As a clinical psychologist, I am regularly confronted with the brutal truth that we are all lie.

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

We would all benefit by shifting our focus from seeing pain as bad to seeing pain as motivation to change.

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

I cannot overemphasize the impact our childhood has on our ability to be honest because we live out what we learned as children in our adult relationships.

Living through difficult life circumstances in not an excuse for passing trauma onto someone else.

When you are not aware that you are bringing old learning to your current relationships, you will want to lie about where it is coming from.

We lie to reflect the aspirational goals that we unconsciously know we will not uphold.

Perhaps the most tragic way that self-deception harms us is that we start believing our lies and we teach them to others.

In fact, lying to ourselves may be the most dangerous thing in the world because we live our truth whether we are honest about it or not.

It is actually a good survival strategy to manipulate twist, and reorganize the truth in a way that is more consistent with what we can psychologically tolerate.

I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.

Be happy you guys. Be proud! You know what you are: you're God's frozen people.

There is a sixth sense, the natural religious sense, the sense of wonder.

It's hard for parents just to measure schools.

We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it.

Spontaneous is what you get after the seventeenth draft.

Sometimes, life threw up problems that even the wisest, most trusted mentor couldn't solve for you. It was part of the pain of growing up. And having to stand by and watch was part of being a mentor.

Dividing into teams doesn't necessarily mean denigrating others. Studies of groupishness have generally found that groups increase in-group love far more than they increase out-group hostility.

The thing about summer is, I think it is pretty easy to dress comfortably, like I tend to gravitate more toward flowy, easy pieces. When summer comes around, I am definitely dressing for comfort.