"Well, I NEVER!!!!"

Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Has anyone ever accused you of lying? How about cheating? Or stealing?

When those situations come up in your life (because it happens to everyone)–how do you react?

For most people, defenses go up fast and hard. Hackles are raised, claws come out and very quickly you start thinking or saying “I would NEVER {lie, cheat or steal}. Never, never, never. How dare they?”

Your pulse has quickened, you feel clammy and you have a nauseous feeling in your belly. It feels BAD, really bad. A minute ago, everything was fine and now suddenly it feels as though you are under attack.

Just thinking about how this has happened to you in the past can bring up all of those yucky feelings.

So what is really going on here?

You are taught from a very young age that to lie, cheat or steal makes you a bad person. And as the stand up, good citizen that you are, you agree that those qualities are less than desirable in others and certainly will not be found in you.

This is where the “I never” comes in. You stand very firmly in, “I would never do that. I would never lie, cheat or steal because I am a good person.”

Except that you have.

Sorry to say it, but I would be willing to put money on the fact that you have absolutely lied, stolen and cheated. (And no, it doesn’t make you a bad person).

At some point in your life, you have lied to someone. White lies, saving face lies, big whopper lies–they are all lying.

Somewhere along the line you have also stolen something–whether it be outright theft, taking office supplies, or finding something in your cart that you didn’t get charged for and not going back in to pay for it. It may have been inadvertent, but it is still theft.

How about cheating? Don’t tell me you never copied homework, looked up Latin translations in the library and passed them off as your own (oh–sorry, that was me) or “peeked” at someone else’s test answer.

We have all done it. Seriously. Every single one of us. No one has gone through life not lying, cheating or stealing.

And this is exactly why your hackles come out. This is why it feels so gosh darn awful when someone accuses you of being less than perfectly honest. Because you know it is true.

When someone so much as infers that you have lied or cheated, you feel that they are attacking your character. And there is a little itty bitty part of you that knows that they are right. When you say “I would never” whether you can see it or not, you are not in alignment and that is what makes you feel so bad.

It has very little to do with the present situation. But you don’t realize that, so you find yourself obsessively thinking about the scenario, knowing you are innocent but still feeling lousy. You go over it again and again in your head. You didn’t do it. No matter what they think. So why does it still bother you so much?

It bothers you because of the “I never”. Because the “I never” isn’t true.

Here’s something you can try. When I get accused of something and feel myself starting to get defensive, I pause. I remind myself that I am a liar, a thief and a cheater.

When I can accept that for what it is, my defenses can stand down. When I can sit with the fact that I am not perfect, but still a good person, I don’t have to fight to prove anything.

Then I consider the situation. Now I can look at it even handedly. My character is intact and I can simply respond to what I have been accused of. It isn’t personal anymore because it doesn’t have the power to make me a bad person.

I can respond to my accuser in an unemotional way and either admit or deny what I am being confronted about. It is easy to explain what did or didn’t happen, because I have taken my worth out of the equation. Approaching these often volatile situations with this new attitude has helped me enormously.

So now, over to you. Do you think that admitting these less than perfect qualities to yourself could be helpful? Or has me suggesting this made you angry?

I can take it. Leave a comment below and let me know how you feel.

And if you need any assistance in getting to your own truth, please know I am here to help. Hit contact in the upper right hand corner of this page so we can set up a time to speak.  First calls are always complementary.

Happy Halloween!!

Hugs,

Lorna

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