How to prevent people from lying

Recently one of my friends sent me a mail asking me whether its possible to stop lying or not. After i told him that its completely possible he replied back asking me how can he motivate someone to stop lying.

In response to his message i decided to write this article so that i let everyone know how to make someone stop lying.

Why do people lie
Every bad habit a person gets involved in has some kind of positive intention behind it even if it was something completely wrong. Some people become addicted to drugs just for the sake of feeling good.

While those people got involved in something that is totally wrong, still they had a good intention behind it which is mood regulation.

In order to help someone break the habit of lying you first need to understand the positive intention that he is trying to serve by lying.

How to motivate someone to stop lying
Some people lie to get attention, others lie to make others think that they are worthy while a third group lie to avoid the expected punishment.

In order to help any of these groups stop lying you shouldn't teach them self control techniques but instead you must help them deal with these underlying causes.

For example if the main reason someone lies was to attract attention then you must help him figure out why does he need attention that much and then help get over this need.

In short, lying can't be stopped by telling people that its bad but instead it can be stopped by helping them get over the underlying reasons that are the root cause for their lying.
Lying to yourself

This might sound strange but in fact a large percentage of people lie to themselves and even believe the lies just because they are too afraid to face the truth.

Many psychological researchers have proven that people who lie to themselves tend to believe the lies later on.

In order to stop lying to yourself you must first realize that you are lying to yourself then you must learn how to be brave enough to face the truth instead of hiding it from yourself.