How To Spot A Liar: Unraveling Truth and Trust in Relationships with Andrea Beach

Are you feeling overwhelmed by dishonesty and half-truths in your life? Join us for an engaging and enlightening conversation about communication, truth, and trust. In this episode, we're joined by Andrea Beach, a renowned hypnotherapist, who explores why people sometimes choose to be untruthful and how we can detect these falsehoods. We'll look at the impact of deceit on relationships and the importance of honesty in strengthening our connections with others.

Get ready for an insightful journey as we tackle how to confront deception in our lives. Drawing from our own experiences and offering practical advice, we'll discuss the importance of trusting your instincts when dealing with dishonesty. Plus, we'll introduce the unique TEAM framework - Touch, Education, Affirmation/Appreciation, and Metrics - a powerful tool for building trust in your relationships.

This episode isn't just about improving communication and trust; it's a guide for personal development and success in both personal and professional realms. If you find this episode helpful, please share it with others who might benefit and consider leaving a review to support our show's growth. Let's dive in!

Today's Guest: Andrea Beach

Andrea Beach is an entrepreneur, investor, humanitarian, and a highly acclaimed life & business coach. She has empowered thousands of people from all around the world through her Master Classes, books, videos, and live events. A leading authority on human behavior, Ms. Beach is a certified hypnotherapist, and trained in NLP (Neuro- Linguistic Programming) and DHE (Design Human Engineering). She has worked with Fortune 500 companies, and people from all walks of life to create successful programs for transformation and success.

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Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships

Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

How can you spot a liar and what do you do when you find out that someone is lying to you? That's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode of it Starts with Attraction. I'm speaking with Andrea Beech. Andrea is a speaker, a writer, a technology futurist. We talked offline for a little bit just about the scope of work that she's done in the tech world. It's incredibly impressive Entrepreneur, leader, runs five companies.

Speaker 1: 0:57

I listen to and think how good for you, girl Like I need to learn from you. And has six kids and is married Absolutely amazing. And she's talking to us today about how we can spot a liar. She's a certified hypnotherapist. She's been trained in neuro-linguistic programming, as well as design, human engineering. She's worked with Fortune 500 companies. She has been incredibly successful and today she's going to use some of the things that she's learned in how to spot a liar, in how to have more effective communication and in how to keep your marriages and your family happy and healthy. Let's dive into today's episode. Andrea, I'm super excited to have you on the podcast today. Thanks for joining me.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Yeah, so here's the first question that we're going to talk about why do people lie?

Speaker 2: 1:49

Well, first of all, it's important to note that everyone does lie, even people that don't think they do. We all do, and there are several reasons why. The most common is to avoid getting in trouble or to avoid accountability for our actions, and we learned that from childhood. You know, mom walked in the room and there was a big mess and she said did you do that? And our first knee-jerk reaction was to say nope, not me, because we didn't want to get in trouble. But often we also don't want to disappoint the other person, and that's a valid reason for lying.

Speaker 2: 2:22

Another reason why we lie is sometimes to make ourselves look better than we are, to elevate our status or look more important to someone else. And a very small percentage of people actually lie for malicious intent. It's usually to avoid embarrassment or getting in trouble or something like that. But there is a small percentage of people that how do I say, enjoy the game and enjoy the power trip. But it's a really small percentage. Most of us, when we lie because we do, it's for better reasons.

Speaker 1: 2:53

Now, one of the things you said is I don't remember which one you were talking about, but you said that's a valid reason to lie. So do you think it's okay to lie? Like? In what circumstance is lying ethical, Is it okay? Flush that out a bit.

Speaker 2: 3:08

Yeah. So that's a slippery slope because in general I would say no, lying is harmful, usually with a ripple effect, maybe not in that moment, but over time. Especially, let's say, in a relationship, if you're trying to not offend or hurt your partner's feelings, you would say, well, it's the more humane, ethical, valid thing to do to lie to uphold their feelings. But if you're withholding something from them for months or years or even decades, that lie will continue to build and often the ripple effects and the damage from it could have been avoided if you had just been a little bit more honest in the beginning. So the word valid, I think, is more or less, as it relates to the reasons, that people would excuse it or think that it's not doing any harm. That's what we call our little white lies. Now, whether or not we should do them, or it's ethical or okay, I would say in general no, even though the intent behind them is usually altruistic or good.

