Lies I believed

Maybe you’ve heard those lies too, and believed them.

“Women can multitask better than men. As a man, you should learn how to multitask”

“Fish stink from the head downward”

“One of the hallmarks of a responsible person is achieving work-life balance”

“Everything is equally important”

One other classic one is about the frog in boiling water. “Put a frog into a pot of hot water and it will jump out”, they said. “But if you place the frog in a warm water and slowly increase the temperature, it will boil to death”, they concluded. I first heard this from a teacher in my primary school. I’ve heard same from senior executives that I respect too. I fear that I might have told someone else once about this.

The problem wasn’t those lies. The problem wasn’t those that told them - some told them in good faith, to motivate good behavior, and to put me “in check”.

The problem was that I started basing important decisions on those lies. And that didn’t stop until I knew better.