Honesty Augmentation

Honesty Augmentation

A practical guide to help
Recognize,
Reduce and
Eliminate
STRETCHING THE TRUTH

By Rachel Peyton

Prologue
Everyone has probably told little white lies or embellished the truth. I wonder if our society could operate at all (corporate, industrial or personal) for a single day without untrue statements or intent to deceive. With this hypothesis in mind, I have considered how many of us actually know how much or how often we do lie. My recent personal experience with "lie awareness" has prompted me to share my "lie research".

I am not a professional in the treatment of mental or emotional behavior. I don't know all of the clinical reasons any person lies, nor do I know all of those rehabilitation processes used to break the liar's cycle. However, here's my claim to knowing the truth; I am a reformed liar. I understand the characteristics and habits of living the life of a liar. I have not only been down the story-telling road, I paved it in rose-colored perjury bricks.

This is the course of action that fixed my lying problem. It's supported with everything I learned about lying along the way (much the hard way). My story telling addiction was extreme. Most liars experience a lesser version of lying and embellishing the truth; therefore, they should learn easily from my mistakes and enlightenments.

I'm certain I could have won the "Miss Fib Teller" title annually for at least a decade. I'm quite pleased THAT isn't a real contest, what bragging rights I'd have, but can't you just imagine the trophy - a cute little princess with a 5-inch wooden nose. And all in bronze - what a keepsake.

Even it you don't lie this will be a wonderful reason not to start, and you should get a kick out of how absolutely absurd my daily life was. It will scare you straight and you'll never even consider a white lie. It's practically humorous now to admit to the things that have come out of my mouth. Laugh at your friends that tell grand stories and then give them this book, with love.

Now that I'm reformed, I love myself so much! My new friends surely think I'm conceded. I brag on myself, but really I didn't know it was this easy to just be myself and be REAL. Now I think I'm a pretty cool chick!

Hopefully, when other liars finish reading this, they will laugh with me, take my simple advice and learn to love themselves for whom they really are.

A Way of Life
Admitting you have a problem should be the number one step, right? In most addictions that's where it starts. But not with lying. REALIZING the problem exists hits you like a ton of bricks and then you spend days, months, even years figuring out HOW to admit your way is the wrong way.

When the right person came along and told me that I have a "truth problem", I listened to him for an entire year and made the grand stories grander, hoping to fool him as well as myself. Then, his persistence built up in my head until I said, "Wow, I have a truth problem!" By this time it was a sinkhole, full of illusions and cloudy tales that I didn't know how to straighten out. How do you just come clean and say that every detail of your life has been made up and inflated, yet all seemingly with good intentions.

Maybe you have a special person who can stick by you to call your bluffs, point out your discrepancies and embarrass you into reality. Or, you may need to be the strength for a friend who is a storyteller. In my case, for some reason, mine saw the beauty inside me and he welcomed the challenge to help me recover from the monster I had created in my own being. For me, he was a blessing and the beginning of my journey to honesty.

Of course, realization doesn't have to come from another person. In most cases we alienate those people who dare to compromise our "stories". I spent the first 34 years of my life doing just that - I was NOT a liar. I preferred to simply think that I told people what they wanted to hear and then pushed myself to live up to those expectations. But, cut and dried, I lied. I knew I was lying.

Lying is deceit. Deceit is fraud. Fraud is an imposter. And I didn't know who I really was anymore. That's what I did. I lied.

I remember a boss telling me that I am a beautiful and charming lady. That when I walk into any room I am looked at with admiration and respect without ever saying a word. Yet, my inferior restraints made me feel like I needed to be grand. I'd open my mouth and "Blah, Blah, Blah" mounds of whatever I thought needed to be heard to make me as good or better than the next board member poured out of my mouth. I though I needed to be extravagant to be accepted by my peers and at the same time I felt it was expected of me.

We all know what a lie is. Now isn't it funny that one definition of "LIE" is "to have an effect especially through mere presence". Only now as a recovered liar do I see what that boss was trying to tell me.

