40. Eliminating the Unintentional Lie

In his 2018 international best seller “12 Rules For Life”, Jordan B. Peterson calls rule 8 “Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie”. I don’t know how you feel about this polarizing author, but there are things that he’s said over the years that need your consideration. First off, I’d like to invite you to read the aforementioned book if you haven’t already, and secondly, I’d just like to say that I can’t believe that he wrote about 7 rules before mentioning you ought to tell the truth.

Telling the truth is so much more important than it even gets credit for, and we get caught abandoning it all the time. However, it’s not always so obvious as intentionally misleading someone with your words. That level of truth telling versus fibbing is too elementary for this intelligent audience. You know of the potential detriments to lying, and you can read chapter 8 in “12 Rules For Life” to learn more about the benefits of telling the truth even when it’s hard. What I’d like to do is discuss our tendency towards lying unintentionally.