Achieve Happiness by Creating a Life Lie

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Categories: philosophy

Reality, when looked at truthfully, is quite depressing. We’re all doomed to tumultuous lives filled with toil and frustration. Most of us won’t live up to our potential. Most of our hopes and dreams will never be realized. Most of us will never become rich or famous or successful.

Just when you think a problem is solved, an uglier one replaces it. The cycle of desperation continues as our faculties decline. We lose our strength and beauty. We become shells of our former selves and eventually die.

Fortunately, thinking about the nasty truth can be averted with a well crafted Life Lie.

How? Luckily it’s easy. If you are relatively happy person, my guess is you already have one.

A Life Lie is a story we tell ourselves. A story we actually believe about our lives that lets us ignore reality and focus on a glorious future. Allow me to provide a background story.

I first learned about the Life Lie (in explicit terms) from reading a play; The Wild Duck by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The main character of The Wild Duck is a man named Hjalmar. By all accounts, Hjalmar is pathetic. His father was ruined by a shady business deal and he’s lived his entire life in shame. His poor family makes a living from a photography business. A business that his father’s arch enemy gave to him out of pity and that his wife runs for all practical purposes.

Useless old Hjalmar should be miserable, but in fact he’s quite the opposite. Despite his pathetic life, Hjalmar is happy because he’s created a beautiful Life Lie.

Hjalmar’s Life Lie is ingenious. He truly believes that he’s going to invent an incredible machine that will make his family wealthy and erase his shame. He doesn’t just tell himself this lie, he actually lives it. Each day he goes off on his own for a few hours, supposedly working on the invention.

What is he really doing? No one knows. It truth, it’s irrelevant. Each day he comes back in high spirits, believing he’s on the cusp of completing the invention and elevating his family.

This is the key to a great Life Life. You can’t just tell yourself a beautiful story. You really have to live the delusion.

After learning about Life Lies, I immediately identified with the concept. Despite myself, I tried to deny it.

I’m different, I thought. I’m no washed up old coot. All my hopes and dreams will come true. Or so I thought. Eventually I realized that it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is being happy, and a great Life Lie accomplishes that.

My Life Lie really isn’t that much different than Hjalmar’s. I believe that if I keep working hard, this blog will become incredibly popular or that I’ll come up with a great idea to make money online. Once I have the money problem taken care of, I’ll be free to indulge my passions for the rest of my life.

I don’t just tell myself this. Every day after work, I come home, boot up my personal computer, and start working on the next blog entry, Photoshop tutorial, redesign, or traffic building activity.

Let’s be real. Is my Life Lie really going to happen? Maybe. It’s not impossible, other people have done it, but success is far from certain. The odds are probably against it.

But that isn’t important. Believing a Life Lie gives my mind something to focus on. I can ignore the pain and uncertainty of life and work towards a goal. I sleep better at night because I know I’ve done my part. If it doesn’t happen, that’s fate.

Sometimes I lose my Life Lie. Reality sets in and it’s incredibly depressing. I feel my smallness, weakness, and the lack of control I have over my life. It’s almost unbearable. Fortunately, I always come up with a new Life Lie.

If you want to be happier, create a fantastic Life Lie for yourself. Don’t worry about what other people think. Convince yourself and start living it. If you’re already happy, keep living the lie.

If you lose faith in your Life Lie, don’t panic. Think about what really makes you happy, create a plan to achieve that happiness, and start working towards the plan. A Life Lie is merely a more accurate description of a life dream.

Thomas Jefferson said that the greater part of our happiness and suffering is caused, not by physical pain or pleasure, but by our hopes and fears. Knowing this, you can make yourself happy and avoid suffering.

By creating a beautiful Life Lie you can fill your life with hope and purpose. You can avert the paralyzing uncertainty of reality. You can live a life of ignorant bliss.

Even if your Life Lie isn’t real, your happiness is. In the end that’s all that matters.

Want to feel great every single week? NOW YOU CAN!

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  • Alissa

    Hi John,

    I loved this post. I do this routinely in my life, and, as you say, it keeps me happy when reality doesn’t measure up. Often our dreams do not measure up to what we imagined anyway (I have experienced this several times myself), so a “life lie” is as good as anything to work towards. Most people indulge in some form of this anyway, with statements such as “if I had enough time, I’d write a novel,” etc., when in fact they would probably never do so or would start and then give it up when they realized what it really involved.

