People who are lying are, understandably, more worried about being believed, so they work harder - too hard, as it were - at being believable.
Interpretation
Lying requires more effort to maintain than honesty, as liars must work hard to convince others of their falsehoods.
This quote by Christopher Voss highlights the paradox of deception: those who lie often invest considerable energy in trying to appear credible, which can lead to an overemphasis on believability. It suggests that the act of lying is not just about the falsehood itself, but also about the anxiety and labor involved in convincing others, revealing the complexities of human communication and trust.
In practice
During a negotiation, one might refer to this quote to explain why it's essential to assess trustworthiness.
When you expect to get into a negotiation, you expect to be faced by a guy that's going to attack you, a guy or gal that's going to attack or that they're going to try to get the best of you. Two-thirds of us, that makes us very defensive.
Price doesn't make deals, and salary doesn't control your career.
There are three kinds of yeses. There's commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit. People are most used to giving the counterfeit yes because they've been trapped by the confirmation yes so many times. So the way you master no is understanding what really happens when somebody says 'no.' When yes is commitment, no is protection.
The sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually, 'That's right.' Before you convince them to see what you're trying to accomplish, you have to say the things to them that will get them to say, 'That's right.'
The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is to give the other side the illusion of control. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Ask questions, that begin with 'How?' or 'What?' so your opponent uses mental energy to figure out the answer.
Very few negotiations are begun and concluded in the same sitting. It's really rare. In fact, If you sit down and actually complete your negotiation in one sitting, you left stuff on the table.
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Nelson Mandela is physically separated from us, but his soul and spirit will never die. He belongs to the whole world because he is an icon of equality, freedom and love, the values we need all the time everywhere.
Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.
How blessed and amazing are God's gifts, dear friends! Life with immortality, splendor with righteous, truth with confidence, faith with assurance, self-control with holiness! And all these things are within our comprehension.
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.
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