and ask for sex it's like hey honey i just want more sex no there's a there's a whole routine there's a whole uh manipulative gauntlet that you run through when you're asking for sex it might be a little look that you give him a little pout a little tease this or that so all those kind of ways of asking for something indirectly be very mindful of how you do those those are very unconscious labeling things in people as evil being evil that person is evil that person is the devil that's all lying anger most forms of anger are lying because actually what anger turns out to be is to be you being hurt but you're not acknowledging that hurt so you lash out in anger instead and you project onto other people playing stupid have you ever done that you play stupid or you pretend like you didn't hear something that you actually heard or you pretend like you didn't see something you actually saw that's a real sneaky one how about withholding important information this one's real huge watch how you do this one all the time it's like but no leo i'm i'm honest i'm truthful they asked me for information and i i told them exactly what the information is except what you neglected to mention is that you rearranged and manipulated the information to withhold the most important stuff you concocted and constructed and presented the information such a way that it doesn't really present the true picture of what that person was asking for or asking about you just kind of reported the raw facts but you did it in a way where the raw facts distort the original meaning i love this next one pretending that you're loving pretending that you're compassionate pretending that you're selfless and pretending that you're spiritual this this is a huge category of lies right here man most spiritual people are not spiritual most loving people are the most selfish people people that call themselves compassionate and loving and altruistic these are some of the most selfish [ __ ] in existence and the spiritual people the religious people these are some of the most hypocritical lying sons of bishops that exist these are some of the biggest fattest snakes in the jungle you know pretending like oh i'm spiritual nothing concerns me i don't care about money i just love everybody i'm a new age hippie this whole kind of act that people play yeah right right moralizing when people preach to you and tell you oh you shouldn't do this you shouldn't do that those are some of the biggest liars out there and when you do that yourself and you do do it you might not be a preacher but you still do it when you moralize your kids or your children or your girlfriend or your boyfriend whoever you do it to or even just inside internally to yourself when you tell yourself well i should do this and i have to do that and this must be done this way and there's a whole procedure this and don't you know don't do it the wrong way that's all moralizing shoulds those are all lies i should go to the gym i should be at this weight level i should be at 10 body fat i should have this kind of woman in my life and my kids should be this way those are all lies false humidity false humility another way that you lie it's like oh yeah i'm not i'm not rich i'm not rich you tell your friends or it's like oh no yeah i would i'm not i'm not that smart i'm not that smart but deep down inside you're like yeah i am rich yeah i am i am smart false humility dissembling your true motives when you actually want something and you're doing something and then people are kind of curious about why are you doing that but then you don't tell them your real motives you give them some fake excuse or you take one of your secondary or tertiary motives and you throw that one out there instead of giving them your true ultimate motive notice how much you do that with people and especially in your intimate relationship speaking of which lying inside of intimate relationships this is one of the perhaps biggest categories of all the degrees of subtlety that you utilize to manipulate your partner or your spouse are incredible they're mind-boggling it's really a work of beauty that you do so much of it and you're so completely unaware of all of it that you do every little tiny manipulative behavior every word you say you know exactly what to say to push your partner's buttons to get them to do exactly what you want so you don't get into an argument or so you have to you can avoid spending a day with her at the mall or she can avoid watching you watch football on the couch or whatever you guys are trying to avoid with each other all the compromises that you have struck convenient compromises how about lying about sex i love this one our whole culture lies about sex this whole thing of false modesty like oh i'm not a [ __ ] oh leo don't call me a [ __ ] don't call me a little [ __ ] i'm none of these things i'm a good proper little girl yeah right you're lying to yourself you're lying to yourself i don't have that much sex i don't have unprotected sex i don't have sex with with strangers i only have sex with people that i love right right how about lying in marketing and in sales if you're in a marketing or sales position you lie through your teeth all the time the ad copy that you write the newsletters you send out the pricing structures that you create oh fifty percent off for the next five days only only for the next five days grab this offer now because in uh in five hours it's gonna expire only five