Lying About Money

Hiding your success to be liked is still pretending.

We recognize pretending when someone makes their life look more successful than it is. They show the handbag, the shoes, and the beautiful parts while hiding everything that does not fit the image.

But what about making your life look less successful than it is?

What about hiding the travel, the money, or the opportunities because you think people will like you more if they do not know?

I want to challenge that. Pretending to have less and pretending to have more are both ways of manipulating the truth to control what someone thinks about you.

You can hide in either direction

On a trip to Lake Tahoe, a friend told me they did not like posting the beautiful places and experiences they were enjoying. They worried people would be jealous or think they were bragging.

But those experiences were part of their real life. If they posted only the mundane parts to give people a different impression, they were also creating an image.

They did not see it that way at first. They thought pretending belonged only to the people who posted the wonderful things and left out the hard parts.

I wanted them to see that diluting the truth of their life was the other side of the same behavior.

I am not on social media myself, so I am not describing how I manage my own feed. I am asking you to look at the reason you are showing or hiding something. Is it an attempt to make someone believe a version of your life that is not true?

Being relatable does not require a lie

Another friend, a successful influencer, told me she did not want her customers to know she flew privately. She thought it would make her unrelatable.

She did fly privately. She did have the money. Pretending otherwise did not create an honest connection with her customers.

Maybe they would not relate to that part of her life. That does not mean they could not relate to her as a human.

You can have money and still experience sadness, anxiety, frustration, mistakes, and disappointment. You can have success and still feel terrible half the time. That is the human experience.

Sharing that experience is different from pretending you do not have what you have. You do not need to make every circumstance match someone else's in order to connect.

Look at the thought behind withholding

I attended a group of successful businesswomen where someone told me they did not talk about money in front of a friend who was outside that business world.

The explanation was that she would not understand. But they were not avoiding a technical conversation that would bore her. They were hiding the amount of money they made because of what they thought she would think.

Other women agreed that telling friends about their income could cost them those friendships.

I had a different perspective. My mission is to be an example of what is possible. One way I do that is by demonstrating what I have created with the Model, including money.

If someone dislikes that, they are responding to something true about me. The alternative would be changing the story so they approve of me. That goes against what I teach.

Your intention is something you can examine

My mother once told me she did not want to tell her friends I had a book deal because she felt that would be bragging.

I asked her what bragging meant. Was she saying her daughter was better than someone else's daughter? Or was she sharing something that had happened?

You can look at why you are saying something and how you feel. You can also look at why you are hiding it and how you feel.

If the thought is that people will not like you if they know, notice the insecurity that thought creates. Notice the action it drives. Then notice the relationship you are trying to create through that action.

Hiding success and hiding failure can both come from not accepting the truth of your life.

Your success does not determine your worth

Having money does not make you better than someone else. It also does not make you worse.

Creating wealth and being a good person are separate conversations. A bank balance does not decide your human worth.

When we treat our circumstances and results as who we are, we can feel shame about them. We may think too much success makes us greedy, or too little success makes us inadequate.

But who you are is not determined by those results. You can own what you have created without making it a comparison of your worth with someone else's.

You can also let someone else disagree with your choices. Their opinion does not require you to become a different person.

Let people respond to the truth

Someone may not want to be your customer because you talk about money. Someone may not want to spend time with you because they dislike what you choose to do with it.

They get to make that decision.

What I do not recommend is pretending to be someone else so they will stay. Then your life becomes a dance of trying to be acceptable to a customer, friend, or family member.

I used to believe that if I became too successful, I would not have friends. In some relationships, people did not like the changes. I could let that be true without making myself smaller to keep their approval.

If someone likes you because of the lies you tell, they do not really know you. And you know they do not. That does not create the connection you wanted.

Own the hard parts and the wins

I want to tell the truth about my success and my failures. That includes the mistakes I make, the wins I have, and the anxiety I experience.

I am grateful that other women shared their success publicly. Their willingness gave me examples and inspiration. If they had hidden it to manage my reaction, I would not have had those examples.

Someone else's success can bring up painful thoughts for you. Those thoughts are your work. Requiring that person to hide or spend differently does not do the work of examining your own mind.

The same applies to your success. You can be honest and let others have their thoughts.

Question the version you are presenting

Are you pretending to have more money than you have? Are you pretending to be happier than you are? Ask why.

Are you pretending to have less, do less, or be less successful because you think that makes you easier to like? Ask why.

Look at the thoughts creating those choices. You do not have to protect shame by preserving the image it asks you to maintain.

Let yourself own your life: the success, the failures, and everything between them. You can pursue the success you want and be honest about it.

That gives you the freedom to be yourself and gives other people the freedom to respond to who you actually are.