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When you are looking at your life from scarcity, yeah, you're always going to feel insignificant and you're always going to feel like if you can fake the abundance, then other people will admire the abundance and then you will feel better about yourself. But since the opinions of strangers never actually going to reach you in your solar plexus, in your heart, like can't actually get to you, it's not going to do anything but make you feel more empty. I am not saying this to you to be cruel. I am saying this because I see it constantly and I think that the first step of getting out of it is understanding that your brain is doing something really human, right? Really human, really understandable. It is how you are wired. But just because you are wired for something doesn't mean that you can't unwire, that you can't rewire, and that you can't change the way that you think, the way that you feel and how your life expands. Hey guys, I'm Rachel Hollis, and this is the show where we talk about life, real life around here. We cover everything from habits and motivation to relationships, parenting, and what it looks like to build a life that you love. If you're trying to grow, heal, or just feel a little bit more like yourself, you're in the right place. Okay, here's what it is. Here's what I would say if I wasn't afraid of hurting your feelings. I have been doing this work for a decade. That's 10 years of coaching, having a podcast for nine of those years, writing books in personal development and doing the Rise conference and sitting across from women in every Season of Life all around the world. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the things that we struggle with, that we think about, that we're trying to navigate our way through, through. And I have noticed a pattern. And if I'm honest, I don't really talk about this pattern because I don't know how to talk about it without feeling like I'm being mean. But I'm also getting to this place in my life. I don't know if this is 40s or perimenopause, where I am just less worried about pleasing people. And I think that if I'm doing this work, that I need to be more honest about what I'm seeing. Because the whole point of this work and the podcast and you sitting here talking to me right now, the whole point of this is that I'm trying to gather a collection of ideas that might be impactful in your life. I'm trying to share the things that I am seeing or studying that I think if they resonate with you, have the real ability to change your life for the better. So all of those things combine to where we come to today, which is me with a little bit of tough love. And this isn't going to be for everybody, but I'm guessing that there are people who need to hear it, because you know what? I needed to hear it once upon a time, and I didn't have anybody to coach me or tough love me. So let me be that person for you today. The pattern that I see in so many women is not being honest with yourself. Now, I don't mean like, big, dramatic dishonesty. I'm not talking about lying to your boyfriend or stealing money from your boss. I am talking about this, like, almost invisible dishonesty of you telling yourself a story about your life so that you can feel more comfortable than what the truth is. I am talking about you performing your life, performing your life for an audience. So sometimes that audience is social media. Sometimes it's your family or your friends. Sometimes you are performing for yourself. But that audience and this thing that you're showing, this life that you're showing, has almost no relationship with what is actually happening in the real world. I mean, think about it. We all know versions of this in our life, right? Like there's Ted and Nancy, and they're so happy and everything's great, and you're so jealous of them. They seem like the perfect couple. And then the reality is, oh, my gosh, they're getting divorce. And it turns out Ted has been cheating on Nancy for the last decade and she didn't know. And the world's falling apart. It's so common for us to show something that is not real and is not true. And in my own life, if I go back a decade or two decades, there was this real disrupt, this real tension, this real cognitive dissonance between knowing in my spirit that something was not okay in my life. Actually many things not okay in my life, but not being able to identify what those things were. And so, man, I'm just gonna like keep on trucking. I'm gonna act the way I wanna feel, I'm gonna like keep reaching for positivity, I'm gonna keep looking for all of these things. And it wasn't until years later that I understand what I was feeling in my body and what my intuition was trying to scream at me. But because I was so focused on sort of what does it look like? I want my life to look like the best possible version that it can, that I wasn't exploring. Well, why doesn't it feel like that? I'm going to do this intensive like week long therapy this summer. And in order to do that you have to fill out like just a crap ton of paperwork. And in that paperwork then you have to do intake calls with the therapists who are there. And one of the questions they were asking me about was, they were like, hey, we see here that you've listed that you had vertigo for a year. Talk to us about that. Like vertigo for a year, what was that from? And they're asking the question more from the place of, you know, do you have some sort of medical thing we need to know about so you don't get dizzy and pass out when you're here? But I told the story of, for a full year of my life, I had extreme vertigo. I'm talking dizzy all of the time I'm talking, you stand up, you feel like you're going to fall over. I went to see every doctor. I had brain scans done. It was like the oldest story in the book. No matter where I went, nothing. Nobody could find anything wrong with me. It wasn't until I went and saw this like super woo woo, ponytail wearing, crystal rocking naturopath doctor, which like today I would have, you know, that's like my dream doctor. But back then 15 years ago or whenever this was, I was like so freaked out. And I sat down with this guy after suffering with it for a year and I talked for two hours straight. And the whole time I'm talking, he didn't Even look at me. He, like, looked off into the corner. Like he was, like, talking to his spirit guides or something. And I was talking, and he would. Every once in a while, he'd be like, ask me a question. I just keep telling him. And then all of a sudden, he's like, stop, stop, stop. I know what's wrong with you. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy, right? Because I've gone to see every doctor under the sun, and nobody knows what's wrong with me. And he was like, this is not a physical problem. This is an emotional problem. There is something going on with you that you are processing emotionally in your body, and it is making you feel dizzy. And he says, I'm not even sure if you're aware that every time you tell stories about this certain person, your hands are. Your hands are literally making the motion of being dizzy as you're talking about this experience. And I didn't even know that emotions could physically manifest in our body. This was so long ago. I didn't have that knowledge. And I swear to goodness, I think I wrote about this in girl, wash your face. Or maybe stop apologizing. But I swear that I went and got in my car, and it was like the vertigo that I had had for a year had dissipated by half. It wasn't gone completely, but just the knowledge that something was going on and that I was creating it was so powerful that I immediately started to get better. So that's what I want to do today. I want to challenge you to understand that you cannot fix what you refuse to face. You cannot change a story if you won't admit that you're telling yourself a story. And you cannot get somewhere new if you keep pretending that you already got there. Okay? And, like, I want you to have confidence, and I know that you have been told forever, like, fake it till you make it. Sometimes fake it till you make it is amazing as sort of a modality to learn how to move and act and breathe like future years. You. And sometimes it becomes a crutch, and you're so focused on faking it that you're not actually trying to make it. You just learned that if you fake it enough, everyone might believe it, and you might believe it, and then you don't have to do any real work. And I know that sounds harsh, and if I'm saying things to you that feel triggering, turn this episode off, you don't have to listen. You don't have to listen to me. But if you know in your heart that you need a little Tough love. Or maybe you got someone in your life that probably needs a little tough love, then let's get into it. This conversation is coming from a place of so much respect for you. This is coming from a deep belief that I have that you are capable of more. But this is also coming from 10 years of watching the same thing happen over and over again. You have to know, if you think about it, of how many women have come to a RISE conference, or how many millions of people have listened to this podcast, or how many millions of people have bought my books. You have to understand, right, that there are lots of people in that mix who have gone on to do incredible things and change their life. And there's also a lot of people in that mix who just keep coming back for more and more and more and nothing changes. So I have decided that the kindest thing that I can do right now, which is something I have never done around this topic, is just tell you the truth, Just tell you what I really think and how I think that you can recognize this if you're doing it within yourself or in a certain area of your life. And if you do recognize it in yourself, let's figure out what you're going to do about that. So today's topic is around self deception. And it is not really something I've seen a lot on social media and it's not something I've seen a lot in books because it's not a topic that anyone wants to own up to. Nobody wants to admit that they're lying to themselves. There's so many layers wrapped up in that. But the work that we are doing in our Deep Dive episodes here on the show and the work that we've done in coaching has all been around this topic lately. Of the stories that we tell ourselves and the way that we self sabotage because of those stories. And so that, I think, is what brought this to my mind. And we have to start with this truth. We all do this to some extent. We all lie to ourselves to some extent. It is not a character flaw. It's, you know, a feature of being a human. It is something that your brain does, and it does it on purpose for reasons that made a ton of sense at some point in human history. I looked this up. There are researchers at Harvard, Yale and Duke, and they have spent years studying this exact thing. And what they found was that humans have an extraordinary ability to take their own bad behavior and their own failures and reframe them as evidence of something positive about themselves. Okay, like sit with that For a second. In one of the studies, participants were given the opportunity to cheat on a test. Okay, so imagine this. It was like the people who cheated, meaning that they made their scores higher than they actually were. Those people genuinely came to believe that the high score actually reflected their ability. So they weren't consciously lying. They actually believed it. And here's the kicker. When they took a second test without the ability to cheat, they expected to perform as well, if not better, because they had fully convinced themselves of the first score being real. So the researchers call this a revival of self deception, meaning that even after people were confronted with evidence that they weren't as capable as they thought, they remained just as susceptible to doing it all over again the next time. Your brain is not trying to hurt you, your brain is trying to protect you. Self deception evolves, at least to some degree, for us to help maintain the confidence we needed to survive. Right? The problem is that it works so well and is usually invisible that it can keep you stuck in a story that has nothing to do with reality for years, for decades. You know how you slice up an apple for the kids and then like 10 minutes later, because they're little and they didn't eat it, the apple's now brown and now they won't eat it because they think there's something wrong with it? That is not the case with Opal apples. These bright yellow beauties stay naturally crisp and non browning. No preservatives, no tricks, just nature dry doing its thing. They're also packed with the good stuff. Fiber, vitamin C, antioxidants, everything you'd want from a wholesome, real fruit snack that fuels your day. Guys, they're sweet, they're crisp, they're juicy, they're refreshing. It's the perfect apple. And I'm a little bit partial. My