  • http://www.Swallowbrook.com GREG ROBERT

    First line of the base post: Reality, when looked at truthfully, is quite depressing. When I read that again just now I realized that it encodes an impossibility. Reality can’t be depressing; reality is just what it is. “Depression” is a subjective response to how we perceive reality against our values, expectations, and desires. So the depression arises, presumably, out of a mismatch between our (very colored) perception of reality and our expectations. Since perceptions aren’t (objectively) real, and since they are, in a sense, ALWAYS a lie, what the heck, just mold them in a way that makes you happier.

    Why is it that what I just said, while logically true, is emotionally unsatisfying? Oh, right, because the logic part is reality and the emotional part is subjective and never the twain shall meet.

  • BillOGoods

    Greg, brilliant. I would say that “perceptions,” while not objective, are also not “in a sense, ALWAYS a lie . . . .” Perceptions of reality can often be correctly obtained through logic or emotions—even if logic or emotions brought us to our correct perception by luck. What we don’t always “know” before hand, however, is if our perceptions, no matter how obtained, are accurate. I think logic and reason bring us closer to a reliable perception of reality than any other method. But, we can still be wrong in or logical reasoning and premises. Otherwise, with that knitpicking observation, well said.

  • http://www.2knowmyself.com farouk

    i agree with you but id rather call it a dream than a life lie

  • nerm nerm

    well i must say i disagree
    not with the lying to yourself part cause in some situations i suppose that is necessary or at least reasonable
    but in that happiness is all that matters
    i personally do not seek out happiness
    and even in this depressing life it manages to find me
    i have no need to lie to myself cause i know the probability of all my dreams coming true is very unlikely but even so i will have fun on the ride to where ever life tosses me

  • Reality

    when your living in a dream, its different then having a dream. the guy in the story, he was just lying to himself, and not taking real opportunities. the workshop was really a physical place of his depression. because, he also knew he never would BUT just didnt kno how to.. its not a never ending rotation of living a lie, knowing your living a lie, theres and end, and thats success.

  • Reality

    hey leah, wanna hook up?

  • Reality

    GREG, you might have high iq, but ure still an idiot..LOL (mocking) lol.

  • Reality

    john wesleys and idiot also.

  • Greg

    Ah, nature smiles upon us by presenting an excellent example of someone living a lie. She gives us the poster “Reality”, who enjoys finding self clever.

  • Reality

    witty, i could write a parody. thats exactly what i just said to you

  • http://www.freshcutinteractive.com Doug

    I found your post by googling “business lies vs life lies,” because I heard someone use the term “business lies” on a movie preview I saw yesterday – sorry, can’t remember the movie.

    Your post is thought provoking – what about when someone tells you that they are doing something, let’s say in a business situation, that you expect of them, but in reality they are not following through? Is this a “business lie” that’s ok, like the Life Lie, because the person lying is convinced he is going to do the thing he’s lying about? So is this person, the business liar, compared to the Life Liar, better, worse, or the same?

    Are all those people who I’ve worked with and said they were going to do something, and didn’t, lying because they thought it was OK since it was only business, so didn’t consider lying bad in business; or because they intended to do the work but couldn’t get themselves to do it for other reasons (incompetence, lazyness, working on too many other projects, depressed, etc.)

    d

  • http://www.TherapeuticReiki.com/blog Astrid Lee

    Actually, I have found that having a life’s lie works to create that lie becoming a reality. I call these ‘lies’ affirmations, or seeds that can germinate within you and grow into new realities.

    In addition, I would like to comment that while the pursuit of happiness is admirable, happiness out of ignorance is not bliss.

    • Sanja

      This isn’s the question of if you would rather know and be miserable or be ignorant and happy…it is about how much everything (reality) is actually how we see it and feel it. It is not what happens, but how we react to it, and we react usually how we feel…So, I must say, I love this article, and I hope the author indeed becomes famous, successful and rich!

  • chris

    An interesting article and one that makes a lot of sense.

  • Craig Malone

    To the writer of this blog……Bravo…nothing else to say….he said it all.

  • joshua

    yeah – i did this. i thought at 15 during the tech boom i’d be one of those kid smart guys you heard about on cnet…. the next bill gates… i still live that life lie and all i do is use the computer to masturbate.