hours by now limited time opportunity all this kind of [ __ ] you guys are masters of that shameless shameless [ __ ] snakes how about lying when you're in a leadership position are you a boss are you a manager are you a ceo are you someone that has people following them well then you lie all the time you like to withhold information how much secretive [ __ ] do you withhold someone needs to get fired or someone needs to get hired or you have some piece of information about some new project all that [ __ ] gets withheld you don't tell that to all your people you only tell them on a need to know basis only at the last minute when it doesn't burn your ass that's when you tell them right perfect example of what we mean by self-agenda and not serving truth here's some more examples for you not admitting when you're wrong you know you've made a mistake but then you don't actually admit it even though you kind of know you should but it's like ah well i'll come up with some excuse for why i really was well i wasn't that wrong leo i wasn't that wrong i mean i was i was basically right i mean i was right on the facts yeah a little bit of it was uh it's okay it's okay i don't need to admit that i was wrong they already know it anyways they already know why should i say it they already know it how about hiding your weaknesses and insecurities you're a guy you go out with a girl on a date you're acting all macho and confident everything's fine you've got money you've got a nice car your life is going great you're so cool that's how you act all lies but hey you want to sleep with her and likewise you're the girl well i'm not going to tell him about my my divorce and my abusive boyfriend and how i had uh i was having sex with that guy over there and this over here and it's like i'm not gonna tell any of that i'm gonna be the nice cute little girl i'm not a little [ __ ] i'm a nice lady i'm clean i'm well put together i don't have an alcohol problem i don't have a problem at school i don't have a problem with my parents none of those exist everything's perfect i'm sexy how about acting perfect when you actually aren't pretending like you're perfect how about withholding emotions it's a huge category of lies right here when you withhold emotions you feel stuff you feel angry you feel sad you feel hurt you feel depressed you feel fearful whatever you feel but who do you tell you don't tell anybody about this you don't share this with people even if they ask you tell them all i'm doing how are you doing today i'm fine i'm fine i'm doing good i'm doing good oh it's it's going well how about when you soften your opinions and judgments someone asks you like at work or your boss asks you hey what do you think of what do you think of this political candidate well what do you what do you think about religion here what do you think about this someone asked you the dinner table maybe you're in some kind of formal setting and it's like well i can't really tell them what i think i'll give them a little soft little weak version of what i really think it's like well that candidate i don't think that candidate is is really quite ready yet to take office that's not what you really think you think that that guy's a [ __ ] [ __ ] but that's not what you say oh no no he's yeah i can kind of see i can kind of see how he's okay i can kind of see how you guys might like him yeah maybe it's like yeah oh i can kind of see how those shoes fit for you yeah i can kind of see it you know i wouldn't have selected those but i can kind of see how they fit for you when deep down you're like those are the ugliest [ __ ] shoes i've ever seen it's like oh yeah yeah honey i kind of like you know i'm fine with your dog i'm fine with your dog you know i don't love your dog i'm fine with your dog but in reality it's like that [ __ ] dog just pisses me off right notice how you do that there's a whole game that you play inside your mind a whole set of mental gymnastics that you have to run through to to make that work how about when you're snarky or sarcastic and you use that to manipulate people that's all lies how about when you use humor especially if you've got a charming personality you're good with people you're a socializer type man you use humor to you use humor to put people in their place you use humor to be little people to humiliate people to wage power wars with people you use humor to disassemble your true motives you use humor to disarm tense situations to mislead people to divert their attention from the real issues that they're interested in yeah you're real [ __ ] sneaky with your humor how about when you scheme secretly scheme to get your share of the pie first this is a good one and you know you've done this like when uh when you know that the company is gonna have some layoffs coming you guys didn't have a good quarter this year you know some people are gonna get fired so what do you do already you're sitting there and you're you're scheming your mind is already off to the races for how you're going to make sure that you don't get fired five people get fired well you're gonna do everything you can to make sure those five people are not including you you know and if it's drawn from accounting well [ __ ] him i got to pay for my family my family's got to survive in this bad economy and you start skipping you start coming up with plans with ideas a lot of them are usually nasty and petty how about being nice in order to get validation