grandma's name was Opal, so I feel like anything with her name on it is always going to be good for me. You can find Opal apples in the produce section of your favorite grocery store or on instacart.com Visit Opal Apples to learn more. Here's what I think about in my own life, and I feel like he would be okay with me saying this, but I'm not going to say which one of my sons does this, but honestly, if you have heard me talk about my kids, you're gonna know. So one of my sons, from the time he was like, 12, every single time he would pass a mirror, he would flex. He would flex in the mirror. Actually, I'll just tell you, it's Sawyer. There's no way you don't know it's Sawyer. And he'll laugh when I tell him later that I told this story. So from the time Sawyer was little, he's an athlete. He's played sports his whole life. Every single time he'd walk in front of the mirror, he would flex in the mirror. It was like a big thing. It was. It's so. I wish I had footage of the hundreds of times that Sora would just be walking along, minding his own business, and then he would see his reflection, and it just. It was like an immediate thing. He had to turn. He had to, like, flex in the mirror. And the really weird thing that I started to notice this was that I could tell that what Sawyer saw in the mirror was different than his actual physique. Okay, so when Sawyer was younger, he was not in shape at all. As much as he was an athlete, he was not in shape at all. His diet was abysmal. Of all my kids, he is the one that loves junk food the most. Candy, chips. He would lean all the way in. He would eat everything. And he did not have a body that reflected the way that he looked in the mirror. Now, on the one hand, as his mama, that's awesome because it means my kid has, like, total self confidence in who he is. The problem was that I started to get concerned that he was like, clearly. He'd be like, oh, look at my arms, look at my muscles. Look at this body, whatever. But he was eating worse and worse. He started to get acne. He started to gain weight in a way as. As the kid. Like we always say, Jackson and Ford got their dad's body, Sawyer got mine. Meaning you're gonna look at a cupcake, you're gonna gain 10 pounds. Like, we just. We can put on muscle in a way that they can't, but we gain weight so easily. So I just was like, oh, my God. I'm looking at my younger self, and I can tell that he has a disconnect with what is really going on with his body and what he's doing when he's looking in the mirror. And he would be, like, confused about things. When he was in middle school, he'd be like, oh, my pants don't fit anymore. I don't know what's going on. I think it shrunk. And it was this really weird thing, like, how do I explain to my kid, like, that he can't see his body realistically? And should I even do it? Like, is it better for him. If he just believes that he looks like Adonis. Like, if he has that confidence, great. But as time went on, I was like, this is really going to lead somewhere bad. Because body dysmorphia, one way or the other means that you do not see your body clearly. And he was going more and more in the direction of, like, I can eat anything. My metabolism's so fast. And it was, like, just, like, completely inaccurate as he started to get older, when he got where he was going to go into high school, and he started to be confused. Like, I don't understand why I get so winded. I understand why I can't, you know, do this. It was like, okay, I gotta. We gotta be real. Like, mama's gotta be real with you. We have to talk about what's really going on. And the way that I did that. I was like, let's just, you know, let's. Let's take account. And I don't know if y' all have ever heard me talk about our family. Like, me, Kez, Jackson and Sawyer have done this thing for a few years called Body Beautiful. We do it during the summertime. We're super nerds, but we all get really into, like, strength training and going on runs, and we, like, sort of compete against each other, and we do this thing every single summer. Body Beautiful started because I needed mostly Sawyer to understand, like, where his body was physically. Like, he's an athlete, so if he can't actually see, man, you don't have the conditioning that you need to sprint to first base or play basketball. If you don't understand how your body is. If you're disconnected from your body, it can't help you. So it was like a real thing. Like, well, should I just let this ride? Because he feels good about himself, but feeling good about himself was, like, leading to this disastrous place because he was making horrible choices for his body and he felt like there were no consequences. And I can say this now. He's 17. He'll be 18 this summer. His. Sorry, this is weird. Like, he's got a great body. He, like. He plays basketball, baseball. He runs. He strength trains. He looks really good. He's throwing faster baseballs than he ever has. He's catching 90 miles an hour. He's so pumped at how far he has come as an athlete. But I don't think that happens if we don't have a real honest look with him three, four years ago about where he was. Okay, so there's another layer of this that I think plays into what was Happening with Sawyer, if I'm being honest. And what I see happening with women in the community, it's about the quest for significance. And I don't know how to say that without sounding harsh, but significance is a. It's like one of the major human desires in life. Truly, there's like, a handful of things that all human beings chase down. Significance is one of them, and there's nothing wrong with that unless the quest for significance begins to rule your life in ways that are not helpful. So, again, there's a psychologist at the University of Maryland who spent his career studying this thing. And yes, I did go look up a bunch of studies, because it's one thing for me to tell you that this is something I'm seeing, but I want you to know that this is, like, documented research. This happens to everybody. This doesn't mean that you are flawed. This means you are human. There's a psychologist at the University of Maryland who spent his career studying this thing. And it's the idea that every single human has a deep and fundamental need to feel like they matter. Okay? To feel like they are somebody, to feel like their life has meaning and weight and substance. That bit is not unsurprising. But here's the kicker. When that need is threatened, when something happens that makes you feel small