by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Learning How to Stop Bullshitting Yourself is a Vital Life Skill for REALNESS
There’s a strange phenomenon that often unfolds on the journey back to wholeness and it looks like this:
The more desperately people want to change, the more complicated they often make the process.
Suddenly, life becomes an endless maze of labels, theories, techniques, identity categories, trauma narratives, personality systems, optimisation hacks, shadow work spreadsheets, and twenty-seven-step morning routines involving Himalayan salt lamps and fermented yak tears – at some point, you really have to pause and ask yourself:
“Am I actually transforming myself and my life… or am I just becoming more sophisticated at avoiding the truth?”
Facts is facts and the fact is that – underneath all the noise – most healing journeys and life transformations boil down to something painfully simple:
You’re either acting from TRUTH or you’re acting from BULLSHIT.
That’s it:
Truth moves you towards wholeness but bullshit moves you away from it.
Truth creates flow but bullshit creates friction.
Truth liberates energy but bullshit drains it.
Truth helps you grow but bullshit keeps you trapped in old patterns whilst convincing you that you’re “working on yourself”.
(You get the picture).
This article is about learning to fine-tune your internal bullshit detector so that you can stop getting in your own way and return to the flow of real life by:
- Uncovering the truth.
- Living the truth.
Not just once and you’re done but over and over again for the rest of your life because REALNESS isn’t a destination – it’s a continual process of course correction (and you’ll never be able to course correct if you’re bullshitting yourself).
Let’s dig a little deeper:
How To Stop Bullshitting Yourself: What We'll Cover in This Article
- Learning How to Stop Bullshitting Yourself is a Vital Life Skill for REALNESS
- The Unfashionable Idea Nobody Wants to Hear
- The Spectrum Between Realness and Bullshit
- The Different Forms of Bullshit
- Friction and Flow: Your Internal Bullshit Detector
- How to Stop Bullshitting Yourself
- Step One: Uncover the Truth
- Step Two: Live the Truth
- Final Thoughts: Keep Returning to Reality
The Unfashionable Idea Nobody Wants to Hear
Before we go any further, we need to address something that modern culture tends to get very twitchy about (to say the least):
There is such a thing as truth – not “my truth”, not “your truth”, not “a truth” – THE Truth. Singular.
This doesn’t mean any human being can fully capture truth in a neat conceptual package and carry it around in their back pocket like a Tesco Clubcard – in fact, that’s actually where the confusion begins because a lot of modern thinking assumes that if nobody can fully conceptualise truth then truth itself simply can’t exist.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it’s a bit like saying the ocean doesn’t exist because you can’t fit it in a bucket and so what we can say is that the actual problem is that:
People confuse their interpretations of truth with truth itself.
Once this happens, ego takes over, which is why we start clinging to concepts and interpretations like our lives depend on it (spoiler: they don’t):
It’s because those concepts help us maintain a certain identity, emotional comfort zone, or worldview and so we become attached to the map and forget that the map is not the territory.
All of this is to say that the truth is not merely conceptual but is in fact experiential and holistic (though to confuse things slightly, not everything we experience is true because our senses etc. can confuse us…like when you see an optical illusion for example)
All we can really say is that the truth is something you move towards and embody more deeply as you become more whole:
Concepts can point towards the truth or away from the truth and so some concepts are definitely more aligned with reality than others but no concept is fully true because concepts are fragments whereas truth itself is wholeness.
Bullshit begins the moment we mistake our conceptual fragments for reality itself and this is one of the reasons that some of the most intelligent people on Earth can also be deeply miserable: they fell into the trap of thinking that the concepts are the end of the line (when, really, there is no end of the line from the point of view of a being in a fragmented body – a.k.a. a human being).
High IQ doesn’t necessarily protect you from bullshit – in fact, sometimes it just makes you better at defending it.
The Spectrum Between Realness and Bullshit
It probably goes without saying that we all need concepts to navigate life because you can’t function in the world without mental models, interpretations, language, beliefs, or assumptions.
The issue is not whether you have concepts but your relationship to them – think of it as a spectrum:
REAL
At one end, you hold concepts lightly and so you know they’re tools (not reality):
They can be useful, practical, and adaptable and you can update them when reality gives you new information.
You see the concepts you carry as being something you HAVE – not something you ARE – and this creates flexibility, humility, growth, and flow.