    • Jennifer

      lmao

  • http://www.mindmotivations.com giovanni

    Hi
    I Read an Article on Philosophy on life and happiness,It is a great read and very interesting approach to a mindset .It has very good outlooks,which I believe after reading the article I can see how the tools that are intertwined in this article can allow this to help.Have a read and give me your thoughts .
    http://www.mindmotivations.com/resources/articles/philosophy-life-amp-happiness
    At the end of the day even if you get one thing out of the article it is an advanced in moving forward and growing as a person.As they say, school is about lessons first then you get tested and life is about the test to learn the lesson.
    Cheers
    Giovanni

  • http://ruff kevin mbugu

    i want to join u

  • Matt Jackson

    This article didn’t really feel right to me, somehow lying to yourself seems very negative and I don’t believe you would really be that much happier if you were, say trying to invent a machine, but after hours of trying each day making absolutely no progress.

    What your doing is very different I think, you have set a laudable goal and your doing a good job of going about achieving it, you have a blog with lots of interesting information on it and you are making a difference to some people. Your not lying to yourself.

    As for Thomas Jefferson I think that the most damaging thing is aiming for a goal, creating a machine, and then lying to yourself that what you are doing now, disappearing into a work shed for a few hours a day, is going to take you there and unfortunately I think that’s what a lot of people do

  • Qwick

    Ahhhh… no one ever knew what goes on inside the mind of a loser – until now!! lmao

  • dkjdedfek

    I can not believe what I am reading. Have I awoken on another planet? You, with the pointy ears, get a life! My goodness, have we all descended to the live’s of cock roaches! People, take some responsibility for your life.

  • http://www.seekselfesteem.com Richard Morden

    The reverse it true because many people have very good lives and come home each day in misery because that’s what they choose to focus on. By creating this life perhaps a false one some good things are bound to happen. We often want to judge our life or others by outward appearance but it really is whats on the inside between our ears.
    Boost Your Esteem

  • http://www.facebook.com/monette.dumandan monette dumandan

    life isn’t fair,, some lives happily in their living.
    others were not. they just depend on how life goes, even if it doesn’t work at all. the author did a great idea on conveying how a certain person want’s to be happy. and in order to be happy, the just commit LIFE LIE.. :) there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you are trying to reach that wonderful life lie you wanted to have … GREAT job,, nice article..

  • neil

    Your brain can lie to you all you want but your heart knows the truth – advocating self delusion? This is terrible advice.

  • DT

    At first, this didn’t feel right to me either, BUT after giving it further thought, I understand …. it all boils down to what we choose to FOCUS on. It’s only delusional because there’s so much negativity in this world, and we’re choosing not to factor that in.

  • http://customizedfatlossreview.net Jack’s Customized Fat Loss

    well…. it’s not actually a lie but for me it is called “dreaming”. i consider it dreaming so i could strive to be the best.

    - jack leak

  • Nnaava

    Best article ever! Thanks!
    And by the way..I think yo lie is working coz yo blog is really popular! Well…..i like it and visit it allooooootttt.
     

  • NONNEEE

    no its all bullcrap. This way is even worse then admiting the truth about reality. Creating a life lie is lying to yourselfand the cracks appear more often thenwhenyour just honest. It hurts bad when your life life falls apart like a thump to the ground.

  • Anonymous

    I love this because the more people who subscribe to this kind of mentality (and a lot of people do, even if they don’t realize it) increases my chances of being successful. Eliminates the competition, you know?

    • anonymous

      What’s interesting is that if someone does in fact subscribe to this kind of mentality they wouldnt really care if they, or you, are “successful”. The only thing that matters is if they are happy, no matter how that happens. You on the other hand get your happiness from success, which a lot of times is derived from the opinions of others and is therefore out of your control. A good example of this would be a placebo. Believing it will work may actually cure symptoms, while not believing it will work probably won’t. Objectively it seems crazy to benefit from a placebo, but which would you rather be: the one whos symptoms are gone or the one whos symptoms are still there? Living with a life lie is a placebo that can get rid of pain and depression if you truly believe in it, even though it seems strange.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Keith-Wetzel/1108462190 Keith Wetzel

    There are many Life Hopes (aka Life Lies) that can never be proven with absolute certainty.  A hope/lie requires an inability to be proven with certainty.  The key to happiness is being able to deal with the uncertainty in your Life Hope/Lie.  We are obligated to determine the probability of the hopes/lies and discard the ones with low probability.  I guess that is my daily question.  Has what I’ve learned or believed today raised or lowered the probability of my Hope?  The tension created when my favorite Hope suffers a blow is motivation for more learning.  I deal with uncertainty with a quest for more learning but the result is sometimes I’ll never know until it’s too late to change my direction.  Then I fall back onto the probability test again.  I’m happy when I think I’ve learned something that leads toward the ‘most probable’ Hope.

