The Vanity of Lies
Or, the truth will make you eat vegetables
I became an attorney to help people.
I’m going to tell you the truth, even if you don’t like it, so be prepared to be offended. That doesn’t mean I will always be right, but I’m not going to disrespect you by saying things unless I believe they are true.
Wake up.
I came to the depressing realization that censorship can hurt real people in profound ways not long after I started practicing Family Law.
My first experience with “woke” style censorship was on a social media platform. Someone was being sued for child support in Texas and wanted to know how to get a paternity test. It’s a simple question like one you might see in the short answer section of the bar exam. The correct response under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure is to answer with a general denial and then request an order for the test.
The woke answer is to admit paternity and pay whatever child support the mother demands. Thus, the legal answer was deleted by woke admins. Only the woke answers were available to the original requester and anyone looking for an answer to the same question.
Decide to find your own way.
I hope Medium isn’t like that. There are some personal changes that the woke culture doesn’t want you to make. Maybe you want to lose weight, be more attractive to women, or become a leader. The desire for any of those things can be offensive to some people.
I don’t care whether you want to become a better Christian or a raging hippy. I want you to find your own truth.
You are not special.
Chances are someone along the way has told you that people should love you just the way you are. That’s bull. How arrogant do you have to be to give yourself the moral authority to judge your own worthiness in others’ eyes?
Neither your rights nor your responsibilities extend inside other people’s heads. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t love each other unconditionally. Just don’t use that as an excuse to settle for less than you can be.
Don’t allow the foolish to deceive you into accepting things that you know you should change. Instead, love yourself enough to be better.
How we lie to ourselves.
I use that famous horse, Mr. Ed (Ed for short), to represent the limbic system or the emotional brain in the Triune brain model. Quincy, Jason’s lizard from FoxTrot, represents fear or the reptilian brain.
Ed and Quincy are always working behind the scenes. A lot of their work involves lying to us.
- “You don’t want to ask her out because she is not your type.”
- “You don’t want to ask for a raise because you work here for reasons other than salary.”
- “You are handsome / ugly / smart / stupid / fat / skinny.”
How do we know which of these are lies and which are true? That’s a problem we all face.
However, we can give general instructions to Ed which he will follow at his convenience like a lazy concierge. Say, you are talking to someone and are unable to think of a movie name. An hour later during the drive home, Ed will pop up and yell, “Gone With the Wind!”
We usually think of that brain feature as annoying, but it’s awesome if you use a little imagination. You’ve got parallel tasks running in your brain with interrupts. How cool is that?
Let’s take advantage of that feature.
Homework.
We need to get Ed started working on a couple of problems for us. We want to know the truth of who we are and the truth of who we want to be. This is a process and the answers change over time. You will use affirmations or prayer to kick-start Ed depending on your existing belief system.
If you are an atheist, you are stuck with affirmations. The style I am using here is adapted from the book Think and Grow Rich by Ben Holden-Crowther. (No affiliation.)
The first step is to pick out a few qualities that the new you will have. If you don’t know, then pick three qualities that you think a person should have. We don’t need to start out perfect; we just need to get Ed working.
- Write “I will be a new person who is [list qualities] by [date 18 weeks from now] by doing [how you think you will get there.]” For example, “I am going to be a new person who is confident talking to women by July 26, 2020 by watching online videos.” (No, this is not a very good affirmation. That’s OK. It’s a start.)
- Mark the date on your calendar. Put reminders every week until then.
- Every night and morning, as soon as you wake up and before you go to bed, read what you wrote and picture the new you. Make the picture as real as you can. Ask the future you what you need to do to become him. He may or may not give you an answer. If he does, write it down.
- Revise what you wrote as you learn more. For example, your affirmation might change to, “I will be a new person who is confident in social situations by meeting three new people every day and learning three new things about them.”
Think of Ed as the “Force” from Star Wars. (Watching Star Wars is now part of your homework if you haven’t seen it.) You control Ed but you also let him direct your actions and he will take you down unexpected paths. You will be more attractive to women if you are more confident in social situations, so that may be the route you decide to take even if it doesn’t seem obvious.
You can find more information about affirmations at PositivePsychology and on Scott Adams blog.
If you are religious, then do the same thing through prayer and let the Spirit guide you. Prayer probably works better (sorry atheists) so don’t feel like this is dumbed down for you. You will also need to read scriptures for guidance.
Good luck!