from people all you people pleasers out there do it all the time just so that we like you so that we approve of you that we love you you'll say [ __ ] anything you're a lying little [ __ ] is what you are you sell yourself out for validation how about pretending that you weren't hurt either emotionally hurt or even physically hurt have you ever been like walking through your house and then maybe your girlfriend is there looking at you or something you're just kind of walking walking walking and then you you stub your toe on the uh the coffee table or some some shoe that's that's laying there on the floor and that really [ __ ] hurt but it's like you want to play it up a little macho right you want to pretend like you didn't really feel it that much was like ah don't worry honey it was nothing it was another just a scratch just a scratch but inside you're like you're bracing with your with your full intensity of your body all your muscles are tense trying to just like hold in that pain rather than just actually expressing the hurt that you felt why are you living that lie you see how this is a matter of your self-image at play it all goes back to self-image your self-image needs to survive even more than your physical body how about the white lies that you tell children and kids you have kids how many white lies do you tell them you don't tell them what's really going on you lie to them all the time you tell them so much [ __ ] filling their minds with all your [ __ ] so then they become liars because you're teaching them by example they listen to all your [ __ ] then they'll [ __ ] their kids and their kids will [ __ ] their kids how do you think this whole cycle gets started starts from year one how about when you say i love you when you don't really feel it and you don't really mean it just because someone else told you that they love you but you don't have the balls to tell them you don't love them so you just kind of oh yeah i love you too honey about when you get a new car some new clothes or something and you want your friends to notice but you don't want to tell them that hey guys look at me look at no you don't want to do that that goes against your self-image of being a humble person so instead what you do is you you find some indirect way you try to nudge them a little bit or you try to like pull up hey guys you know what let's go to the beach next weekend and oh we'll use my car yeah we'll use my new car we'll we'll just use my new car how about when you excuse your own hypocrisy the biggest hypocrites are the ones that don't admit they're hypocrites and usually you're completely blind to your own hypocrisy the [ __ ] you do is so hypocritical the [ __ ] you do versus the [ __ ] you say there's like a an atlantic ocean of difference between the two but in your mind it's all it's all just kind of masked over and glossed over and fudged over so that in your mind you don't seem like a hypocrite at all but if you look at a little closer then you do tons of hypocritical [ __ ] that you lie to yourself about how about holding in your stomach holding in your belly maybe you're even doing it right now go ahead just release release your belly right now you've probably developed a chronic habit of just holding in your belly because you want to shave a couple inches off your waist how you look whether you're a man or a woman you're trying to hide that gut of yours what do you think that is that's a lie so i could just keep going on and on for hours about this list you know but i'm running low on time so i hope that you start to see the subtlety that's going on here right i went to all this length so that you see the subtlety it's very very [ __ ] subtle very subtle not only is it subtle but then you lie to yourself on top of that plus your your awareness level your mindfulness level is so freaking low that you just it just doesn't even register on your radar screen so at this point you might be thinking well lee okay so what's the solution what do i do about this you want me to become a saint is that what i should do leo just be a perfect saint not lie to anyone no hold up with your black and white thinking there's a there's nuance here in this discussion there's nuance in every single video that i shoot so stop your stupid black and white thinking i want you to become very mindful mindful mindful mindful of how you do this how you lie how you manipulate how you self-deceive here's a profound another profound insight for you is that truth alone is curative and healing the truth alone heals you just noticing what's true and what's false already starts to heal you you don't even need to get other people involved yet in fact i want to propose the following solution which is that you should start telling the truth more especially when there's a cost to yourself agenda involved with telling the truth not just telling the truth when it's easy telling the truth when it's hard and there's three levels of telling the truth that i want to introduce to you level one and they get harder and harder as you go up the levels so level one is the easiest although it's still going to be very difficult for you simply tell the truth to yourself at the bare minimum you have to be honest with yourself about your beliefs your ideas and your behaviors and your manipulations so you know what if you're gonna manipulate your boss or you're gonna manipulate your wife fine but at least tell yourself okay i'm manipulating