Just how big a liar are you?

Mindset.

It’s a term that may be tossed around all over the place, but that doesn’t mean it’s not crucial to your success—or failure.  How you think and talk to yourself can propel you forward or keep you mired in frustration  and mediocrity.

You may be familiar with the concept of “the big lie.” It holds that people will tend to believe a colossal lie because they can’t imagine that anyone would have the gall to make that particular comment if it actually were untrue. Since obviously no one would tell such a huge lie, the statement must be “the truth.”

How many big lies do you tell yourself?

High achievers tend to downplay their achievements, and they use deceitful self-talk to do so. Are you guilty of telling yourself any of the following lies?

• If I’m not suffering, I must not deserve success.

This is one of my personal favorites. I’m guessing it stems from old religious teachings which equate suffering with worthiness.

Say you’re feeling good about what you’re doing to your business, and you’re feeling confident that you’ll reap the rewards in good time. If you find yourself starting to fret that you’re not doing enough / not working hard enough / simply are not enough, chances are you’re unconsciously telling yourself you don’t deserve to succeed unless you’re suffering. Maybe it’s time to read The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks, for some great tools you can use to stop “upper limiting” yourself.

• This is easy for me, so it must be easy for everyone, which means it’s nothing to brag about.

Talk about faulty logic.

So something is as easy for you as falling off the proverbial log? There’s a name for that something: A GIFT. Embrace what comes to you easily, because what’s easy for you is impossibly difficult for others—and you deserve to be compensated, both financially and emotionally, for using your gifts to serve others.

• Reaching out to help someone who needs my particular skills isn’t being helpful, it’s being pushy.

Wrong. Wrong. Really wrong.

Getting someone out of a jam is being helpful, even compassionate. What gives you the right to withhold your problem-solving skills from people who badly need them? Pushy doesn’t enter into it, unless you’re trying to sell someone a service they don’t need—and that’s a whole different situation.

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What other lies do you tell yourself to sabotage your success? And what techniques do you use to challenge those lies and allow yourself to step into your power and talents? Please share and help the rest of us leave the lies behind, too!

(By the ways, thanks to Alan Cleaver for posting his “biggest liar” image in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.)

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