Speaker 1: 4:07

But yeah, yeah, that's you know. It's an interesting point. It's the classic question of you know, if the wife asks, do I look good in this or do you think that woman is pretty right, like, what's the? What response is going to be more edifying, maybe to for your wife to hear versus maybe what you actually think? And it's kind of this balance that we make in a lot of circumstances like that of, well, if what I truly think isn't really going to be helpful in this situation, then what is a different way that I can say it?

Speaker 2: 4:40

Something like that Exactly and what it's usually the men. It's exactly right. Women have a tendency we will bait our husbands or boyfriends into a question, and I'm guilty, we've all done it. And do we really want the honest answer? We think we do, but we may not, and that puts him in an uncomfortable and unfair situation. So the relationship gets stronger when he can say, honey, yeah, she's an attractive woman, but nothing like you, baby, or I'm in love with you or I can't take my eyes off you long enough to even see what you're talking about. That comes with time, guys, get better at this. But it does create more of an intimacy between the couple when you can be honest but do it where it's kind of sandwiched in between compliments or in between a situation where you might say, obviously she's attractive, honey, but look at you tonight, gosh, you're stunning. Those kinds of moments bring a couple together because the honesty really does impact the intimacy.

Speaker 1: 5:40

Yeah, that's good, I love that. So we've talked about how lying isn't necessarily that the person is evil and has malicious intent. So then, what are some ways or how can we spot, maybe, when people are lying to us and I don't know? Maybe kind of a different spin on that, which may sound like a silly question, but how can we also begin to realize when we aren't being completely truthful and that maybe we are making the situation worse by not being truthful?

Speaker 2: 6:16

Once you learn the cues and I'll give you a few here in a second you'll notice it in everyone people you work with, definitely your kids of all ages. You notice it in strangers. On average we lie to strangers three times in the first 15 minutes of meeting them, so it's very common. So a few things to watch. The first one is blink rate. The average human blinks about 16 times a minute. If we're really excited and interested in something, that number goes way down because we have our wrapped attention, we're completely focused on whatever that thing is. So our people dilate and we're watching and we don't blink as often. But when somebody is lying they will blink much more often because they're trying to calibrate, they're trying to keep up with what's going on inside their head. So that's one Interesting.

Speaker 2: 7:03

Another one is fidgeting and this has to do with the person. I have kids. Out of my six kids I have one that's a fidgeter. When he's totally calm he fidgets, and so if I were to judge whether or not he was lying or not, I would be inaccurate. So it's really more or less knowing their own unique behavior.

Speaker 2: 7:20

And if they're not a fidgeter and they're picking at something or they're bouncing their foot, all these little fidgety things. That's a really good indicator that they're super uncomfortable. And it might be because they're telling a lie or you, and that's another way to calibrate yourself. Another one is if you have some type of avoidance in eye contact. So if you're normally looking someone in the eye and all of a sudden now you move to a different topic or subject and everything that felt normal now feels awkward because they just keep looking off or they keep, you know, focusing on an inanimate object. They're doing it one to avoid that window to the soul. The eye contact, which we all know, but also focusing on an inanimate object, allows them to gather their thoughts and collect the lie and compartmentalize it in their brain. So it's another kind of body language cue that you can watch for as well.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Hmm, interesting, is there? Do you think that people so I know we said like people don't really lie for malicious intent, but do you think there's some people out there who are, you know that lower percentage of people, the con artists? They want to lie and they've tried to master not lying or making it seem like they don't lie.

Speaker 2: 8:37

I'll give you a couple of those. So this is a little more sophisticated. You see this a lot in career politicians I'm not going to get into politics, but you do see this a lot. I have probably a hundred photos of politicians doing this where they suck in their lips like this. So usually it either happens right after somebody has said something they'll say a lie and then they suck in their lips like hmm, like, almost like I wish I hadn't said that or if somebody asked them a question we see this a lot in business negotiations where they don't want to give the honest answer they will suck in their lips or cover their mouth. You see this a lot too. Or they kind of like you know they think or they're doing this Covering your mouth, or suck, sucking in your lips, like that is actually your body's way of trying to hold the truth in. You're physically having a reaction to not trying to let the wrong words spill out of your mouth.

Speaker 1: 9:35

That is so fascinating. I have never heard either of those things and I'm sitting here. I'm sure now I'm going forward in different situations. I'm going to be keeping my eye out for that, but it's not to watch. Wow, that's insane.