or you feel like you failed or you feel like you don't matter, humans will naturally do almost anything to restore it. And that includes constructing a whole story about yourself or your life so that what exists on paper is what matters most. And, guys, this has never been easier since the invention of social media in 2011, when Instagram became a thing and this got more and more and more popular. It has never been easier to fake a happy life, to pretend that it's okay, and then wonder why you feel less meaning in your life. Well, wait, I just posted this reel, and it did really well. And, like, everybody liked it. And, wow, I'm doing this thing, but I still don't feel good on the inside. So the research of this psychologist showed that this need is so powerful, the need to feel significant and the threat of not meeting it is so uncomfortable that people will pursue significance through all kinds of extreme behavior before they will sit with the discomfort of being honest that they're not where they want to be. They will do everything but be honest about what is happening in their life. And girls, boys, I know there's, like, two of you. I have done this. Like, we all have done this thing where you're like, no, no, I'll look Over here. No, like, I'll work harder. I'll do this. I'll, you know, go love bomb this person over here. Like, I'll show what a good person I am so that I don't have to feel the feelings of not being where I want to be. In the most plain language. It is more painful for people to say that they are not where they want to be and that they don't know why than it is to construct a story, to post about that story, to talk about that story, to perform that story that makes them look and feel like they are on their way. Oh, it's so brutal. Because I talk a lot about this idea of future self and acting as if you are future self. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about embodying the energy of your ideal person or wearing clothes as if you are the ideal person. I am talking about just absolutely BSing that things are better than they are. Have you ever seen those pictures? They often, like, will go viral. Kardashians did this really famously, probably still do, where they would photoshop pictures that makes them look like they have a completely different body than they do or there was one. I went to a music festival like a year or two ago and it was a smaller artist, but it was someone who was like on their way up and she was performing, let's say it was like acl, it was something really cool. And she was performing on one of the stages and they got a shot of her from behind. You know that shot of like, you're on stage and there's your fans and they're all like cheering for you. But then someone realized that the shot that they had used AI and they had just like doubled, tripled, quadrupled, the same small group of people over and over and over to make it look like she had this like packed stadium. It's so easy to do that thing rather than face that you thought that you were going to have 10,000 people show up to your show and only 500 came. And can I just like give you a little flip on that really quickly? We're missing the blessing when we're trying to show that there are 10,000 people in the audience. Healthy living is built on everyday habits. And one of my favorites that I have been harping on for about a decade is hydration. It's so stinking important, you guys, and not just drinking enough water, but making sure the water you're drinking is safe. With Aquasana filters, you get healthier, odor free Water that tastes amazing. I told you guys that I brought the on the counter Aquasana filter out into my new office. We are out in the country now, so we're on well water, which is great, but I also just want to make sure that it's clean. Aquasana's advanced filtration removes harmful contaminants while preserving the beneficial minerals. So every sip supports better hydration. Visit aquasana.com and use promo code RAIN for up to 50% off select systems. That's a Q, U A S A N A.com promo code R A C, H. Aquasana. Healthy living starts with healthy water. I saw this video the other day on Instagram where this guy. It was actually really sweet. And I knew the. I wish I knew the creator's name, but it was. He had made this video about thinking about his childhood self. And it was like, okay, if you take this marker, then you get to hang out with your childhood self for, like, two hours. And he sort of flashed back to his younger self, and he was like, I'm gonna be a millionaire and I'm gonna be an astronaut, and I'm gonna have a mansion, and I'm gonna just, like, all the things, like, a little boy thinks. And his future self was like, I don't know. I don't know if I want to meet my childhood self because I'm afraid of what he'll think of me. And it's, like, so brutal. And he ends up doing it in this, like, made up, imaginary scenario. He ends up having his childhood self come, and it's the guy playing his childhood self. And he's like, hey, man. Like, look, I know that you're probably disappointed because we didn't. And the little boy version of. He's like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. You're grown up. You have a beard. Oh, my gosh. This is amazing. We have a beard. And then he's like, yeah, I do have a beard. But, like, I just want to let you know that, like, you know, I never got that mansion. Little boy, he's like, is this your. Is this our apartment? We have our own apartment. This is so sick. And he's like, yeah, yeah, we have our own apartment. And then the little boy's like, oh, my. Do you know how to drive? Do we know how to drive? And he's like, yeah, I know how to drive. And he's like, oh, my God, could we go for a drive? And it's basically like him beating himself up to his younger self about all the dreams that he had that he didn't accomplish. And as he spends a couple hours with his childhood self realizing, oh my God, I'm living a life my childhood self would think was so cool. Because you're not seeing your life from the perspective of your 11 year old self, you're seeing your life from your 38 year old self. Assuming your 11 year old self would be disappointed because your 38 year old self is disappointed. When in reality you're missing the blessing. That person who was like, oh, I need, you know, more people in my audience as I'm performing. Okay, well the flip of that is, holy crap, you're performing at acl. But you're missing that. Like you're, you're seeing the wrong