my boss okay i'm manipulating my life at least start there and as you're doing the manipulation at least be mindful of it throughout the duration as you're doing it might take you a couple days to execute your manipulation okay fine but just stay mindful throughout that process notice what you're doing and why you're doing it what's really going on why are you manipulating her or him to serve yourself agenda and notice what the cost is the cost is truth you don't give a [ __ ] about truth you don't give a [ __ ] about honesty you care about your self agenda that's what you care about you care about your self image you care about preserving your identity at all costs that's the only thing you care about in life pretty much the only thing you're almost incapable of caring about anything else not unless you've done a lot of work on yourself this kind of work that we're doing here hundreds and thousands of hours of it is what i'm talking about so that's level number one just start to notice for yourself and that's that already is a huge advance forward but there's also level number two level number two is starting to communicate the facts of situations more accurately and honestly so what are the facts you know if your boss comes to you and asks you hey are we going to meet next quarter's projections instead of softening the blow and not telling him everything you give him a couple of facts no give him all the facts give him all the facts even if he's going to fire you give him all the facts same thing with relationships if you've been cheating on your boyfriend or spouse or husband tell them that that's a fact tell them the facts of what happened how many times did you cheat don't just tell them i cheated tell them i cheated five times with the following people give the facts report the facts as they were or as they are for you that can be quite challenging if you're writing a sales copy if you're a salesperson or marketer start writing sales copy that's actually factually true rather than trying to manipulate and withhold certain information disclose all the facts and start to notice the huge difference between writing a communication designed to promote yourself agenda was just the sale of products and earning you of money versus writing a sales copy that actually reports the facts as they are that actually tries to communicate truth that has a totally different energy and vibration to it when you're actually trying to report the truth same thing in your work you know if you're an artist if you're a writer whatever kind of work you do you can do your work in a way where you're serving truth versus your self agenda start practicing that and then level three of uh communicating truth is actually communicating how you feel not only do you report the facts but also how you feel about the facts so for example your boss comes to you and asks you about the quarterly reports not only do you give him the facts and the facts might look bad you give him the facts but let's say you're also afraid and you're fearful and maybe you're also angry at someone in the company but see all these emotions you bottle up to all these emotions so this third level is about communicating your actual emotions so you actually tell them hey i'm afraid i'm afraid you're going to fire me i'm afraid that uh or i'm angry at that person in in accounting who didn't do the right job to get the right numbers in or whatever communicate your emotions or in this this one this is the hardest thing you'll ever do if for example you cheated on your spouse not only do you communicate that you cheated on your spouse but now you communicate your emotions about it as well so it's like i had sex with sally not only did i have sex with her but i loved it we had multiple orgasms together we hung out we had fun we went shopping later we had the best time of our lives because that's honestly how you felt you might say i'm in love with her this is something you would never ever ever think of doing even in the most radical examples what you would usually do is you'd say well yeah honey i cheated i'm real sorry but see that too is a lie because that's not how you really feel how you really feels like yeah i cheated because you were a [ __ ] and you were nagging me all the time and i really love this girl so you don't tell her that because that's [ __ ] gonna destroy your your ego when you try to do that this is not easy stuff to do and even as i'm talking you should already be shaking in your boots quivering with fear and dread about doing some of these actions this [ __ ] is just like ah it's like acid it's like pouring acid on your self-image it just completely obliterates it also though it's extremely healthy and it helps you to reduce all that [ __ ] in your life depression loneliness sadness hating life anxiety stress all that [ __ ] where do you think all that [ __ ] comes from that comes from you lying and sweeping under the rug all the dirt for years and years and years until it festers and then it destroys your life so yeah there's a cost there's a consequence to uh to being truthful serving the truth is not easy it's very emotionally challenging which is why nobody does it because no one cares enough about truth you might wonder well leo why should i care about truth maybe i should just serve myself agenda and that's it what's wrong with manipulating people lying to people and all this well you know it's not a moral problem i'm not