Speaker 2: 9:46

Let me. Let me pause right there, though, and say it's not one of these behaviors where you could say, oh, he sucked in his lips, he's lying. Or oh, he's bouncing his foot, he's lying. It's actually a cluster of behaviors, because one action by itself can be completely normal. They could need to use the restroom, or they could be frustrated about something else that just happened. They're not lying, it's another indicator. But when you have a cluster of these, they're avoiding eye contact or covering their mouth. They're deflecting where they're avoiding answering you, that's another one. Or turning it back on you, somebody says you know, did you bubble body go, did you? That's deflection. If somebody's doing things like that in a cluster, mean that's your bottom dollar. They're lying.

Speaker 1: 10:32

Now, what about? Because a lot of our world now is virtual and sometimes we're just talking on the phone with someone or we can't see their entire body, like on a screen, in order to see, maybe, if they're doing some of that, is there anything about like voice inflection or you know, we can't tell if someone's making eye contact with us over zoom right. So what are some ways that we can spot a liar in our virtual world?

Speaker 2: 10:58

So that's a great, great question. So one of them is deflection. So if you ask them a direct question and they justify in other ways, you can ask them a question about did you take the car to go do this thing? And they say, wow, I can't even believe you're asking me about the car. You didn't even have it filled with gas last time I was here and, by the way, when did you get the oil change last? They're totally not answering the question and they're they're turning it back on their wife or their husband or what have you said.

Speaker 2: 11:26

Deflection and reversing the conversation around to make the other person guilty is a really strong indicator. And another one is if you know this person and how they would normally react and now, with the question that you're asking, they're overly irritable or overly emotional about the question. If they're like offended about a really simple question, or if they get really snappy or irritable when you think it's just a question, why are you acting like that? It's usually because they are irritated that you've basically found them out or put them in a situation where they have to lie in their minds. So those are a couple things to watch for tone and also raising your voice and speaking louder Then you normally would. Again, you've got to know your person. If they're always loud, it's not an indicator and you might want to watch for a cluster of those behaviors as well.

Speaker 1: 12:22

What about?

Speaker 1: 12:24

Well, as you're talking, I'm thinking of just a couple of situations in my past where, either in business dealings or otherwise, the one I mean, the one that you're saying, that sticks out to me, and I feel like it's happened every time has been the person turning it back on me, or somehow I, you know, I'm trying to have a conversation about one thing and they tell me I'm being paranoid, and they deflect and they, they skirt around it and I'm like I never really got an answer about this over here, right, and then you come to find out months later, or sometimes years later, like there was a bunch of lies, which and this is where my next questions coming in I feel like I know that my gut was telling me that from the beginning, sure that there were so many other things about these people, like they were likeable, or Other people trusted them, and so it was like, well, maybe I'm the one reading the situation wrong, right, but it, I mean, it has never failed me, andrea, that my gut is ended up being right.

Speaker 1: 13:31

So how, like, what about just the gut feel?

Speaker 2: 13:36

Absolutely trust your gut and I think the older, the more mature we get in, the more we lean into that gut intuition and we see it play out correctly, even if it's years later. It informs and strengthens that intuition to where, hopefully, we can shorten the gap. So now, next time when you're in a conversation, let me give you a couple of little Jedi mind tricks that you can use to help when you're in that like weird put up against a wall kind of situation. So if you believe that somebody is, as we say, gaslighting you, like turning it back around, making it your fault or avoiding what they're talking about all together. So the thing that you can do and this is what they use in like hostage negotiation stuff you just get very quiet and very still and you make eye contact with them, which they're not going to like you tilt your head to the side with this look like you're really curious, like Hmm, that look they won't know what to do with that. That will freak them out. So they'll start to either talk and chatter and reveal more of what's going on with them, or they might ask a question like what, what's going on? What are you looking at me like that and you might want to say a phrase like interesting or curious, and that'll rattle them. So that's a good way to very quickly get to the truth of what's going on, because you're not allowing their story to really take shape. You're basically standing firm in your gut intuition.

Speaker 2: 15:01

Another thing you can do is mirror back to them whatever it is that they just said. So if, I don't know, somehow they lie and you know they're lying, you can feel it in your gut. You can just respond back to what they said in the form of a question with curiosity. So if they say I did not do that, you could say you did not do that, and you're really soft. And this works for men too, it's not just a female thing. The man can say to his wife you didn't do that, and he says it not with a sarcastic, accusatory tone. It's really soft, it's really curious, with that little kind of cocker spaniel tilt to your head.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Really you didn't do that and all of a sudden she's trapped or he's caught or it feels very like I don't know what to say now, and they'll reveal themselves and usually what you'll hear is well, I mean. And then you get the justification for why they actually did it.

Speaker 1: 15:59

This is kind of going in line with the next question I wanted to ask, which is can you get someone to tell you the truth?

