How to Lie- Creating Signs of the Truth

Telling a convincing lie is not just something that occurs at the level of your speech. You must also believe what you are saying so that you are confident that your words will be accepted as unquestioned fact. Once that shift occurs in your mind, your body is the next to follow.

If you followed the advice in Lying - Convincing Yourself First, you have made tremendous headway in not only how you approach lying but also in how you lie. In this article, you will learn how to create the appearance of being truthful with your body language.

A good portion of the success you will have lying will depend upon your ability to create convincing body language. No amount of storytelling or factual placement will help if your body is inconsistent with your words. To make sure you are flawless in your presentation and your body is in synch, you must always think about who you are going to be lying to. I’ll explain.

Understanding How The Suspicion is Created

The thing that creates suspicion and doubt in the person we are lying to is almost never the story we tell them. Most of us have the common sense to know that we better come up with something that is believable if we want to get away with a lie (even if the story is not actually that believable, it’s the thought that counts), but we almost never think about how we can actually make them believe this story.

The following analogy will illustrate this concept further. If you give a compliment to someone, you could tell that person all sorts of wonderful things and it could be perfectly true. But if you have a scowl on your face with your arms crossed, it won't come across as believable or sincere. It’s the same with lying.

First, consider how familiar this person is with you. The best way to determine this is how long they’ve known you. Lying to someone you just met is easier, obviously, because they know nothing about you, your history, or your baseline mannerisms.

Time Makes a Big Difference

Crafting a lie to tell our partners is easy if you've been going out for a short amount of time. These people often take you on your word and have little to no suspicion because their brains can’t figure out if your overall presentation is truthful or not. Their minds have to check the box that says, “Do not have enough information to answer this question”, and thus you remain in the clear by default.

However, the longer you two are together, the more familiar they become with all of your baseline behaviors and body language when you are telling the truth. They also become more receptive to little things like your activities (most of us being a little more predictable than we’d like to think), your storytelling style, and even the stress changes in your voice in relation to your mood and feelings about the subject you are discussing.

Now most times they don’t just come right out when they pick up on an inconsistency and go, “Ah ha! You were blinking more than usual when you said that. You lying son of a bitch! Get out!” But now there is a seed of doubt and as the old saying goes, "Where there's smoke, there's fire."

Hard Training, Easy Lie. Easy Training, Hard Lie

That seed of doubt is what you are trying to avoid. You don’t want to be in a position where you are gathering facts and remembering details to make your case, laying low, or inspiring your main lover to start doing random stuff like checking your email and asking you all types of questions every time you get a phone call.

I’ve been criticized for saying that lying is easy and that the depth I go into it is not necessary, but I feel it’s important to think like this about every lie you tell. Switch your thinking from, “I’m going to get out of this situation now, and eventually they’ll forget about it” (which they won't) to, “I’m going to make sure they have no reason to continue looking deeper because this lie is so excellent that it is the truth.”

The body language you will use to suppress suspicion falls into two categories: generic and specific. Generic body language is composed of the common cues that everyone uses automatically, and specific body language that is your own personal behavior when you are being truthful or lying. I’ll address generic body language in another article, but for now I am going to focus on specific body language.

To gain control of how you present yourself you will need to do two things: become aware of how you move and sound when you are telling the truth and desensitize yourself to telling lies.

Let’s start with awareness of truthful motion. This simple exercise can teach you everything you need to know about sounding truthful. First, you’ll need a mirror. You can get the most out of this exercise if you have access to a mirror that can show you your full body, but if not, most bathroom sink mirrors will do pretty fine.

During the evening hours of the day after you’ve done just about everything you’ll do during the day, stand in front of the mirror and recount your day as accurately as you can remember it. While you are rattling off the events of your day, make sure to take specific note on a few things, namely:

 

 

• The most motion of your arms





 

 

• Your posture and how you hold your neck





 

 

• What you do with your hands





 

 

• Where you eyes are





 

 

• Your tone of voice





 

 

The more you do this, and the more aware you become of those things, you can move on to paying attention to some of the more subtle things such as:

 

 

• How often you blink





 

 

• Your rate of breath





 

 

• How often you lick your lips and the duration of which





 

 

• How often you swallow





 

 

With these steps, its not a bad idea to find a partner that you can trust (preferably someone else who is cheating on their partner and is down for becoming better at the craft) to look at you and make notes, as the more subtle the actions are, the harder they will be for you to keep track of on your own.

The Incredible Benefits of Heightened Awareness

Now unless the person you are trying to deceive is a pro at reading people and their reactions under stress (and very few people fall into this category), they’re not going to actually be conscious of this. Instead, their subconscious mind will be taking in all of your movements along with your words and will make a choice between “Hey, everything here is in line with what we know about this guy (or girl) and there’s no reason for us to doubt their story” and “Hold up! Things are waaaaayy off. I think I need to investigate!” We want to avoid the latter, obviously. Dodging bullets is hard as hell, but it’s a lot easier to not get shot at in the first place.

Now that you are becoming aware of things you do when you tell the truth, some things will naturally start to happen. One, you will be more aware of your body in general. This comes in handy when trying to lie because you will know how to act and move and even blink and breathe as you are telling your lover that you were out dancing at the club that night instead of where you really were.

The next thing that will inevitably happen is that you will become more aware of other people and when they are lying or being completely honest. This is fun to use when watching other people, and can take on a whole new dimension of joy if you like to trap and bury people once you catch them lying to you.

Faking signals of truth can be difficult because even though you are learning to be an actor, you still have a certain set of natural reactions in your body. There is still a certain amount of stress that comes from lying. Most of it comes from your conscience and is constantly conflicting with the fact that you think you are an honest and good person despite the fact that you are telling a lie.

This is called Cognitive Dissonance and you can read more about it another article. Suffice it to say, cognitive dissonance is a problem that must be dealt with. You can either lose your morals completely (which I don’t advise), or you can simply get very comfortable with the idea that if you are going to cheat, you’re going to have to lie...and then you lie. A lot. Like all things, practice makes perfect!

Don't become delusional and live in a crazy world you make up, but get practice admitting to certain things in private that cause you get that gut reaction of shame. We all have that feeling since just about no one I know is actually proud of cheating, and it's not really socially acceptable.

So if you’ve cheated in your relationships before, say so out loud. Look in the mirror and say it, but do not judge yourself. That would only strengthen the hold that cognitive dissonance has on your reactions, the very reactions that you are trying to hide.

Admit to some terrible things you’ve done, things you would not be proud of, and pay attention to that feeling you get when you do it. Ironically, the more you pay attention to it, but not judge it, the less power it has over you, and you will be able to lie more effectively.

In future articles, we will go more in depth about how to deal with internal setbacks to lying, but remember: if you can’t stand the heat, stay away from fire. If lying bothers you (which I assume it doesn't since you are reading this), then you shouldn't be cheating at all, and you should lead an honest life and relationship. But if you're like the rest of us, you're going to have to lie some time, so you may as well become more proficient at it.