When we aren't honest with ourselves about who we are and what we want, we allow other people and circumstance to determine our life course.

We lie to ourselves about the smallest details, and we lie to ourselves about our largest life choices.

At the most basic level, self-deception is fooling ourselves into believing something that is false -- or -- not believing something that is true.

The truth is that our self-deceptive lies range from seemingly tiny untruths to massive life-altering falsehoods about reality.

One major cost of self-deception is that we use painful life experiences to justify being non-ideal versions of ourselves.

The areas in which we felt most insecure, unsafe, unloved, uncomfortable, embarrassed, angry, and generally unresolved as a child are the areas that we will be most prone to self-deception as an adult.