Unintentional Lies

Increase Your Self-Awareness

A big part of Emotional Intelligence is self-awareness.  I have noticed that there are times when reality hits me too close to home and I find myself defending myself with spin-doctoring what I did - which turns out to be be only 1/2 true.

I did it this week...

I call this the Half Truth Ghosts - one of my 9 Emotalerts - emotional hauntings that interurpt heathy and honest living.

Here is the excerpt from my book on it:

Emotalert #1 - The Half-Truth Ghost - Learning to Believe the Actual Truth Sooner
In my years of coaching, I have noticed a great human skill - believing half-truths.  This is the ability to take a little piece of reality and embellish it to one's advantage - so much so that the real truth is hardly recognizable.
This is what I mean.  Something happens to us us - usually something we did not prefer, are surprised by, or would not have chosen for ourselves.  The precipitating events leading up to the presenting issues my be disconnected and haphazard or they may be strategic or manipulative.  In any case, we find ourselves in a situation we don't prefer.  We begin to cater to our internal victim mentality and make a nugget of truth the main Rock of Gibraltar of truth.  Soon enough, the real truth is taken over by a constructed truth, which may be more, a lie.  We trace the situation back to one or many events that happened to us and release ourselves from any fault and any contribution to the situation.  The half-truth becomes the whole truth and we turn ourselves almost entirely into victims rather than taking responsibility for our part.  We also neglect or forsake the opportunity to recognize what we can do with the situation, regardless of its precipitators.

Turning this ghost into an Emotalert involves admitting our tendency to look for someone or something else to blame for where we find ourselves.  There are times when we are victims, but even those times offer us some learning about ourselves, the world and how we will handle the union of both.
I had to learn to do this when it came to admitting that what happened to me in my upbringing, as well as things I did myself, were not good.  Some of them were actually bad - even heinous.  Even writing about them reignited the emotion as I had to admit those things really did take place and they really did/do affect me.  They also shaped me positively because they drove me to leave the past for a different present and a momentum-gaining future.  They are context now, but they are not dictators of my emotions.

From Chapter of 9 - Emotalerting - The Art of Managing The Moment
Available on Amazon or by contacting Dr Carlyle at drcarlylenaylor@gmail.com