“I don’t know which is worse, lying to my friends and family and how it makes me feel or lying to myself about how I feel. There are days when I don’t even know the truth from the lies. I lie constantly. About little things, things big…everything. I need help and support. I feel totally helpless. How do I stop lying?”

I understand how you feel. It’s painful because you lie to make people love you or love you more, but it only makes you unhappy. And others do not trust you! Because they know, even if they don’t tell you…

Follow these seven steps to stop lying

1) You can’t stop lying if you haven’t admitted to yourself that you have. Staying in a denial state of mind only prolongs your pain and reinforces behaviors that make you unhappy with yourself. Therefore – admit and accept responsibility.

2) Make a list of all the resources you already know that work for you. List strategies that have worked for you in the past, in all areas of your life, to achieve any type of goal. (For example: I stay motivated by listening to motivational tapes and reading books.)

3) Keep a list of your slips – the times you fell off the wagon. Ask yourself, “Hey, what happened? (For example: I felt insecure about my actions, so I lied because it made me feel better.) This exercise is important because learning happens when you start asking questions.

4) List the reasons why your lie did not solve your problem. Ask yourself: “What didn’t work here? Why not?” (Example: Lying didn’t make me feel better; in fact, it made me feel worse about myself later on.) If you can learn all you can from one lie, then the next lie won’t be as traumatic. Remember, it’s more important to think about progress than perfection. But past lies and behaviors are just information. Use it to correct and improve your present and your future. I read somewhere: “If life is worth living, it is worth recording.”

5) Invest in an expensive journal and start recording your actions. Record your reasons for lying. And start a dialogue with yourself.

6) Recording your actions makes you aware. And it is necessary to develop the abilities of consciousness. You may be too critical of yourself. It’s you? When you tried to stop lying for a day and failed, do you feel guilty? Do you replay negative images repeatedly in your mind? Remember: you are not your behavior. When you feel bad and find fault with yourself, you empower your habit of lying. The best solution is to become aware of the lie, disengage from it -because you are not your behavior- and record how it made you feel.

7) The next step is to become an effective risk taker, because progress in life will always involve risk. He had many fears and bad habits and knew that he had to take action.

For example, this is why I faced my fear of heights and Bungy jumped 110 meters from a bridge over the Zambezi River. What I have learned is to be in control of my destiny. And my destiny was limited by my fear. Not anymore! I (you) must be willing to become an actor. It’s not a reactor. Even if you think you can’t do it… just act as if you can, because from action comes action and from repeated action comes belief.

Are you willing to bungy jump on the habit of lying? Because you must be willing to risk failure. And if you’re prepared to take risks, you’ll let your habit of lying grow. Make a list of all the scary risks and face them. If you start doing these actions, you will control your mind instead of your mind controlling you. Not only will you break the habit of lying, but you can use these steps to stop any bad habit.