Speaker 2: 16:06

Oh sure, now you can coerce them and force it. Now I would say usually we can't really control people, but we can certainly influence them. And there's a few things that I suggest, especially in relationships. The first one is if they're lying, especially on a consistent basis, maybe it's because that's how they grew up and they're in survival mode and they have trained themselves to be pathological liars. You would be shocked at how many people that are really good people, good, wholesome, good Christian people, that just lie pathologically because they were survivalists.

Speaker 2: 16:39

But it is on the partners to say you're OK, you're safe, and if you tell me something, even if it's going to hurt my feelings or offend me or might disappoint me, I would much rather have that than distance between us with lies or half truths or things like that. And you've got to go first. You have to be the partner to model that first and be super vulnerable with your husband or wife or your boyfriend and say, oh man, I did, I did back into your car, it was me. And I felt so bad, I even thought about lying about it because I didn't want you to be disappointed and upset with me. And I had this whole moment where I realized if I did that then it would basically break our trust and I didn't want to do that and you apologize. I'm so sorry and I'm even sorry that I thought about lying to you, but I'm glad I didn't and I hope that was OK.

Speaker 2: 17:31

And when you say something like that, your partner's going to be like of course it's OK. I want you to always tell me the truth. They almost can't be mad at you when you approach it in that vulnerable state and you're modeling for them how they can then do that back with you. But you have to uphold it. If they come and tell you the truth, you can't clobber them.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Right, yeah, absolutely. This happened last night with my son. He's six, which is the amount of children you have. When you said that, I was like you have six kids. I don't know how you live. That's amazing. You're a superwoman. But my son last night. He has a little recital at school tonight, and so I typically don't love for them to. The school gives them laptops and I typically don't like them to be on their laptops at home, especially on school nights. But he needed to practice for his recital tonight and all the stuff is in this thing on the computer. So anyway, he did that and then I took a shower, took forever in the shower. I come back out and he's like all I did was my songs, and then he had this look on his face and I said OK, tell me, the truth Is that all you did and he went. Well, are you going to be mad?

Speaker 2: 18:43

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 18:44

And I said no, I will not be mad if you tell me the truth. And so he said well, I actually played some video games. And I said well, thank you for telling me the truth. And so I didn't punish him, I didn't do anything, I just said thank you for telling me the truth. I probably could have expanded further on it based on some of the things you just said, but the point is, I agree, we can't tell someone, tell me the truth and then attack them for it, because then we're punishing the behavior that we actually want to see.

Speaker 2: 19:15

Correct. Now that doesn't give them a free hall pass either. So if your boyfriend or even girlfriend, let's say that they're constantly going out with the girls after work and getting a drink and then coming home and lying about it.

Speaker 2: 19:28

And you say hey, I keep hearing that this is what's going on. Can we have a conversation about it? I even feel like when somebody says tell me the truth. To an adult not necessarily a child, because children aren't quite as conditioned yet, but to an adult they get a little defensive you can say let's have a conversation about this. I'd really like to understand what's going on and you're safe with me. Let's have this conversation.

Speaker 2: 19:52

But if the answer is, well, yeah, I just want to go have a drink every single night and I really don't want you to tell me what I can or can't do, there's a bigger problem in the relationship. It's not so much about lying about how many drinks or did she go out, it's more or less. I'm not going to contone the behavior. I'm going to condone you being vulnerable with me and I'm going to appreciate and respect you being honest with me. But that doesn't mean the behavior is OK. You don't get a hall pass to go get drunk every day afterward, so there is a difference.

Speaker 2: 20:21

So, as long as that you're consistent with your partner and saying you can come to me and tell me the truth, even if it's going to be disappointing or if it's going to paint you in a bad light or if you think it's going to hurt me, because that's what keeps us together as a team. As soon as there's dissonance between us and lies or halfs truths, I can't really know exactly what's going on. So I don't feel like I know you as well to be able to support you. But if there is something that's wrong my behavior, your behavior is something that we need to address. Just because we're honest with each other, doesn't excuse bad behavior, right, and the partner will say, oh no, absolutely, Because, remember, at that moment it's a two-way street, so of course they're going to agree to it and that framework needs to be established as early on in a relationship as you can do it.

Speaker 1: 21:05

Yeah, that's 100% right. In all of our relationships marriages, dating, relationships with our kids, business, I mean all of those things how do we best show other people that we can be trustworthy? That might be a weird question.