It's very hard to just say, "Hi, my name is Rachel and I'm a liar." Substance addicts have a product and vice that causes their illness. My drama was all in my own head. Yes, any addict should say that they are such. But, liars are different, our entire game is words. Play on words. Work with the words. Twist the words. No harm done. We aren't ingesting illegal products or poisoning our bodies. There is no admission for a liar because additional embarrassment makes us hide from the lies; tell more lies. We just can't face it or admit it. So until we are reformed, and for the sake of rehabilitation, in the interest of avoiding that embarrassment, let's call our weakness not lying, but "honesty augmentation". This means:

Honesty: free from deception: truthful: genuine, real: reputable: creditable

Augmentation: to inflate: enlarge: increase for personal gain

"Truth inflators"

We won't do this in denial of the facts, just to soften the blow for those of us who have not reached realization or admission yet.

This isn't for the psychologically disturbed pathological liar; this is for the average person who doesn't feel good enough about himself or doesn't know that being yourself is supposed to be all you have to do.

Baby Steps
It all started when I was a small child…Yes, the old cliché.
My mother says that when I first started talking, every morning I would stand in my crib and yell, "Rachel's awake! Everybody get up!" I delighted myself in being the center of attention at all times. I was a precious little thing. A real girly, girl. I always wanted to wear dresses, but not just any dress. It had to "twirl". Yes, I did a twirl test and if the dress passed, I was a happy Princess for the day.

I think that my very early narsistic love of myself was normal. I knew I was a pretty little girl and Daddy would NEVER tell me "No". However, my darling mother, as good as her intensions were, was actively creating a little monster. I won my first beauty pageant when I was a year old. In elementary school I remember being in these little pageants and even when I didn't win, I'd get a little trophy; everyone did. Immediately my mother would tell the world I won first runner up, I won Miss photogenic, I won. When I did win third place, Mother would proclaim me as the Grand Champ, First Place Winner.

Looking back now, I remember thinking that my appearance or performance wasn't good enough, that we had to make up stories to be what was expected of me. I was a five year old with a false beauty resume and a totally bogus portfolio. My little mind didn't know where to stop. In the third grade, I remember telling my friends that I lived in a mansion, that I get to eat candy for dinner, that I get fifty dollars every week for allowance and that I have over a thousand dresses. Always bragging, always having great stuff.

My precious mother had six children by the time she was twenty-five years old. I was second of six. Three girls, three boys. I am the middle girl, between a tomboy and a genius. My mother had an amazing talent for individualizing each of us. We never felt lost in all the kids, each of us were treated like an only child in her own way. With me, I think I was the pretty little girl that was going to get the glamorous childhood that she missed out on. I can in no way blame my mother for my adult behavior, she sincerely motivated me to be a Princess, and that is exactly the world I wanted to be in. Her little "embellishments" on my performance were just her way of complimenting me; making sure I did not feel like a failure. She had limited time to encourage my success and used grand displays to make her point. With six individual children, she had to move on to the athlete, then the doctor and the scientist; making sure she left the Princess in good state of mind.

Ahhhh, a mother's love…I took it all too seriously.

"Cover Your Eyes, No One Will See You"
When my mother caught me peeing in the front yard, with my hands over my eyes I assured her that the neighbors would not know, they couldn't see me, I had my eyes covered tight. Oh, how I'd love it if THAT little trick worked.
Could this be the same mechanism in my brain that told me what you say is what is real? What you don't see can't really be happening?

"Everybody loves Rachel"
Long before "Raymond", that was MY favorite sentence. Can't you see a beautiful eight year old girl, bronzed, long-legged, big eyes, in a bright peach bikini running around the yard proclaiming, "Everybody loves Rachel!"

So much self-confidence made me feel like I could do anything. At an early age I realized that I would SAY I could do things and then, having a conscience, I had to live up to them. I'd worry myself sick trying to do what I'd said I could do. I was a born people-pleaser and I wanted to make everyone happy. If a friend wanted a special toy, I'd say, "Oh, I have that and I don't ever play with it. I'll bring it to you." Then, I had to cry until my mother got it for me and I'd sneak it to my friend. Sometimes my charm and tears took weeks to conquer the task (even batting my big eyes at Daddy took time) and I'd continue to promise the toy to my friend until my efforts paid off. I'd stay awake at night and worry and feel like I was letting my friend down, having childhood stress over wanting to please my friend.