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  • Mira

    yeah, you blog is really good so I don’t think you have a Life Lie – you have a dream coming true :) )So keep going, I’m pleased reading it :)

    • http://www.facebook.com/jim.maclean Jim Maclean

      If I thought this was a viable option I would become religious.
      I dissagree with this completly, it will generate self centered and vapid outlook on the world.

  • Santos

    This approach is dangerous. There are real horrors and evils to be addressed in living in the world, and allowing oneself to live in delusion instead makes on vulnerable to all sorts of manipulation. 

  • http://screw9-5.blogspot.com/ Screw9to5man

    To be honest the thought of living a lie is kind of depressing. The idea that you could be working towards a dream that is unlikely to ever be fulfilled. For me, I couldn’t think like that. I kind of know what you’re saying. “The journey is more important than the destination”, or something like that. For me though, I have to believe that what I’m working towards WILL happen, it HAS TO happen. It’s that important for me. 

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  • Bill Hatfield

    Great article!  Studys show that depressed people have a much more realistic view of their life and the possibilities than average people do. That says to me that self-delusion (conscious or unconscious) is a requirement of any level of on-going happiness.

  • Philip Lanphar

    This method sounds like a cheap solution to a more serious problem… Trying to escape reality by telling yourself a lie is ultimately adding to your depression. I suggest to stop running, regroup and face your problems head on but with more focus and direction. Reality can sometimes be a hard pill to swallow but true satisfaction in life comes from being honest with oneself no matter how ugly it might be.

  • Anoniraya

    I wouldn’t call it a lie. But more of a way of “tricking” your mind into a different mindset. It gives your mind focus and drive to work towards a goal, and although there is no guarantee to success, its better than just giving up being victimised and having a lousy attitude over your circumstances.

  • Olivia

    I call that Ambition.:)

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  • Gunnar

    “Even if your Life Lie isn’t real, your happiness is. In the end that’s all that matters.”

    No! That’s not good enough. There is more to life than happiness and feeling good, and besides these feelings are finite and superficial, they go away.

    I was taught not to lie my life through success. I’ve made promises to myself since childhood that I would not, and it is so hard but I have kept my promises. Else, I would be lying to myself and I could not live with that. I could not go one day with it!  I would lose my mind, one’s faith, one’s devotion, integrity, belief in myself, to care, to feel, and I would rather go through a million bouts of depression than to lie to myself. So I repel your advice. The advice of cheap snakes in the grass!

    • am29

      What’s more important in life than feeling good and being happy, and acting as a positive role model for other people? Take it easy on yourself, you’re a strong person, but you’re beating yourself with your own strength. Being happy is important. You’re not inspiring anyone by being hard on yourself and sticking to your guns even though they’re out of bullets.

  • L Kcovington

    Consider “life is but a stage and we are all but players”. We all present a self made persona to those we meet and know. It all begins the first time we get in trouble as a child. We learn that something we present is unfavourable to others and begin developing and portraying “ourselves” to others. This is the very fabric of a lot of religions. To continue, being perfectly honest with ourselves is not always tasty and easier to accept the way we want others to see us. The mere fact that we have self awareness demands it!

  • Fedre Gkz

    but sometimes if you live a lie, and never touch the truth, without that wake up call you don’t ever get to come up with a better plan.

  • Brian

    Wow this  is such a remarkable post. I’ve been doing this for years, but I’ve never realized it. I personally have dreams of becoming a very successful musician. There will be days I’m living my best, and days I’m broken down thinking I’m not good enough. I think I will save this article to read every month.

  • Thebatcave

    This is all subject to interpretation
    of course. The problem that a few commenter on here have with it is really
    nothing more than semantics. If it were called “create a life dream” much fewer
    would have responded in a negative way. They hear the word lie and instantly
    preach about how awful and dangerous this is for you.

