CORP-IU-NEWS-AWARENESS-11.2.21

Why tell the truth?According to study, in 2016, 1 in 6 Americans were on some sort of psychiatric drug, mostly antidepressants. Imagine what it is now...The statistic alone is depressing.But what if our unhappiness epidemic has way more to do with us than we know (or are willing to admit)?What if the reason we have trouble sleeping, toss and turn, grind our teeth, and/or need that cookie, drink, or pill is because of the anxiety that comes from managing all we’re not saying (aka lying about)?Maybe it’s us...Yes. We're calling us liars.We're practically born liars.The minute we figured out how to talk, didn’t we figure out how to lie?Whether it was to get out of trouble or get another cookie from Dad when Mom already said no. Obviously, lying isn’t something any of us are particularly proud of. It’s why we hide the fact that we lie in the first place. And not only do we hide our lying, we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to justify it, defend it, and/or blame it on anything else other than our own sneaky and cowardly selves.But not to worry. We are not alone. In a study by Robert P. Lanza, James Starr, and B.F. Skinner (University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University), two pigeons were taught to use symbols to communicate information about hidden colors to each other. When reporting red was more generously reinforced than reporting yellow or green, both birds passed through a period in which they “lied” by reporting another color as red.So you see. Even pigeons lie for a “cookie.”We’re trained early on that when we don’t do what we said we’d do or when we’re caught doing something that is frowned upon (e.g. allegedly cutting up all of your mother’s favorite Pucci scarves to make clothes for your Barbie), all we have to do is feel terrible, look sad, and say we’re sorry (whether we mean it or not), and BAM...we’re decent people.Even as adults, most of us still think that as long as we feel guilty that we, for example, didn’t call our mother, AND we have a legitimate enough excuse to go with it, well then, we’re doing okay.But, here’s a question for you: Does feeling guilty, so long as we have an acceptable excuse, really make us a decent human? Or does it make us, more accurately and simply, well-intended liars?What do you think?Lying also has other repercussions. It has gotten us into a bit of a bind.The real reason we don’t and cannot fully believe in ourselves and our dreams is because out in the real world, we are not fully being ourselves. We have wrapped ourselves pretty darn tight in the pretense of who we want people to think we are. Even worse, lying affects our health. Some of lyings other side effects include...

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