Now, I look back at the many times I did things like this and I wonder, WHY did I even open my mouth? WHY didn't I let my friend have her parents get the darn toy? It came from my need to make people happy; to say what they wanted to hear and my overpowering need to be accepted.

Teen Tales
My parents divorced when I was fourteen. Of course, I was the first child to move out of our childhood home and in with my mother. Two younger siblings followed about six months later. My stepfather, never having children of his own, adored me. Yes, another daddy to bat my big brown eyes at.

Learnin' to Work It
When I was thirteen, my parents had a friend, Danny, who was twenty-six. Danny told me that he wanted to marry me when I grow up. He was always at our house, bringing me gifts and constantly complimenting me. My parents never let me leave the house with him, but if you can "court" without leaving the living room, that's what Danny did. And he did it quite well. He never touched me, just gave me all of his attention. In my child mind I was thirteen and he was twenty-six, twice my age. So, when I thought about him, I would think that when I am twenty, he'd be forty. Worse, when I am only forty, he would be EIGHTY! Twice my age. That's how a child's mind works, in my case. With that, I never took Danny seriously but I sure learned early how to get what I wanted from a man. At the mention of the new Gloria Vanderbilt jeans that a friend got before me and the next day I had every style in my size.

Why is this relevant to my honesty problem? This is where I graduated from batting my lashes at Daddy to seeing the power of being Rachel and how that in itself affected the opposite sex. Quite effective. Now with Danny it was innocent enough, but the experience made an impression on me.

A Crazy Man's Strength
I grew tired of men treating me like a prize and decided to find a man that would want me for me. Not realizing then that I had been created by my stories and other men's expectations, I didn't know whom I was or what I had to offer a man. Then along came this tall, longhaired, ladies man from Alaska. He had little to offer a woman, lived in a friend's camper trailer yet really intrigued me.

I knew this relationship would work in two ways. First, he had to know I loved him only for him; he had nothing at all that I could want from him except love. More importantly, he thought I hung the moon and it would be easy for me to start over and find myself. He even asked me in the beginning, "What makes you tick?" I had no idea and we resolved to find me together. Well, he was not a "bread winner" and I was use to having everything I wanted. So, of course, I resorted to what I knew best. Find a way to get what you want. I worked hard and tried to do it all myself. But I was robbing Peter to pay Paul. This man was demanding, wanted ME to fix his problems. My need to please and make people happy kicked right in. I started telling stories about grand things that would be happening with my career and he expected me to take care of business. We were very co-dependent on each other. As time passed and my "fortune" never came in, one by one my boyfriend would call me on the little stories and interrogate me on the details of each situation. I was exhausted from all the stories I was telling. He broke me and I knew I had a problem.

"Wake Up and Smell the Nail Polish"
The first time I wondered if I could get a pedicure in PRISON, I started thinking that the truth really is important. This is where REALIZATION became a key factor to my behavior. However, I was completely unsure where to start or how to fix anything. I knew that this Guy would let me commit armed robbery if it meant he'd live the high life. Now, I had to ask myself, was my problem any worse than his controlling me? I realized that this boyfriend's ability to get me to face the truth was also a hard, ugly ability to control me. Even considering all the good he did for me, I had to get out from under his controlling thumb. It must have been the combination of knowing that he drastically changed the liar part of me, and being terrified that he could continue to alter me into whatever he wanted. Without going into details that would merit another entire story, this man was bad, BAD news. I knew all that I had left was me, and I wanted to walk away with dignity and believe that I could start fresh. I was scared straight. I was ready to be nothing but myself, offer no reasons, no explanations, with no exceptions. I needed to be REAL.

"Vodka on the rocks - and make my rocks little pills"
Time to stop thinking so much and try to control my own mind. Oh, yeah, this is going to work. My mid-life crisis came when I was so tired of holding life together for everyone else. I couldn't handle any more stress and sought help. My doctor thought lightly of my problem and instead of counseling, prescribed very strong anti-depressants for me. My little numbing pills. Yes, they made life easier, I couldn't cry any more and I forgot how to be dramatic.