thing. You're seeing what's lacking instead of what you have. When you are looking at your life from scarcity, yeah, you're always going to feel insignificant and you're always going to feel like if you can fake the abundance, then other people will admire the abundance and then you will feel better about yourself. But since the opinions of strangers never actually gonna reach you in your solar plexus, in your heart, like can't actually get to you, it's not gonna do anything but make you feel more empty. I am not saying this to you to be cruel. I am saying this because I see it constantly. And I think that the first step of getting out of it is understanding that your brain is doing something really human, right? Really human, really understandable. It is how you are wired. But just because you are wired for something doesn't mean that you can't unwire, that you can't rewire, and that you can't change the way that you think, the way that you feel and how your life expands. Okay, so let's talk about what this looks like and the three types of lying to yourself and self deception that I see most often here. Because self deception is one of those things that sounds obvious in the sort of abstract way, but it's pretty hard, I think, to see it when it plays out in you. And as I'm going through these, notice if any of these land with you. Notice if any of these make you feel sort of uncomfortable and like a little alarm goes off somewhere. Just because you might have this in one area of your life doesn't mean that you're this ogre and you're lying to everybody. And like, no, we can have this in certain segments of our lives and our willingness to face that means our whole life is going to get better. The first kind of lying to ourselves that I see is mistaking performance of growth for actual growth. Girls, this is a big one. This is like when you sign up for the half marathon and you've never really done a health thing before, and you make this big deal on social media that you signed up for the half marathon and everybody celebrates you. And oh, my gosh, Amy, this is so amazing. We're so proud of you. And you have not literally not walked one step, let alone run. You've, like, literally done nothing. But you just got celebrated for growing, but you didn't actually grow. Now I get it. You were excited, you did something brave and scary, and you wanted to put it out there. I don't shame you for that at all. I've done that. But the problem is that the celebration that you got tricked your brain, you were like, oh, I got the dopamine rush, and I didn't have to do anything to get it. So another version of this is like personal development junkies. This is a thing. This is a thing. It's like you have read every course, you've gone to every personal development conference, you've read all the books, you follow all the accounts, you can talk about personal development with the best of them. You got all the ideas, you know all the things, but you have not actually changed your life in a meaningful way in years. I know that someone just felt that. I know someone just felt that because I'm afraid to say that out loud, because you're not supposed to say that out loud. The personal development industry would love for you to keep buying the books, and they would love for you to keep going to the conferences, and they would love for you to stay here forever. When I started coaching this year, when we started that up again, I said it over and over and over. The goal is not to have you staying coaching. The goal is for you to graduate and feel like you don't need this anymore. And in fact, I was so committed to that idea that I closed the coaching cohort, meaning if you are not in coaching, you can't get into it anymore. And it's a 90 day program, and when the 90 days is up, the cohort is done. And that is very intentional. It has to be, guys. It has to be. You are not supposed to stay in this space. You are supposed to graduate and evolve and, like, go apply the things that you have learned. But if you stay and you keep doing the same thing over and over, but you don't really see your life changing, you have confused the activity of consuming growth content with the work of growing. I want to say that one more time. There is a big difference between you consuming personal growth content and you doing work in your real life that helps you to grow and evolve. You know, in the movie Eat Pray Love or the book Eat Pray Love, but let's go movie version because it's got Julia Roberts doing all the things and she, you know, she goes to Bali and she's meditating and then she's eating pasta in Italy and she's praying in the ashram. And it looks like transformation, right? What she's doing, it looks like healing. But if you watch closely, Julia spends the majority of the film in the exact same emotional patterns she started with, right? She's falling too fast. She loses herself in relationships. She runs from discomfort. The scenery changes, but she doesn't change. And I freaking love Liz Gilbert. I've interviewed her here on the show. I love the book, I love the film and I use it as an example because I think a lot of people are living in their version of that story, right? They are changing the scenery, they're buying something new. They get a new planner, they start a new morning routine. It's a different coach, it's a different program. It's. I'm gonna focus on my business. It's. I'm gonna try intermittent fasting. They're trying, but they are not getting real lasting results. Because real and lasting results looks like doing the hard, uncomfortable, slow, boring work. I told you earlier, I'm going to do a week long inner child deal with childhood trauma. Full week immersion therapy. No access to my family, no phone, no technology, nothing for a full week. I'm 43. And you have to know that at this point, I have done every freaking kind of therapy you can imagine. I have done plant medicine, I have done yoga, I have done breath work, I have done childhood therapy, inner trauma. I've talked to shamans, I've had, you know, Reiki, I've had energy work, psychics, like girls. I have done all the things. And here I am going to do a week of childhood trauma therapy. And this is not like, you know, in la, how they have those, like bougie, you know, you're gonna go stay at a five star resort and then meet with a therapist. This is not that. This is like not cute, okay? But it's. There's stuff in me and I don't wanna go through the rest of my life dealing with it. So I'm