UNREAL
At the other end, you identify with your concepts and take yourself out of reality:
You cling to them rigidly because your identity depends on them being true and so now your concepts are not something you have but have become something you are.
Once ego fuses with interpretation like this, then reality itself starts feeling threatening and this is where friction begins (because reality will always eventually expose whatever isn’t real).
You can attempt to delay it by distracting yourself, intellectualising everything, blaming others, or even spiritualising, therapising, or ‘podcastising’, but eventually reality is gonna tap you on the shoulder and remind you that “This thing you’re holding onto isn’t true“.
The more rigidly you resist that invitation to course correct when it comes, the more unncessary suffering you create for yourself.
The Different Forms of Bullshit
Bullshit doesn’t always look dramatic – indeed, sometimes it looks very respectable and might even sound very intelligent.
The outcome is always the same, though:
A disconnection from reality.
(Because bullshit is the opposite of reality)
Here are some of the main forms it takes so you can learn to spot these tendencies in yourself and break free:
1) Self-Limiting Beliefs
This is the classic one – you convince yourself you can’t change and you tell yourself things like:
- “This is just who I am”.
- “People never really change”.
- “I’m too damaged”.
- “I always mess things up”.
- “I’ll never feel normal”.
- “I’m broken”.
- Etc. etc. etc.
The problem with all this is that most of the time these beliefs aren’t truth – they’re actually just emotional conclusions formed from past pain, shame, conditioning, or fear.
Essentially, they’re mental prisons disguised as identities because the ego would often rather remain predictably miserable than risk the uncertainty of growth back into realness.
At the growth requires death – not physical death but the psychological death of who you thought you were…all of these limiting beliefs are just the ego’s way of stopping you from taking the plunge.
2) Friction Against Reality
One of the clearest signs you’re bullshitting yourself is chronic friction which means that everything feels heavier than it needs to and so you’re constantly frustrated, defensive, restless, and drained.
This occurs when you keep trying to force reality into alignment with your interpretations instead of updating your interpretations to align with reality.
This always creates misery over time and comes from the simple fact that reality flows but bullshit resists.
3) Unnecessary Drama in Relationships
Relationship drama isn’t usually caused by love itself but by identity attachment which causes people to become more interested in being ‘right’ than being connected.
Again, this comes back to defending the ego’s familiar concepts instead of seeking truth and so every disagreement becomes an existential threat because the ego experiences contradiction as annihilation.
These just leads to people arguing endlessly about who’s correct whilst intimacy quietly dies in the corner.
From this point of view, a lot of relationships are basically two nervous systems trying to protect fictional identities from each other and this is why humility is one of the most attractive qualities a human being can develop.
Humility keeps you teachable and teachable people can stay connected to reality.
4) Energy Drain
The bottom line is that bullshit is exhausting. Seriously exhausting.
Trying to maintain false identities, distorted narratives, emotional suppression, or rigid worldviews consumes enormous amounts of energy and so you’ll literally feel this physically:
- Heavy body.
- Foggy mind.
- Low motivation.
- Chronic tension.
- A strange sense of deadness.
- Etc. etc. etc.
This is because resisting reality requires constant effort.
Truth, on the other hand, flows naturally which is the direct opposite of bullshit which has to be continuously defended to maintain itself.
5) Emotional Blockage and the Void
One of the saddest consequences of self-bullshittery is emotional numbness because it causes people to become trapped behind conceptual walls they no longer even realise they built.
What this means is that bullshit causes people to intellectualise instead of feel, perform instead of relate, and analyse instead of experience, and so – eventually – emotions get stuck behind the ego structure and life starts feeling hollow.
This is what I like to call the Void:
We don’t experience this because life itself is inherently empty but because an attachment to unreality has disconnected us from direct experience.
The good news is that emotions usually start moving again the moment truth starts moving again so nobody is permanently ‘stuck’ (even if it might feel that way).
Friction and Flow: Your Internal Bullshit Detector
One of the most beautiful things about reality is that it constantly gives feedback about whether we’re being real or unreal and so you don’t need a guru floating on a mountain to tell you whether you’re aligned or not.
Life itself is constantly giving us feedback through two main states:
Friction
When you experience chronic friction, restlessness, emotional heaviness, constant frustration, or deep disconnection, it’s often a sign that your concepts and interpretations are no longer aligned with reality.
