The Liar in Your Life: A Review of a Book that Explores Life, Lying and Reality

The Liar in Your Life The Way to Truthful Relationships, by Robert Feldman, ISBN 978-1-60026-653-1, a HachetteAudio book, is a new look at life, lying and the reality that we all lie.

Even complements sometimes have a lie at their core and we fool ourselves if we think complements-- either that we give or receive--are always, even usually, based on truth and are given for altruistic purposes. Though complements may be given to spare ourselves, the other person or both of us embarrassment, such complements still involve lying rather than truth. Such complements may be a subtle, or not so subtle, form of enticement or manipulation.

We often soften truth when we fear truth might hurt in some way. Feldman shows from his research for The Liar in Your Life, though lying is certainly not always malicious, lying always has consequences, many often negative ones.

Lying, as Feldman points out in his HachetteAudio book The Liar in Your Life, isn't just practiced by bad or evil people. Lying is something we all do-though we like to think of ourselves as truthful. Unlike what is implied in shows like Lie to Me (which I really like), lying is not always that easy to discern and scientific analysis has shown that experts in discerning lying are often not that much better at discerning lies from truth than a normal person.

Feldman also takes issue with lie detection. Feldman points out that all a lie detector proves is that the subject is stressed. It doesn't prove that person is lying. He/she might just be nervous about taking the test. In fact, The Liar in Your Life reveals that many accomplished liars aren't phased by lie detectors, are not nervous, do not sweat and do not give negative readings even when blatantly lying. Whereas many who are stressed while taking the test, but telling the truth, give readings declaring they are lying.

Surprising, lying is a human factor. When children become capable of lying to get out of a situation, it shows not that they are becoming evil, but that they are maturing to a new level of understanding. Feldman in The Liar in Your Life proposes that lying isn't just shaped by environment, though that plays an important factor, lying is in our very DNA.. Human beings are not naturally good. We are born to lie.

While this has been the Biblical view, Feldman in The Liar in Your Life dismisses the Christian point of view even though it is consistent with his findings. He instead attaches an evolutionary explanation about instinct and self-preservation. Whatever the cause, Feldman's audiobook The Liar in Your Life makes a clear case that we all use lying to our advantage.

Environment also plays a part. Whether our lying is to help or hurt others depends a lot on what those around us do. Do our parent, family or friends speak truth or do they use lying to hurt us or others, to break the law, or to manipulate in some way? If so, we may well use lying for these same reasons. If we're around those who use lying so as not to embarrass or hurt, we'll most likely use lying in that fashion.

Often we use lying and self-deception to preserve our self image. We like to hear good things and often buy into lies not because we're totally deceived by the lies of another, but because we are deceiving ourselves.

The Internet has made deception easy since we often don't really know who we're talking to or if what they say about themselves is true. As Feldman says in The Liar in Your Life, Avatars make truth even more difficult to discern.

However, we can't function without some degree of truth and trust. Feldman in The Liar in Your Life says the challenge is in how we deal with the pervasive lying in ourselves and in those around us. We need to recognize that all lying, even well-meaning lies, has at its core a certain amount of victimization and harm as well as manipulation. This alone should make us think twice about lying when the truth may serve us better.

Feldman in The Liar in Your Life says in order to protect ourselves from the lies around us we need to be vigilant and not take things at face value. We also need to consider whether lying is worth our effort. Some lies are not worth digging into, they are just passing idioms like the response, "I'm fine." How often is this really the truth?

We need to learn to assess what is said and done and not assume everything or everyone speaks truth. Ask ourself, do they have reason to lie? Why? Of course, if we ask for truth, we need to learn to accept it and not get all bent out of shape when what we hear isn't what we wanted to hear. And we wonder why lying complements are easier than unvarnished truth?

In The Liar in Your Life, Feldman points out that we need to discern the difference between truthful encouragements that lift up and getting our support from false complements that eventually let us down.

Feldman in The Liar in Your Life says that betrayal of trust through lying causes as much harm as war trauma. Feldman also says we can recover from from such betrayal but it takes time, and truth and no lying. Brick by brick we can rebuild trust on truth. Trust and truth are the true foundations of any healthy relationship.

As Feldman says in his HachetteAudio book The Liar in Your Life, lying may be in our DNA, but we don't have to use lying to manipulate others. We, as humans, can and do need to balance deception with truth and sensitivity.

As the Good Book says, "The truth shall set you free."