You know when you’ve promised someone you’re going to do something and then when the time comes to actually do it, you so totally do NOT want to do the something that you promised them you’d do? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.
I used to be the type of person that when that “something” came up, I’d talk myself out of doing it all day, and then make up some lame excuse (“ummm, my cat is sick? I need to put air in my tires? No – no wait – My toilet is overflowing!”) and fire off an email to the person I made the promise to and promptly not answer my phone all night out of fear that they’d call me and find out I was lying.
Sounds bad, I know, and to be honest, I used to be a lot worse. A whole heck of a lot worse. Like compulsive liar worse. Embarrassing fact about Eran: as a teenager, I worked at McDonald’s. On one particular occasion, I took someone’s shift for them. When the day of the shift came, I really didn’t feel like working. Instead, I called in and told the manager that a close friend of mine had gotten into a car accident and died.
And DIED.
OH MY GOD.
Had I actually started mentally killing off my friends, just because I didn’t want to go to work?!? What the heck was wrong with me?? And why did I even take the shift in the first place, especially when I knew I didn’t want to? When I think back on it now, I’m absolutely mortified.
So sometime in the recent past (I’m not even really sure when), I made a promise to myself that I was going to start being honest – with myself and with others. It just got too tough to keep up with the lies.
I’ve discovered that a big part of keeping this promise has actually been learning to listen to myself, and consequently, learning not to say “yes” when I mean really mean “no.” It’s not easy. I’m a people-pleaser by nature. My first instinct is to help people, and I very rarely consider my own time or my own needs before I automatically say “of course!” to anything and everything.
So this time, I am making a promise to do something for someone – but that someone is myself. And even if I so totally do NOT want to do it, I’m on to me. I’ve heard all the excuses before. The good news is that now, instead of mentally killing off my friends, I’m slowly killing off the compulsive liar within me. No more excuses. No more sick cats and clogged toilets. No more imaginary deaths. Time to buck up and just be honest.