One of my favorite T.V. Shows back in the day was Lie To Me. It was on right after House, MD and the show sort of “fit” in that time slot. If you remember from the show, House’s famous line was “everybody lies” and Lie To Me explored why criminals lie and how to catch them in a lie.
Anyway, lots of people focus on how to spot a lie. There are books and video courses, and I think probably some seminars on this stuff now.
You know what’s not big business?
Teaching people how to spot the truth.
There are a gazillion ways someone can lie to you, but there’s only one way someone can tell the truth.
If a person says “My name is Bob”, you know his name is Bob. If he later says his name is “Mark”, or “John”, or “Jesus”, now you don’t know what his name is.
But, that doesn’t matter.
There are a million different names he can tell you, but he only has one name.
And if you know his real name, it doesn’t matter how many different names he says he has. It doesn’t matter all the ways he can lie to you. All that matters is that you know his real name. Any time he strays away from his real name, you know he’s lying. You don’t care about the exact details of the lie — you only care that it’s not the truth.
Focus on that, instead of the infinite ways an insurance agent or financial planner or anyone else can lie to you.
Good news is there are relatively few truths in the world, compared to the infinite number of lies.
That makes your job relatively easy.