Lying. Is It Ever Okay?

Has anyone ever lied to you? How did it feel?

Have you ever lied? How did that feel?

I won't guess how either of those felt for you, but I will bet that you answered 'yes' to the first and third questions. I would venture to say very few humans reading this have never told a lie or been lied to at some point in their lives. I mean, we did all have parents of some form or another.

I lied recently and I was surprised as anyone when the fib flew out of my mouth so readily.  I have been consciously making an effort NOT to lie for many years now. I was "busted" rather quickly and the person on the other end was hurt, understandably so.

Besides my own experience, lying (and trust) has come up a lot lately, both with clients and in personal conversations. Is my employee lying to me?  Why wasn't soandso truthful about that silly little thing? How come I never feel like soandso is giving me the whole story? We're also seeing a boatload of lies and coverups coming to light in the media. It's all around us.

People lie for countless reasons. One of the most popular being "I didn't want to hurt the other person" which most often translates to:

"I want to avoid the conflict that I believe telling the truth would cause".

More on that later.

To rationalize lying, we tend to break them down into degrees of severity. There are the big "OMG, I can't believe he said that, bald-face lies"  all the way down to the "little-bitty, teeny-weeny white lies" we tell about something minute. And don't forget the "omission of truth", that's not quite a lie, but we know it may lead someone to believe something that isn't true.

Lying. Is it ever okay?

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