It’s Hard to See The Truth When You Believe the Lie
One of my favorite jokes is about the two blondes who locked their keys in the car. It goes something like this:
Two blondes were shopping at the mall. When they were done, they went out to their car, which happened to be an awesome leather-interior convertible, but they realized they had locked the keys in the car. So they both kind of stood there and thought for a while.
Then one of the girls had the bright idea to try to open the car with a coat hanger, so she started fiddling with the lock. The other blonde looked up at the sky, became very worried, and pleaded,
“Hurry! It’s going to rain and we left the windows and the top down!”
Why it’s so hysterically funny is because we SEE the truth and the alternatives - they don’t. They don’t see that the top is down and there are other ways to get in the car and grab the keys and control of the vehicle again. How stupid. How blonde, we say. But the fact is, you and I are just as trapped as they are.
We stand outside of our lives with the key in the ignition worrying that it’s going to rain and we’ve left the top down. We believe the lie, just as they did, that the only way to get something we want is through the traditional or usual way. In this joke the women don’t climb into the car through a window, or by climbing up on the trunk and into the back seat of a convertible. It just doesn’t occur to them.
I came out to a parking lot with two friends the summer we were all living in a VW van and camping across Canada and the Northwest. We’d stopped in a bar to get a sandwich and a couple of beers and take a break from the road.
When we left we found the van had been blocked in by two large pickup trucks on either side. There was like 4 inches of clearance on each side. The two men who I guessed owned the trucks were standing outside the bar on the patio with several other men. They said, “I guess you’ll have to come back inside and have another beer.”
The friend who owned the van just smiled and opened up the back of the van, climbed in over the seats and backed it straight out. We got in and pulled away laughing and waving. It never occurred to the two men that there was a third door and that we had other options.
It’s hard to see the truth when you believe the lie.
So many people get trapped in the lie and can’t see the truth - that they have options, that they control their lives. These are the people who say, “I HAVE to go to work if I want to keep my house.” or “I have to do what my boyfriend wants to do or he’ll leave me.” or “If I don’t stay late and take home work my boss will fire me.” Those are lies. We’ve convinced ourselves they’re truth, but they’re not. The truth is, you can do anything you’re willing to choose and accept the consequences for.
You don’t have to go to work. You CHOOSE to go to work because you CHOOSE the lifestyle you have. Say it. “I choose to go to work because I choose to have the lifestyle I have.” You can also choose to change jobs, pursue a passion, start a business, retire early, live less extravagantly and work fewer hours. Choice. It’s all about choice.
This is the point where people generally stop reading and shoot me angry emails, “That’s not true!! I CAN’T stop working. I HAVE to pay bills, I HAVE to support my children, I HAVE to …..” and they really believe that they are unique - that they don’t have the choices the rest of us do. But they do.
Martha Beck expands on this in her book Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What!. I LOVE this book! It’s not a new concept - Dr. Viktor Frankl said the same thing in his book about being a prisoner in a German death camp during WWII, Man’s Search For Meaning. Dozens of other authors and people have their own ways of expressing the same truth - “It is hard to see the truth when you believe the lie.” The blondes at the beginning of this post believed the lie that they were locked out of their car. We believe the lie that we are locked into our current lives, or locked out of the fun life so many people around us seem to be having. The “truth” is our thoughts are only that - thoughts. You control them. You can change them. And when you change them YOU change your life.
One of the most amazing things I realized about my ant farm was that as I watch the ants do the incredible things they’re doing, I start thinking about them - assigning them *stories* about what I believe to be the *truth* about them and what they are doing. When I change how I think about them it changes how I feel about them. It’s called “anthropomorphizing” - giving human characteristics to non-human creatures or objects. As I shifted my thoughts from “Only 20% of the ants are doing all the work while 80% sleep” to “I wonder how they allocate the work?” I began to pay attention and see that the ants worked in shifts. The ants who seemed to sleep the first 24 hours are now digging at the other end of the farm - not lazy at all as I THOUGHT.
We all *tell stories* about our lives. For more than two years mine was, “I’m homeless.” Now it’s, “I’m living the dream, traveling and loving life.” I’m in the same van, with the same dog, the same resources I had then, but oddly enough I’ve started attracting clients and more money and a better way of living. Why? Because I started believing the truth, not the lie. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not magic. It can be hard, but it happens. Trust it.