Speaker 2: 21:26

No, it's a perfect question, because we are all so conditioned to watch out for ourselves. That's just survival of human mode. It is more natural to hide, cover and to throw out little breadcrumbs and see what happened. So when you go first in a friendship with a girlfriend you know me and my girlfriends I have a particular girlfriend of mine who she has that conditioned response where she will keep things very close to the vest and then, as I start to peel back some of the layers, she'll kind of go okay, we'll fine. I actually didn't do that and I'll say and you could have told me that from the beginning I love you, you're good, we're fine, like we're always gonna be friends, honey, don't worry about that. And now it's been almost three years, we've been friends and she's finally. What's funny is she's finally started saying, well, you're gonna get it out of me anyway. So let me just tell you and it's a cute thing now between us but she feels safe and we certainly need that with our children, we certainly need that in our relationships.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Yeah, absolutely. What are some practices that you think people could proactively do to facilitate that trustworthiness and to eliminate breaches of trust in the future?

Speaker 2: 22:39

So, specifically in a relationship, there's something that I talk about which is team. A team exercise T-E-A-M. So in the evening, like when the day is over, you can get together with your partner and touch each other. It could be holding hands, it could be snuggling, whatever you're doing, sitting with your knees, touching whatever, and then talk about one of the things that you learn. So that's the E education. What is the thing that one of you learned today, Like I learned that my dad is going on a cruise in November, oh, okay. Or somebody can say I learned that outer space we have more black holes.

Speaker 2: 23:12

It could be random, but it's kind of interesting when we tell each other these weird, quirky facts and the other person receives it, because we're all big children, we get fascinated by things and we want to tell people that are interested in what we're interested in. So that's the E and the A is you want to affirm your partner in some way and show them appreciation. It could be either one for the A and say, hey, I just wanted to let you know I really appreciate the fact that you are this way, or you do this Now. You can't say the same thing every night. I appreciate how sweet and kind you are. No, that worked the first night. But you need to be as detailed as possible and the details can be about somebody else. Hey, I heard from Kathy and Jim next door you helped them with their gutter situation. I appreciate what a great neighbor you are and how you take initiative to do things like that. You're awesome. So you're affirming them and you're telling them something you appreciate about them.

Speaker 2: 24:02

And then M is metrics, so you're doing a check-in. Is there anything that's bothering you? Is there anything that maybe happened today that you didn't feel comfortable or you felt awkward or put you in a bad situation? This does not have to be with your partner. It gets that man. It worked. I got called out for not doing this and I didn't know even how to respond. I did it. I was guilty, I did it and you telling your partner that and then going, oh honey, it's okay, you didn't mean. That is a great practice for being that way in your relationship as well, when the stakes are higher.

Speaker 1: 24:39

So let me go back through the words. The T is touch, so some kind of like hand holding, hugs, something like that. The E, what was the word for? E, education.

Speaker 2: 24:48

Education.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Okay, so sharing something you've learned. And then the A is affirm or appreciation.

Speaker 2: 24:54

They're interchangeable, whichever one you prefer.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Whichever one. And then the M is metrics and this one is about the repeat, the question that you said again, like you're looking for, what were some things that weren't?

Speaker 2: 25:05

Check-in on the metrics on how you're doing Now, what I do in my relationship. We're like, how are you doing one to 10 in business? How are you doing one to 10 in your personal life? Like, how are you doing with your health, with your fitness, with your diet, with your wellness, with your workout plan? Like that's a really personal thing, Emotionally. How are you doing? We'll go, you know. How are you one to 10 with extended family?

Speaker 2: 25:26

One to 10 with friends. We do a one to 10. Okay, but you don't have to. Metrics can be like anything going on with you that you don't feel equipped to handle or manage emotionally right now. And then the other person says, yeah, actually I'm really upset and worried about my brother. Okay, well, how can I help? Right. So metrics can be however you measure your life in that moment, and I also recommend doing a weekly check-in.

Speaker 2: 25:51

That's a little bit more in depth. Maybe it's Sunday morning before church, or it's Saturday, before you know the day gets started. You have coffee together. Whatever that moment is that makes the most sense, where you just say, hey, where's your one to 10? That's what we do, right. What's your one to 10 in business? What's your one to 10? And we'll also cover things like what has you most energized right now in your life and what's depleted your energy this week? Do you have anything coming up that you're worried about or that you're super excited about? And then, what are those metrics? And then how can I help you? Is there anything I can do to support you better through this?

Speaker 2: 26:23

That's usually a weekly thing, but it's so valuable for relationships.