gonna go do some really hard work to process this stuff. And try and get it out and try and learn new techniques. That doesn't feel good. And I won't be posting about that on Social. That is not something to show off to other people. That's like the real honest hard work. And here's the thing. The real honest hard work doesn't feel good when you're in it doing real work. Whether that's on yourself, your psyche, your mindset, your business, your marriage, whatever, it feels good later. It feels good once you're on the other side. It doesn't feel good when you're in it. But that is one way that you can tell if you are doing real work. Performance of growth gives you a feeling that you are making progress without actually requiring any progress from you. Your brain's clever, right? So it will happily trade public perception of growth than you actually doing real work. That's hard. Okay? The second way that I see people lying to themselves is telling a story about what's coming instead of dealing with what's here. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. This one is so big. Telling yourself a story about what's coming instead of dealing with. With what is here. This is the woman who is always about to do something, right? She's about to launch the business. The book is almost done. The relationship is almost where it needs to be, right? Like, he know he's improved so much. Like, we're gonna. It's gonna be great as soon as he, you know, can just get out of prison. Like, then it's gonna be really. She's always three months from her breakthrough. Okay, There is a version of this in Aesop's Fables, like the Ant and the Grasshopper. You guys remember that story from when we were little? The grasshopper spends all summer long and he's like singing and he's playing and he keeps telling himself that he's going to prepare for winter. And while he's like hanging out and having the best time, the ants keep working. The ants go marching one by one, you know, and they're working all summer. And every time they see the grasshopper, he's like, well, you guys are lame. Like, why are you working so hard? And they're like, we gotta prepare for winter. And he's like, winter schminter. Then winter comes and y' all know how it ends. It's a fable. This is not a Disney movie. So in this fable, the grasshopper es muerto, right? He's done. The grasshopper's self deception is not that he didn't know that winter was coming. He knew winter was coming. The lie that he told himself was to keep constructing reasons why today wasn't the day to prepare for winter. Do you keep constructing reasons for why you don't actually have to get real yet, right? Eventually, someday. These are some of the most expensive words in the English language. Every single time that you're like, well, someday. Well, like at some point or eventually, we'll get around. Every time you do that, you make a trade. You trade your real future results for immediate emotional discomfort. You. You trade being the person of your dreams, being someone you could actually admire, being someone you actually feel proud of, instead of someone that you're pretending to be proud of. You trade that for current comfort. And those trades, they compound, the longer you make it, the longer you keep lying to yourself, the harder it gets to start. The third flavor of lying to yourself, the third sort of self deception mechanism, is the most painful one to name. And it's this. Performing a version of your life for an audience. But the version of your life that you're performing has nothing to do with how you actually are. Nothing. And social media has made this so much easier. And now AI, oh my God, we're so screwed. AI can make you look like you're, you know, having a picnic on the top of the Eiffel Tower, like, now. You really, truly don't need to do anything. Have you guys ever seen the movie Ready Player One? Or read the books? I get super freaked out that that is very likely our future. And I'm like, joking, but I'm not joking. Meaning the second that virtual reality, like, gets to. I don't even know what level where you can sort of plug your kids where, where our kids or our grandkids can kind of plug themselves into. Where they get to be whoever they want to be that is completely disconnected from who they actually are. We're toast. We are toast as a human species. I think we got a minute. You know, I think you and I, I don't know what's gonna. I'm not even lying. I really don't know what's gonna happen to our kids or their kids. I don't know what kind of future they have. But you and I, I think we can sort of ride this out. And if we can ride this out for the next, you know, however many years, 40 years, let's hope 50 years we got in us. As much as things will continue to change, it still looks like wanting our real lives to feel good. And your real life cannot feel good if it's all just a big facade for social media. We have this entire infrastructure now that is all about broadcasting a highlight reel. And you get real time, positive feedback anytime you do post the highlight reel. And then it's easy to convince yourself that the highlight reel is the whole story. I. I saw this post a couple years ago where this guy had come out the other side of, like, really severe depression, and he posted a reel that was like, check on your friends. And what it was was him resharing a video from, like, three years prior when he was really severely depressed. And he made this reel and he was like, doing a dance on TikTok. He was like, in his early 20s. Doing a dance on TikTok looked fantastic. Like, dancing, happy, joyful. He said an hour after I posted this video, I considered taking. He considered taking his life. He's like, this was the fakest video. I was at my lowest point, but I thought that if I could make a video where I seemed happy, then I would be happy. And maybe you think I'm being too extreme in this example, but I think we all have a version of that. I will go whole weeks, I've gone whole months without posting on social because a long time ago, I felt like I had to. Had to post, had to show up, had to do the thing or this whole business that I've built and all of this work, it all, like, come crashing down. And, like, I just had this completely false idea that I had to show up, show up, show up, show up. To the point that, like, you have nothing left to give creatively because you've just like, every freaking day for a decade have been creating content. And I got to this place, particularly after