Duke Christoffersen - The Shameless Liars Guide

I want to express the utmost gratitude to all those people who believed in me, even though I was probably lying to them. Deb, that means you. Thanks for giving me the chance.

I want to express the ut-utmost gratitude to my family. Thanks to Valba, Kevin, Libba, and Jenny for teaching me how to lie. And big thanks to Chris and Beth (my parents) for threatening to punish me if I lied. Fear is a great motivator for not getting caught.

Id also like to throw some gratitude to the other liars that I call my friends, specifically the Frost for being there, and to Ballard for not being there when I needed a place to crash.

Jeanette and Rick know I am grateful for their help. I dont lie to themor do I?

I have to offer gratitude to my ex-wifeif both of you are reading this, you can both believe Im talking about you. No matter which, I never lied to either of you (about anything major anyway). I never needed to.

And eternal love and gratitude to Cornbread, my ex-dog, the only little guy who always knew when I was lying. Dogs can sense that, you know.

It is always the best policy to speak the truthunless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

Jerome K. Jerome

The journey on which you are about to embark will transform you from an ordinary person who lies into an extraordinary liar, and every journey begins with one stepexcept this one. It begins with two:

Step 1: You must accept the truth, and the truth is that you lie.

Step 2: You must stop accepting your inability to lie well.

If you say that you dont lie or that youre going to stop lying, then youre off to a good start, because youre only lying to yourself (which will be covered later).

Everyone lies. If this is true (which it is), then why are so few people good at it? There are many reasons that people are bad liars. First, they have been raised to believe that lying is bad. Thats not true. Lying isnt bad; bad lying is bad. Second, we live in a world with billions of people who lie and get caught. The more people we have, the more people get caught, and the more people get caught, the more skeptical people we have who dont believe what youre saying even before you open your mouth. Third, rapid technological advancement makes it difficult for you to lie. The mass communication and recording devices we have today trip up liars in ways that were impossible as few as a hundred years ago. And last and most important, no one has ever taught you how to lie well.

By the time you finish this book, you will be able to overcome all the obstacles that face the modern liar. You will understand that lying is not bad, but necessary for survival. You will overcome the skeptics by learning how to establish trust. You will learn how to use (and not use) technology in ways that will keep you from getting caught. And, if you follow the ABCDEs of Lying, and strictly obey the 10 Lying Laws, you will have the skills necessary to transform you from someone who once felt bad about lying into someone who is not only good at it, but someone who has turned it into an art form.

Enjoy the journey.

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth.

Mark Twain

What would your life be like if you didnt lie? It would be short and lonely.

If you never lied, you would lack the basic survival necessities and you would alienate all the people who would otherwise be a support system for you. You would ultimately die of starvation, exposure, sleep deprivation, or some combination of the three. And you would die alone.

At first, everything would be fine. Your family, friends, coworkers, and employers would appreciate your honesty. But slowly, you would find that when you tell people things like, Hey, Bob, your hair looks a lot thinner than it did a couple months ago; youre going to be completely bald by the time youre thirty-five. Its too bad your chances of finding a life partner are getting as thin as your hair, they want absolutely nothing to do with you.

Face it, the truth actually does hurt, and nobody wants to be around someone who hurts them. It starts when you tell your coworkers things that they dont want to hear and they go complain to your boss. Youd think your boss would defend you because youre a hard worker, but thats not true. Nobody works hard enough to satisfy their bossthey pretend to work hard and lie about how busy they are, so they dont get more work piled on them. Not you, though. You tell your boss that you get bored before lunch and start playing minesweeper or solitaire. That would probably be okay, except you also tell him that he needs to lose about twenty pounds or the wife thats too good for him is going to leave him for the young, good-looking intern in the mail room that shes probably sleeping with anyway.