Speaker 1: 26:28

Absolutely. The intentionality taking that time to connect is so important. What led you to be interested in all of these subjects?

Speaker 2: 26:39

So early days I thought I had two separate paths in my life. I had no idea I was gonna intertwine them. I went into sales and into technology and was headstrong into growing my career in businesses, but at the same time, my personal passion was human behavior. I read every book I could get my hands on. I became a certified hypnotherapist and trained in NLP and DHE, which is design, human engineering. It was anything that I could read any podcast, webinar, seminar, anything I could do to learn more about what makes people tick. I was just fascinated, and I was fascinated by things like culture and language and how it impacted people.

Speaker 2: 27:17

I had no idea that I was gonna actually mix the two until I had a rare situation happen in business where I needed to call on my human behavior side in order to inform what was gonna need to go into the scope of work for a technology build, and it worked. Let's just put it that way. It's a longer story, but it worked. And at that moment I realized, ah, if I can use all of these, as I say, jedi powers and all of this knowledge base to inform better decisions on technology builds or custom software, whatever it is that we're doing, this is gonna be a better solution, that's gonna have a better outcome for everyone and from that moment on, I never did another RFP, another request for proposal.

Speaker 2: 27:58

I never did anything where I gave the ideas out front for free, because I realized that those ideas informed by the behavioral science on the background, that was the secret sauce. So that's how it evolved.

Speaker 1: 28:11

Are you still involved in the business side of things? Are you still running companies and things like that in the tech space?

Speaker 2: 28:18

Yeah, so I still have five Out of the five companies. Three are active where they really require my time and attention. The other two are on autopilot. They coast One, my custom software mobile app development business, is set to triple in size this year.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Post-covid things have changed quite a bit.

Speaker 2: 28:37

Thank you so we're growing a lot. One of the things about that, speaking from the behavioral aspect, is we're not afraid to say no, we're not afraid to call the baby ugly. For example, if somebody comes to us with a scope of work maybe they want to build a mobile app or they need to integrate some healthcare system or whatever we'll look at what they're doing and say that's not going to work. Let us tell you why that's not going to work, behaviorally speaking. Because employees are humans, customers are humans. Everybody behaves in acts. According to behavioral science, just because we're building a business solution, you can't forget who's actually using it. So we try to make things gamified and enjoyable for the user, because then they're going to love logging into their daily system and using it. It becomes a lot more interactive for them, they're going to use it and the business will benefit.

Speaker 1: 29:25

Yeah, Then you recently also launched I guess you could say more of your B2C side. You're doing more things, especially in the realms of courses for women and things like that. Can you tell us more about that?

Speaker 2: 29:38

Yes, it's called Life Unleashed and it's lifeunleashedonline. If anybody wants to check it out, think of it almost like an online academy, where women certainly benefit. I feel like at middle age we realize there's no Santa Claus, I don't know. We get to this age where we feel like, wow, this isn't how I thought my life was going to turn out. When we become empty nesters, there's this reevaluation of who we are and what we want to do. Maybe we're bored to death in our career or we don't have the financial freedom we thought we're going to have, or maybe we find ourselves single again and we're trying to date and navigate these crazy dating waters in middle age. It's nothing like when we were young.

Speaker 2: 30:18

The idea was to give women a cheat sheet essentially the success strategies or the greatest hits of all the things that I learned from the world's leading experts, and put it all into cheat codes so that nobody had to go through all the things that I had to go through to get there. Now we've opened it up to couples as well, because you really do need to learn things like rules for fighting. We have a four point framework that will take all that fighting of recurring conversations that you just keep recircling the same fighting topics over and over again. We can eliminate that. It's a proven technique and we need the guys. The guys have to buy in, they have to participate. Especially when you're going to do future dreaming and vision mapping together, you want his dreams in there too. So we've incorporated a lot of the stuff for the guys in there as well.

Speaker 1: 31:06

I love that. As a working mom and wife, what have been, personally, some of the areas that you have focused on in order to succeed in your marriage, in your family, as well as in business? How have you kind of structured your days or your weeks or your life in order to hold all of those things sacred and to continue to cherish them without dropping one or the other?