I got divorced, where I was like, f this, like, no, no way. If it all comes crumbling down because I refuse to, like, do a dance on social media, that's okay. Like, because I just can't. I can't. When you don't feel like it, when it doesn't feel good, when you have nothing to say that's real and true and human. We have seasons. We have summers, right? And springs where we want to, like, show things off and look at this creation I made. But then you're also going to have winters where you need to be planted in the ground and growing and changing. I point this one out because this one's the dangerous one. It can make you seem like your business is doing better than it is. It can make it seem like you have a whole community around you when you don't. It can make it Seem all of these things that allow you to not actually be real with what it is. I'm not saying don't share your life, but understand that you can trick your brain into thinking that it's something it's not. And then you're like, well, wait, where is this for me? Where is that feeling of joy? Where is this, like contentment in my life? Where is this health and vibrancy? Where is it? Because the world thinks it's there, but it isn't. I think you get it. I think we've talked about the ways that we lie to ourselves and you have at least some understanding of how this is unhealthy for you and how it actually gives you the opposite of what you want, which is real change, real good feelings, real increased revenue in your business, real joy in your family, like real stuff. Let's talk about the way through. I have spent a lot, like 45 minutes being so real about something that's hard. And I want to be equally honest about what it looks like to get out of this and tell you truthfully that it's not easy because just like you want to stay in the comfort zone in some areas of your life, it is easier to continue on this path. And I have no control. That is what I've learned after 10 years of doing this. You don't need a therapist to analyze my life and be like, well, you couldn't help the women in your family, so then you created this whole online family and then you tried to help those women instead. I'll go work through this at my week long therapy session. But my point in saying that is I don't know if this will help. I honestly don't know. I don't know if this episode will do anything. I don't know if people who have been inside of self deception for a long time, if they can even be self aware enough to know that this is happening. But on the chance that even one of you had like a light bulb moment, let's talk about what it looks like to get through this. The great news is that being honest with yourself is not as catastrophic as your brain is telling you it will be. Okay? It is not as catastrophic. I have had so many ego deaths in my life, particularly over the last decade. If you're not familiar with an ego death, look it up. It's brutal. But I've had so many ego deaths in the last 10 years. And in a lot of ways, being honest with yourself when you've been deceiving yourself is a massive ego Death. It is you being willing to face that you are not who your ego told you you were. And that is so freaking uncomfortable. Especially when you sort of told yourself that it was better than it was. Here's something that'll trip you out. Maybe not. I don't know. But this is just the truth. And I'm into the truth. So many people ask me about. Girl, wash your face. Why did girl, wash your face? How did you do that? Girl, wash your face came out in 2018, I think at this point, has sold like, six and a half million copies. Like, completely changed my life, can change my family's life. Just that kind of success is not something you can plan for. But everyone was like, how'd you do this? How'd you do this? And I'm not gonna lie for a long time when that happened, I was like, oh, my God, I am a. I'm like, the best writer. Girl, wash your face. Success happened because I'm a really good writer, and I know how to communicate with women. And then I was like, well, maybe girl, wash your face. Success happened because, like, divine ordinance, like, I was supposed to write about these things, and the universe let it. And then I'm like, well, maybe it was this. And you do. You can't not grapple with how in the world something like that happens. I'm 43. It's been. Let's see, I wrote that in 2018. We're in 2026, so, you know, it's been eight years. I think it was an absolute. Just right place, right time, full on luck. I do. I. I really do. I hope to God that I continue to become a better and better writer. I got a lot of books in me. I got a lot of stories to tell. I want to be better. That was, I think, right place, right time. I think I had an idea universe, pass one on down. And I had been communicating with women, and I sort of knew how to tell a funny story. And I wasn't afraid to be vulner vulnerable and tell hard truths. And that was something that wasn't popular then. And it just worked. And I don't know how it worked, and I don't know why it worked, but I think it was predominantly luck. And nobody wants to hear that because it's like, well, if it's luck, then how do I, like, repeat this thing? Yeah, girl, same. Because what I find so ironic to me as a writer is that you're always hoping that your next book is going to get better and better. And I am telling you that my last book. I wrote a book last year called what if youf Are the answer. It was 27 questions that helped you get in touch with your intuition and know yourself better and, like, figure out your life. I am telling you right now that I am a better writer today than 2017 Rachel could have dreamed of being. And I'm telling you that what if you are the answer is written 10 times better than girl, wash your face. It's better. It's more insightful. It's, like, real. It's all these things. And didn't even touch the hem of the garment in terms of sales. Like, it didn't even get close. And you can get really bummed out about that. I mean, I still am so grateful for my readership, and I'm so grateful for my career as an author. I cannot replicate what the other book did. I do not have the ability. When I had to hold space for that. My God, was that an ego death? And it was four years between one book and the next. I didn't want to write another book because I didn't know how to replicate success at that level. And then I finally just had to accept, oh, babe, that wasn't you. That wasn't your talent. That wasn't your skill. That was just this