Obviously, health matters too and so sleep deprivation, illness, hormones, nervous system dysregulation, and physical stress all affect your state but – assuming the ‘basics’ are in place – persistent friction is usually an invitation to examine where you might be bullshitting yourself.
Flow
Flow feels different to friction because there’s openness, energy, movement, clarity and presence:
You feel connected to yourself, reality, and life itself and so the sensations of the Void start to dissolve and disappear.
This doesn’t mean everything becomes perfect – things still go ‘wrong’ (and definitely will), pain still exists, and loss still happens but – when you’re grounded in truth over bullshit = you know how to return to flow instead of collapsing into unnecessary suffering.
This is because flow is feedback that’s telling you that – at least in this moment – you’re not fighting reality…you’re actually participating in it.
In general, the ultimate barometer for bullshit is this:
Do you believe you can keep growing into deeper wholeness or have you convinced yourself there’s something fundamentally ‘wrong’ with you?
Basically, the moment you conclude that growth is impossible, you’ve almost certainly bought into some kind of bullshit.
If you’re ready to live a bullshit free life then check out my book Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World.
How to Stop Bullshitting Yourself
So what’s the actual process of overcoming this kind of ‘bullshit’ once and for all?
Well, it comes down to two lifelong practices:
- Uncover the truth.
- Live the truth.
This isn’t always easy but it is simple – we can also frame it also frame this through the lens of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action (the model I use when building coaching containers with my clients).
Step One: Uncover the Truth
This is essentially the Awareness and Acceptance phases and it means developing the courage to honestly examine yourself and your life – not through shame but through curiosity.
Here are some practical ways to do this:
Test Your Assumptions
Most people rarely question their core beliefs – they just inherit them from family, culture, past experiences, or emotional wounds.
You can dig deeper by asking:
- Is this actually true?
- How do I know?
- What evidence contradicts this?
- Would I still believe this without my emotional attachment to it?
- Is this helping me move towards wholeness or away from it?
Truth can withstand examination but bullshit usually gets defensive.
Learn to Regulate Your Nervous System
People stuck in survival mode (sympathetic dominance) struggle to perceive reality clearly because a dysregulated nervous system distorts perception and makes everything feel more threatening than it actually is.
That’s why embodiment matters in the form of things like breathwork, exercise, sleep, cultivating stillness, getting out in nature, meditation, and taking time for real rest and recovery
These things aren’t luxuries – they’re non-negotiables that help remove internal distortions and noise so you can see more clearly.
Stop Identifying with Every Thought
Not every thought deserves your loyalty:
Some thoughts are wisdom, some are conditioning, and some are just fear wearing a clever disguise.
You don’t need to believe everything your mind says – in fact, some of the greatest transformations happen when people realise that their thoughts and reality are totally different things.
Stay Teachable
The people most trapped in bullshit are usually the ones most convinced they already know everything but eal growth requires humility.
Living to learn is healthier than living to defend.
Step Two: Live the Truth
Awareness without action eventually becomes another form of bullshit because you can understand yourself endlessly at that conceptual level and still remain stuck.
At some point, truth has to become embodied, expressed, and LIVED.
This means taking real action aligned with your actual values and vision instead of the performances and wild goose chases that your ego wants to send you on.
That might mean:
- Having difficult conversations
- Leaving unhealthy environments
- Setting boundaries
- Creating something meaningful
- Taking responsibility
- Letting yourself be seen
- Admitting you were wrong
- Pursuing what genuinely matters to you
- Letting go of identities that no longer fit
Truth becomes real through real action (the greatest form of expression) – not theory or endless analysis that keeps you in the realm of the conceptual alone.
Final Thoughts: Keep Returning to Reality
Nobody becomes completely free from bullshit forever and that’s not really the goal:
The goal is becoming quicker at noticing when you’ve drifted away from reality so you can return.
That’s real growth – not aiming to be ‘perfect’. but simply learning to course correct over and over again.
The more you live to learn instead of living to defend your identity, the more freedom you experience and so the more lightly you hold your concepts, the more deeply you can experience reality itself.
The more aligned you become with truth, the more naturally flow starts to emerge – not because life becomes easy but because you stop fighting what’s real.
When you stop bullshitting yourself energy returns, connections deepen, and wholeness begins to emerge again – not through becoming somebody else but through finally letting go of everything unreal that was keeping you from being fully alive.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to build a more solid foundation in your life and to step away from unnecessary friction and frustration then book a free coaching session with me and take a step towards flow.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
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