Speaker 2: 31:34

That's such a good question. So the first thing I'll say is I didn't always do a good job at that. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to find that balance and I don't even like the word balance because if I think of a teeter totter, whatever, it assumes that everything is equal and it's not so. I've actually built and structured the companies in a way to where they can run without me pretty much, and that was very intentional. In my early days, when I was a brand new CEO, there was a lot of trying to prove myself and all this ego that was involved and it was all roads lead to Andrea and that might have been great for my ego but it wasn't great for my kids and my relationship and it just wasn't great in general for my health or anything else. So it took me a while to realize that I need to prioritize myself and the relationships that matter and the rest will fit in. If you think of boulders, those people and those relationships and things that matter most are your boulders, and then you've got pebbles and smaller things that you can fill around. Those become your relationships with your girlfriends and what you're doing with volunteering and the other things that really matter to you, but not as much, and then the sand is what fills in everything else around it. And if you prioritize in that way, you'll continue to put the people and the relationships first that matter.

Speaker 2: 32:49

And every once in a while you just get really out of balance.

Speaker 2: 32:52

And if you can go to your kids and go to your husband or your boyfriend or whatever, and say I have a project at work that for the next three months is just going to completely consume me and I'm apologizing up front if I'm not, is here for you emotionally, or my time, or if you really need me, babe, can you please come and just grab me and say, mom, I need you, or, hey, I need your help with something, and understand that this is just temporary. Sometimes, when you inoculate against a season like that ahead of time, everybody's OK and you've given them permission to be really honest when they feel neglected or that they need you. And there's other times when you may be all in with your relationship, because maybe something's going on with one of your kids and you need to spend time with them and you're really focused on them, or maybe it's your relationship and work suffers for it and that's OK, it's never balanced. It's just constantly paying attention to where your focus is. What is the highest and best use of your time? Right then.

Speaker 1: 33:49

That's really good. It's the clarity of the situation and then clarity in the communication to all of the people involved that help set it up for success. That's right. Yeah, where can our listeners find out more about you and what you do?

Speaker 2: 34:05

Sure, thank you. So they can go to Andrea Beach dot me. There's lots of information on there, and if they're interested in anything about career acceleration or business entrepreneurship or how to improve their love life, they can go to life on leash dot online. Or we have the new love life breakthrough dot com that they can visit as well, and, of course, all the social channels.

Speaker 1: 34:25

Awesome, and we have all of those. We'll put them in the show notes as well, so that people can easily find them. I really appreciate your time today, andrea. I learned a lot. I know the listeners did as well, and I appreciate our conversation.

Speaker 2: 34:38

Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1: 34:40

Here are my key takeaways from today's episode.

Speaker 1: 34:44

This topic isn't just about how to spot a liar. What I hope you took away from it and realized is that it's about looking deeper into every relationship we have and first starting with ourselves and asking how can I be sure that I'm showing up authentically and creating a safe place for the people in my life to tell the truth to me? As Andrea said, most people don't lie because they are vindictive or malicious. They lie because they're trying to protect themselves from being hurt or protect someone else from being hurt, or a third one that she mentioned was elevate their own status in other people's eyes. All of that being in mind, when people can feel safe and secure, those needs to lie all go away. When they know they're not going to get in trouble, or if they know that it's safe for them to say the truth without a doubt they don't have to be hurt without hurting someone else's feelings as best possible, or if they know that the person that they're talking to loves them for who they are and they don't have to prove themselves, then the truth comes more naturally. So what can we do to proactively prevent our relationships from turning into breaches of trust which lead can lead to ourselves lying or the other people lying. I love this team acronym.

Speaker 1: 36:01

Important relationships in your life. Find a way to connect each day, have some kind of touch, especially with family. Wouldn't necessarily recommend that in business, but family. Do something to physically touch each other, maybe with people that you work with in your business. It's more of just touching base with someone, seeing how people are doing. The E is for education. What did you learn today? Just getting a feel of their day, their mindset, what their experiences were. A is some kind of affirmation or appreciation to the other person, and then M is metrics, just checking in. Where do you need help? How can I support you? What was something great that happened to you today? Really, this is a framework for opening lines of communication so that you can stay more in touch, intentionally in touch and intentionally communicating with the people that you care about in your life. This helps with our emotional attraction, which is evoking emotions within others. They enjoy feeling when people know we care about them, then they will care about us.

