How many times have you come across a situation like this? You are not treating people well when you think you are. You are acting helpless, like a victim in certain circumstances, when in reality you are not. You are feeling disdainful toward others around you. You pretend to be someone you are not. If you have ever had any of these experiences, it is obvious that you have been lying or betraying yourself.
Self-betrayal is an act contrary to what one feels one should do for another person and it can be considered the root cause of self-deception.
Self-deception, as a disease, is a process of denying or rationalising away the relevance, significance or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. It generally involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.
The real problem is that most of the time we don’t even realise what is wrong. This symptom is called “insistent-blindness” or the inability to see that one has a problem.
With self-betrayal and self-deception, we act in ways that are contrary to what we intentionally believe is right and appropriate. We “unconsciously” blame others for our actions, we fail to see the humanity in people and we fall short of taking into account that other people also have their own needs, beliefs and values that drive their behaviour.
The Arbinger Institute refers to self-deception as the act of not knowing — and resisting the possibility — that one has a problem. It also proposes that life’s key principle is how we live in relationships, and that the human transaction is all that matters. Hence, the moment you act contrary to life’s key principle, you will start betraying yourself.
An act of self-betrayal and self-deception can happen either at personal or professional level without your knowing that it is happening.
Let’s imagine this: You’re a man who’s just arrived home late at night from a long day at work, feeling exhausted. You hear your toddler crying and think to yourself, “I should be helping my wife and get up to take care of the baby.” However, at that moment you also have another thought: “Wait a minute, I’ve been working hard already today and I’m really tired, so my sleep is just as important as my wife’s — why should I bother?”
Or this: You are in a hurry to attend a very important meeting with the CEO. Your elevator arrives and you get in, press the button of the floor you want, and when the door is about to close someone shouts from afar asking you to hold up and wait for her. Initially you are thinking you will wait but then you say to yourself, “I’m in a hurry and my meeting is probably more important than whatever she is doing. That’s why she’s taking forever to walk to the elevator.” Then you choose to press the doors-closed button.
These examples are simple and, I think, many of you reading this may have had one or both of these exact experiences. Yes, you are betraying yourself by thinking in the way described above.
At work, we can easily get caught up in the endless routine of tasks and essentially lose sight of who is at the other end of our human transactions. We focus only on our tasks, our KPIs and our targets, to the point where we ignore others or seek to compete with them in order to “win”.
In situations like these, we respond to others through the lens of self-deception. We lose sight of others and justify our behaviour (be it good or bad) by unjustly blaming others or finding fault with those who get in your way. In other words, we perceive others as one of the following: obstacles or problems if they get in your way; vehicles if they can somehow help you win; or irrelevancies or nuisances if you think what they’re doing means nothing to you. Yes, your view of others is distorted and you are betraying yourself!
In practice, when self-betrayal or self-deception occurs, people will unconsciously lie to themselves and will come up with endless excuses to justify their self-deceit. These excuses tend to fall into the following categories: you are better than they are, you deserve something better than this, you are worse than others, or you would rather be seen as someone you are not.
Let’s put it this way: when you act contrary to what you feel you should be doing for another person, it is an act of “self-betrayal”, and when you betray yourself you will begin to see the world in a way that justifies your self-betrayal; thus, your view of reality inevitably becomes distorted and you will essentially enter the box of self-deception.
Now you probably understand the fundamental concept of this self-deception and are starting to ponder actions you have taken that might have been acts of self-betrayal. The good news is that once you realise that you are lying or betraying to yourself, you are beginning to step out of that box of self-deception. Getting rid of that box is also possible and that’s the topic I will be talking about next.
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Arinya Talerngsri is Group Managing Director at APMGroup, Thailand's leading Organisation and People Development Consultancy. She can be reached by e-mail at arinya_t@apm.co.th or https://www.linkedin.com/pub/arinya-talerngsri/a/81a/53b
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