telling you like you're going to be a bad person or going to hell if you lie that's not why you shouldn't lie it's an integrity problem and integrity is something i'm going to cover in other episodes it's too much to cover here but just in a nutshell the problem here is that when you're out of integrity with yourself when you lie to others and you lie to yourself as well and you manipulate and that becomes your default mode of communicating and interacting with human beings then that starts to taint your whole life like i said you know it toxifies your whole life you're the one who's getting depressed you're the one who's stressful you're the one who's in danger of having a heart attack you're the one who's fat and overweight you're the one who hates the world you're the one who's angry and resentful all the time you're the one who's passive aggressive so you're paying the cost of that so i'm not telling you to do this in some altruistic you know vain like oh well yeah just be honestly that you're a nice noble person no uh it's because your dishonesty has gotten so bad that it's backfiring on you and it's um it's making your life miserable that's why you want to be integrated because a disintegrated life is very painful i will give you a warning though is that if you do start doing level 2 and level 3 of honest communication and you start telling the facts and you do start you know spilling your emotions then you have to have courage and you have to accept the consequences that might come from that and there might be some serious consequence maybe you'll get fired maybe your wife will leave you maybe your children will hate you now in most situations what the mind does is it completely over exaggerates these consequences usually you won't get fired usually your wife won't leave you and usually your kids won't hate you in fact if you're truly honest and you kind of wear your emotions and your heart on your sleeve that's very refreshing for most people most people appreciate that kind of honesty even if you did something really bad you usually won't get fired for it if you actually like go and honestly report the facts and report how you feel about it usually you won't get fired so play around with that test that out let me give you some concrete exercises here these are your action steps one is i want you to start noticing yourself agenda in action notice the difference between self agenda and truth which one are you honoring when you're doing the stuff you do i also want you to start noticing how much you lie be mindful of your lies as you're lying especially the very subtle ones that i talked about also start to notice how you suddenly manipulate people you manipulate people everywhere and usually the closer they are to you the more you manipulate them the people you manipulate the most are your spouse your children your parents and your family members you manipulate them the most so just watch out for that and here's a trick that i want you to use to remember because you're going to fall back asleep you're going to fall back to sleep real fast because none of the none of this that i talked about is serving your self-image at all here this is very dangerous very threatening so here's how you keep yourself from falling asleep you get a rubber band something colorful like this put it around your wrist make sure it's not too tight so you can wear it for a long time without it cutting off circulation to your hand and you wear this for a whole week i want you to put one of these on wear them for a whole week throughout your day sleep with it shower with it brush your teeth with it and go to work with it have sex with it on and every time your eye catches sight of that color of that uh of this rubber band then i want you to just remind yourself oh that's right i'm supposed to be on the lookout for my own manipulations and lies and self-agenda and this will help you to stay on track and not fall asleep alright this is it i'm done i'm signing off please click the like button for me really helps if you want to support actualize.org click that button right now post your comments down below share this video with a friend and lastly come sign up and take a look at actualize.org i have a free newsletter there with weekly updates on these kinds of videos as you can see one of the hallmarks of my videos is that i try to go extremely deep with you because i know that the deeper i can go with you on these concepts even though fewer people will watch them you'll actually start to see the benefits of doing real personal development work it's quite rare to see videos that are this deep it's quite rare to see this kind of information assembled in this way especially for free this type of information would usually cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars so it's worth it to stick around if you really want to build a high quality life you need to understand how your mind works you need to start to understand how you're deceiving yourself how you're lying to yourself how you're manipulating people and that's just the tip of the iceberg of all the stuff you need to know so every week i release new stuff advanced concepts very deep material that will transform your life if you just sign on board stick around most of my content is free in a few years your life will start to transform if you follow some of the stuff that i'm saying all right i'm out of here sign up and stay tuned and i'll see you soon you