Speaker 1: 37:03

It's this, stan Tattkin, the episode that I had with him a couple of weeks ago, which you can go and listen to. We talked about how people want to know that they are going to be looked out for and appreciated, and they will want to reciprocate that when it happens. There's a whole lot more we talked about in that episode, but it's important for emotional attraction. So what about when you do spot that someone's lying to you? Or you have that gut intention, or you have that gut feel that someone might be lying to you. I loved the takeaways from that as well, which is you don't have to say you just lied to me or anything like that. You simply I mean one of those, one of the takeaways that Andrea said was simply just pausing, looking at the other person, tilting your head a bit Hmm curious, hmm interesting. But it can be difficult to pause and slow down that much in the moment because we're hurt, we're angry. Trust is important and when we feel that it's been broken and that someone is lying to us, it's easier to go on the defensive. But if we can really calm down during those moments and try and press in lovingly and kindly and gently into those areas that we feel the truth has not yet been shared, then we are more likely to create a foundation and an environment that the other person will eventually feel comfortable and confident enough to hopefully share the truth. And then my third takeaway, which didn't have anything to do with with the how to spot a liar part of it, but the intentionality of communication with the people that you love in your life.

Speaker 1: 38:48

I love what she said about if you know you're entering into a stressful season, then being proactive in the communication of hey, this is a really hard time for me. I'm going to be overwhelmed. How can we all work together to get through this? I feel like so many times I know I've done this in my life where I just try and grind my way through a hard season and I don't necessarily want to admit that it's going to be hard to other people or feel like I'm failing the other relationships in my life, so I simply try and hold it all together and continue to do all things well, which means I don't really do anything well. How would it look different if I were to simply go to my friends, my family, my coworkers?

Speaker 1: 39:30

A perfect example of this is I'm, as many of you know, I'm in the process of my dissertation and specifically the place that I am right now in my dissertation, I mean looking backward. I now realize that this year I didn't realize how much this year was going to be incredibly difficult and how much time not just time on the clock, but like mental energy and emotional effort that it was going to take out of me and and and focus at many different times during my week. If I had known that, or maybe if I had just admitted it to myself, because I really thought on the front end that I could just like grind it through and get done in a couple of months with this specific part that I'm in, and that wasn't true. I even my chair, my dissertation chair, told me it's going to be a year and I laughed and cried at the same time. It was like, ah, I'll show you. And also, it cannot be a year, like I cannot grind through the next year this hard. But it has been a year.

Speaker 1: 40:28

I just wasn't willing to, I was lying to myself, I wasn't willing to admit the truth about it. If I had actually, on the front end, gone to my kids, my coworkers, my husband, my family, and said I'm about to go into a really hard season and it's going to be a year and I need help, can we plan what that looks like? Because I don't want to sacrifice these key things in my life. I don't want to sacrifice time with my family. I don't want to sacrifice. I mean right now I'm it's December literally have not decorated for Christmas, haven't pulled a tree down, have not even found the elves on the shelf in its December 7th. And for any of you who know anything about my family, my mother literally starts decorating for Christmas in October, fully decorated before before Halloween.

Speaker 1: 41:16

So there's always been an expectation in on my life, just from how I grew up, of like we decorate for Christmas in October and it that's how it needs to be in order to fully celebrate the season and all of those things. And it's been an expectation I've been carrying. And literally just this morning I I've all we've done is put the tree up, not even decorations, just an empty tree. And it's been there for like three weeks and I just stood in my loving, loving room and cry. And I just stood in my living room and cried and was like I'm too busy, like I am too busy to get the decorations down, to decorate this tree, and it there was a lot of personal feeling of have I let everyone down? Have I let myself down? Have I let my kids down when, when the truth of the matter is like is it really the Christmas decorations that matter? Is it really the perfectly decorated tree and the elves on the shelf? All of those are just expectations.

Speaker 1: 42:23

Going back to what I was saying earlier, that I've continued to try and hold myself to when maybe I just needed to admit to myself In January that this season there's going to be things I need to take off my shoulders and expectations I shouldn't hold myself to Because, in the grand scheme of things, they don't matter. They don't matter as much as spending time with my kids, spending time with my husband and doing the important things in my life. And I think it's hard when we try and keep it all together and not ask for help, and grind through and try and present ourselves as perfect and all put together Is when, internally, we completely fall apart. That was my soapbox for all of you today. I hope what your takeaway is is that it has nothing to do without a spot, a liar. But that was great and I love that we had that conversation. But I also love the takeaway, maybe today, just because of things I've been processing, that we don't have to do it all and we shouldn't, and it's important to be intentional about our time, about our focus and about our relationships.

Speaker 1: 43:49

I would love if you would share this podcast with a friend or someone who needs to hear it and maybe that was you today and if it helped you, I'm glad. Leave a review. It's one of the best ways you can help support the show and support the growth of it. It's one of the best Christmas gifts that you could give me. I appreciate you listening. Thank you for being a follower and a listener of it Starts With Attraction, and please share this with someone who might need it. Until next week, stay strong, but that doesn't mean you have to do it all.