fluke and praise God and thank you, Jesus, but that's not something that you can maybe do again. So what you get to decide, by the way, as a creative is like, is it worth it? Would you do this thing? Even if it can't be that? But see, in my willingness to be honest about, like, oh, dang, I don't know if I'll ever be that successful again. That was brutal for me. Brutal. But in that came the truth. Hell, yeah. I am a writer, little girl. Rach dreamed of being an author. Now I am an author. I'm gonna keep writing books, and maybe more people will like them, maybe less people will like them. That's not the point. But I can't get to that truth if I can't be honest with myself. Here's some steps to getting real, to getting honest. You need a reality check from someone who loves you but will hold you accountable. Okay? This is not your best friend. This is not your yes man. This is not the person who tells you that everything you do is amazing. This is not your mom who believes that you are perfect and the sun shines right out of your butt. Okay? This is someone in your life, like a therapist, maybe a mentor, if you have one, or a friend who's further along in the thing that you're trying to do, who will tell you the truth, even if it's uncomfortable? Ask that person what they see when they look at your situation. Be like, can you please just, like, be my second set of eyes? What am I not seeing? Where do you think I am not being honest with myself? And this is a really hard part, but you have to actually listen to what they say. You have to listen to what they say without getting defensive. Because the second that you get defensive, you miss the message. Now, you don't have to take on board everything they tell you. You have the ability to choose what you want to choose and to decide if that, you know, does that resonate with me or no, I don't think. I think they're projecting. That's, like, not my thing. But somewhere in there is some truths that you need to hear. The second thing that you can do is an audit. Okay, Pull up your calendar for the last 90 days. Pull up your bank statement. Pull up the pictures in your phone of the last three months or the last six months. And look at where your time actually went. Look at where your money actually went, not where you planned for it to go and not where you intended for it to go. Where did it actually go? Because the two things that are the greatest determination of your real priorities in life are your calendar and your bank account. Period. They will tell you the truth. When you can't see the truth, they will tell you the truth. More than journaling or intention setting, those are your receipts, and your receipts do not lie. If you tell yourself, you know, I'm so healthy and I'm making all the right moves, I don't get it. I don't understand why I can't lose this weight. And then you look at your bank statement, you're like, oh, gosh, I eat out four times a week. 0% chance you're eating out and staying on your nutritional plan. See, if the story that you are telling yourself about yourself matches the evidence, if it matches, great. But if there is, like, a significant gap between the story and the receipts, that gap is information. And that gap is where you need to do the work. My last thing that you can do to be more honest with yourself is start saying the true thing out loud. This sounds so embarrassingly simple. It's also one of the hardest things a person can do. There is something that happens when you say the true thing out loud, even just to yourself, alone or in your car. When you say the truth thing out loud, it's different than just Thinking about it. It. And when you say it, you make it real. You stop being able to pretend that you don't know what the truth is. And that moment of not being able to pretend anymore is actually the beginning of changing your life. It might sound like, okay, I have been saying that I am going to do this for two years and I haven't started. Or it might sound like saying, you know what? I'm not okay. Or I don't know what I'm doing and I've been pretending that I do. Whatever the true thing is for you, say it out loud. Say it to yourself, to someone you trust, to God, to the universe. Whatever it is, just say it. Because you cannot navigate away from a location that you refuse to admit that you are standing in. All right? The GPS only works if you let it know where you actually are. Okay, I want to end this conversation by saying something that I really, truly want you to hear. If you have found in today's conversation that you have been lying to yourself, it does not mean that you're a liar. It means you're human, okay? It means you have a brain that is doing what brains do, which is trying to protect you from pain and trying to maintain your sense of worth in a world that can be really freaking hard. Right? You are not bad for having done this. And you are not broken. And you are not uniquely messed up. Some special messed up unicorn, snowflake. You're not. You're not special in the fact that you mess up. Right? It's one of the most well documented things in all of psychology. We all do it. We do it in lots of different ways and to various degrees. What I am asking you to do today is just choose to do it a little less. Okay? Choose one area of your life. Look at that one area of your life and just ask yourself what is true, not what is comfortable. Not what I would prefer, not what I wish would happen. What is actually true. Choose to let the real story of your life be the one that you're working on. So when you come into coaching, we have this thing where you take a modality test, you take an assessment that tells you what to work on first. And there's so many people in the community who had to take it two or three times because they were having a hard time putting what was true instead of what they wished was true. And you knowing what you wish was true is incredible. It means you know where you want to get to, but you're never going to get there if you won't first. Admit where you are and you deserve to get somewhere. And you can. But you've got to be honest about what it is. It actually is. Okay guys, I hope that this conversation was helpful and I hope if you know someone that needs it, you'll share it with them too. I will be back soon with more conversations. Until then, as always, I love you and I'm rooting for you. The rachel hollis podcast is produced by me, rachel hollis. It's edited by andrew weller and jack noble. So good, so good, so good.