    For those of you who think that there
    is more to life than being happy, well, name it. I’ll save you the trouble, you
    really can’t and here is why…when you talk about having a positive influence
    on others, doing charity work, raising children, whatever, surprise…you do
    these things because that it what makes you happy. You do the right thing
    because that is what makes you happy. If you are doing things that make you
    unhappy on purpose, then you my friend are the one who is in danger and needs
    help.

    His life does not need to match your
    expectations of what life should be. In example…My own brother, the man fell
    ass backwards into a lot of money relatively early on in his life. Enough that
    he will never have to work. He does NOTHING constructive all day. He reads,
    watches TV, naps, works out, shuffles around the house and will take one of his
    classic cars for a drive around town. In my eyes, this is a waste of life, I
    think of all the places I would go, things I would see stuff I would do, but not
    Brian, he has no interest in any of that.

    He has no interest because he is
    happy with what he does and how he lives, truly happy. So what am I supposed to
    do..force the things on him that make me happy? Tell him he is wasting his life
    because what he is doing is not what I would do?

    If any of you want to live a
    miserable life and do things that do not make you happy, then that is up to you
    of course. You will die just like the rest of us, except those of us that know
    how to be happy will have lived a much fuller life than those who did
    not.

    So yes, it is about happiness and the
    way you get to that is up to you. Maybe you’re happy working hard for little pay
    and giving away what you do make. To me personally, that sounds like no fun, but
    who the heck am I to shove what makes me happy down your throat. That’s right,
    nobody.

    It’s a lot like religion, many who
    feel you have the wrong faith will try to impose their faith on you, because
    they feel you are wrong. Thing is, they don’t really know for sure whether
    you’re right or wrong, the important thing to them is that they are right. Same
    goes for happiness, if a person feels TRUE happiness in what he or she is doing
    (even if it’s a mental state or dream) why feel the need to shove you’re
    perspective of happiness on them? I’ll tell you why, because you want to feel
    right about what your version of happiness is and if anyone does it different,
    then they are wrong.

    Open your mind, calm down and give
    things some thought beyond your own life choices and what you feel makes you
    always right.

    • Jennalemon

      Striving for your own happiness might be a good goal if it is only you in your world.  How does that wife who has to run the photography business AND take care of a family feel while he is off in his life lie? Do you think she is happy with her lazy happy husband? Do you think she appreciates and adores him?  So she can tell herself her own life lie, right?  That he is going to do right by her some day? That it is OK that he uses her to enable his irresponsibility?   This might work for the working years while they both divert themselves.  One day both of them will look back at their lives and KNOW how it really went and what sillies they were to keep themselves small and deluded.  They will resent each other and themselves for being so silly and not striving for what IS important.   What is more important than happiness?  Love, Honor, Peace, Faith. 

  • guest

    Practicing mindfulness is a good start to encourage healthy
    states of mind. Hopes and dreams may even become irrelevant to your state of
    mind through this practice, unencumbered you are then truly free to pursue
    them.

  • Calumnmcaulay

    This is an interesting perspective that makes a lot of sense one which I can relate to.. And I do realise that what about to mention may sound like the ‘life lie’ you speak of however many of the greatest minds on the planet are working hard to greatly extend human life span with various types of technologies – it has been speculated that by 2045 we will have multiplied the intelligence of our human machine civilisation by a billion fold resulting in what is called a singularity. Human machine because we, essentially will not be able to discern the difference between human and humanoid.

    Check out my blog for more info. http://www.livingyoungforever.wordpress.com

    The future really should be radically different than it is now – we just to remain optimistic and spread the good word!

  • Bryan Caranto

    This is exactly what I am trying to do. Lately, I’ve been thinking about going into the dog breeding business, thinking I’ll make money for it. I’ll sell my guitar because fame isn’t important right now (art is but not fame and I’m having a hard time trying to get both anyway) and I just don’t think it will bring me money at least for the next 2 years. 

    So, for the business to be successful, I need to train the dog, sort of like jog with her every morning. I also need to feed / bathe (and all those maintenance) the dog regularly just so the business would be successful (dog show champion / strong dog who knows tricks and all) so I can sell those puppies in the future easily. If I try to look at it, I know it’s “suntok sa buwan” (Filipino) or “a punch to the moon”   in English which means, well literally “impossible” to be able to accomplish those things but it isn’t really the main goal. The main goal (which is also hidden) is to train myself and become more responsible than what I am right now. 
    And to do that, I have to create a life lie.

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