It was time to grow up and be a big girl; make that an honest woman. So, I threw away the pills and the boyfriend.

What's LUCK got to do with it?
I don't know what to think about "Luck".

I can testify that I am one of those persons that Murphy's Law is active in my daily life. I'm not going to say I have bad luck, but it seems that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Every task, chore, assignment, adventure or plan I encounter generally has some type of complication.

Therefore, I am constantly being tested. I don't think that it is punishment that I can't seem to catch a break. Just life. I am that person whose check is always lost in the mail, I lock my keys in the car, my animals get ran over, my persistent calls do not get returned, and I oversleep. For each of these events I use to provide those grand stories to make them not my fault. Now, I take each incident as it comes and deal with it. Sometimes it's even fun to admit to the boss that my cat unplugged my alarm clock (the truth) instead of making up a family emergency for my tardiness. And it's so easy to not tell that lie and then have to repeat it and remember it. The truth is a natural thing. You can recall it without hesitation and it feels good.

By His Grace…
I am a Christian and I love the Lord. I have left my sins at the alter and know that I am forgiven. Each day I start fresh, in prayer and I am thankful. Now that I am "fixed" I regret any persons I may have hurt and I humble myself before each of them and ask forgiveness. However, people are not as forgiving as God. If there is a single person I have lied to in the past that has not told a lie themselves, they truly are better than me. Surely that person is still not perfect. We all have regrets and must work together to overcome, to forgive and to let go.

I had one friend that I lost in my divorce (my ex-husband got her & her husband) and she continues to trash me (four years later) and tell everyone that knows me all of the dirty laundry that went on between us. She refuses to accept any form of an apology and will not acknowledge that even though Jesus Christ himself has forgiven me, she will not. I am a source of gossip for her and I guess it makes her feel like a better person to talk about how bad I was. She won't stop and see that I am not that person and I have made a better life for myself. She is a mother of two boys that do not know the Lord, and her hard heart is in my daily prayers.

I tell this story because it is an amazing example of how wrong we can be and not even know it. We probably all have a vice, a wrong way of thinking in some area; weather it be lying, forgiving, gossiping, cheating. We all want to like ourselves and we want to think that our way is the right way.

"Only God will judge me" is a nice thought and I wish more people would treat each other with that in mind.

How do I know I'm really better?
Progress is a wonderful thing. I think about every thought in my head BEFORE I say a single word. I analyze every situation and make sure I am being just and fair. In that analyzing, I do catch myself pondering the way I would have solved a problem earlier in life. Now, those ways are dismissed as unthinkable and never considered. I recognize that I do instinctively think mischievously, but then I instantly disregard any unfair play and stand up for honesty.

It is very hard to admit guilt, take critical feedback and be strong. I think of it as keeping life straight. Reduce drama. Take the bad when it comes and deal with it right then. No more snowball-effect catastrophes for me.

"I am Beautiful Today"
Just thinking about me, who I REALLY am, when DID I grow up? This is the first time I've felt like all the tests and experiences of my life are all coming together. I read all of those pretty little phrases that insure and assure me that "it all happens for a reason" and "it will be worth the wait", but I've never felt like my path is leading somewhere, anywhere. I've wondered why I am me, how many personalities will I go through to find ME? I took a deep breath this evening and then I relaxed and I realized that I would be Rachel from now on. Today's the day! I have completed a journey in my own individuality. In this "personality search" I have been a daughter, a mother, a wife, a girlfriend. I have given and been selfish. I've had new experiences and went through "phases", all lessons learned.
Yesterday I was sad, thinking about all of my tears, my complaining, my insecurities and my personal faults. I grieved the hardships my loved ones and friends have suffered for my shortcomings. I even felt a very personal embarrassment for some of the "situations" I've involved myself in. I know that I have been going through a cleansing process for quite some time.

Now, I feel strong, independent, motivated, and most of all self-confident. I am so happy to be exactly where I am. The same loved ones and friends who held my hand, have lead me here. What a precious gift. I really mean it this time...
I am beautiful today.