How can you stop lying to yourself and commit fewer bad decisions?

Why lying to yourself is one of the worst things you can do
We lie to ourselves every single day. We rationalize bad decisions, fall for cognitive biases we know of and let us be persuaded into doing things which are harmful to us. While the gravity of the decisions is different the tone is usually the same. Mostly you tell yourself one of those things:
‘It is not that bad if I do it once’
‘Just one more time, then I will stop doing it’,
‘I deserve to do that right now, I will not feel bad about it tomorrow’
Usually this is bullshit and deep down you know it. There are some decisions which are usually bad for everyone like taking hard drugs. Especially in terms of bad habits everyone has their own nemeses, though. For some people, it is drinking too much, for others it is overeating and for others it is spending too much time playing video games. There are probably some things which are popping into your head right now. Everyone has bad habits to a certain degree. The funny thing is that everyone knows that everyone else is flawed but we usually still think we are unique in that regard. I am by no means promoting perfection here. Indulging yourself in the pleasures of short-term rewards is perfectly fine. The problem arises if you have specific expectations for yourself and fail them because you are lying to the most important person in your life, yourself. There is no one who lives a whole life without committing any bad decisions. The objective is to minimize them as good as you can. Why? Bad decisions usually have bad consequences. Even if the action itself does not have bad first order consequences immediately bad decisions and habits influence and strengthen each other. This means that you are more likely to deviate from your diet if you drink too much. To conclude, lying to yourself is one of the main cause of bad habits and harmful decisions.
Two strategies that help you cope with the problem
An interesting question to ask at that point is the following: Are there any people who do not lie to themselves? I do not know of any. However, there are generally two types of people who lie to themselves less often than others: People with a clear goal in their mind and people with strong principles.
In my experience, people who lie to themselves the least are people who hold strong principles. There are those who defined their own principles and those who adhere to the principles of some institution. Since the latter can be a problematic topic depending on the circumstances, let us focus on the ones who design their own principles. Defining your own principles is hard, very hard. It goes back to the fundamental values you believe in. One person who famously defined ‘virtues’ for himself was Benjamin Franklin. You can read all of those here. I strongly recommend reading both the Autobiography and the biography by Walter Isaacson. Benjamin Franklin was an inspiring person one can learn a lot from. I do not personally have a finished set of principles for myself. However, I am working on them and during the past month, I made a lot of progress through extensive introspection.
Since defining principles is tough, here is a short-cut to being more honest with yourself: Get a goal or vision. Having a clear goal or a vision which you are fully committed to makes you way less inclined to lie to yourself. The funny part is that often specific and seemingly unimportant goals like ‘I want to run a mile under 7 minutes’ can decrease lying to oneself significantly. Talking yourself into eating ice-cream every day or skipping the workout becomes suddenly way more difficult to align with what you stand for. The increased discrepancy allows you to be more aware of the fact that you are lying to yourself. Eating too much sugar and not working out will inevitably push you farther away from your goal of the seven-minute mile. It is almost impossible to deny that. Use goal-setting as a device to decrease dishonesty towards yourself.
If a person has both goals and principles, they are usually interrelated and cannot be analyzed properly without the context of each other. My main point however is that either of those can help you to lie less to yourself.
There is one general pre-condition for all of this. You must be aware of what you want to do and what decisions you make. The most difficult part however is to define why you have taken those decisions. This takes a high level of awareness and serious reflection.
What can you do?
Firstly, you should accept that you will most likely fail from time to time. You will lie to yourself and the fact that you will be consciously aware of it afterwards will make it even worse. The most important aspect is to stop yourself from doing the same thing again. If you failed to maintain your daily meditation practice for a day, do not complain about it the next day, just start from scratch. No excuses, just go at it again. Complaining does not increase your chances of success. Secondly, you should define specific goals for yourself or craft a set of principles you want to adhere to. After you have done so, using a decision journal can improve your understanding of your decisions. How you can do that can be found here.
I personally lied to myself a lot. I still do it frequently. It often hurts me and sometimes even people around me. Being aware of it grants me the power to change. I intend to use it.
