Stop Lying to Yourself and Be Successful

By Apollo Akora -

Stop Lying to Yourself

“Don’t Lie to Yourself” – is a phrase guaranteed to annoy the targeted recipient. Just think about it. You sketch out a business idea, or a plan to learn a new language. Surely it would hurt, if in response, you are told not to lie to yourself.

Now why does being told not to lie to ourselves make us angry? Have they fingered out an underlying flaw in our big idea? Of course not!

The phrase “don’t lie to yourself” attacks you. Not your idea. Not your picture of the future. Not your version of how things could be. It says, very simply, that the idea as it stands is probably sound, it probably will work, and things could turn out the way you have sketched out. But wait. There is a spanner in the works. That spanner is YOU.

The idea is a vehicle. You are the driver. And because you are in the driving seat, this vehicle will not be getting to its destination any time soon. Most likely, it will be derailed.

It will be derailed because you lack the ability to keep it on the road all the way to wherever it is you are going.

Let us be frank. It is your inability to desist from taking detours that is being criticized. Maybe you are the type that gets bored quickly. Soon, there will be another flavour of the month. When that comes, off you’ll go, in another direction.

He’s Lying to Himself

If we could read the minds of others, we’d be Olympic finalists at being hoping mad, going through a step change, and jumping to conclusions.

Every time you are told not to lie to yourself, you can be sure that there are four others that have said to themselves – “he’s lying to himself”. Maybe they put the phone down, turn to their significant other, and say – “don’t worry, it will never happen, she’s just lying to herself”.

Success Boils Down to Knowing Yourself

To not lie to yourself, to be honest with yourself, requires that you know yourself. Herein lies the rub. Success boils down to, or at least kicks off with, one thing. Knowing yourself.

What it means to be Successful

The time has come to square the circle by associating lying to yourself, with being successful. To do this, take a butchers at the current body of knowledge on the subject of success.

These works, by their own admission, are not about making YOU successful. (Note that success is synonymous with leadership. It is virtually impossible to have an abundance of one without the other).

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell
The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader by John C. Maxwell

Without taking anything away from the above world bestsellers, they describe what qualities successful people have. They tell you the laws that those who live in the land of success abide by.

Mapping out Success – Wish U Were Here

Imagine you have a map in front of you. Imagine there is a place on the map labelled success which is clearly, for want of a better term, mapped out. That’s cool for those that live there. Yes, one of the inhabitants may send you the occasional “wish you were here” postcard. The sad truth, for you and I, is that we aren’t there. We need two things to get us there.

We need to know where we are. Knowing where we are means knowing ourselves. Being honest with ourselves. Not lying to ourselves. Then we need a route. A way to get ourselves to where we want to be.

We doodle and drool over what effective people are, the 21 irrefutable laws that define them. We pour over vivid depictions of how the other half live. The other half being the citizens, the inhabitants, of “successful spaces”.

Start out by Knowing Yourself

Dreamers need to do as well as dream, in order to live their dreams. To do this, you must get to know yourself, not just your one self, but the many incarnations of you, in the past, present and future.

Knowing yourself is the first step you must take, by hook or by crook, on the road to wherever it is you need to go!

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Stop Lying to Yourself and Be Successful