Chapter 2

One reason people lie is to achieve personal power. Achieving personal power is helpful for someone who pretends to be more confident than he really is. For example, one of my friends threw a party at his house last month. He asked me to come to his party and bring a date. However, I didn’t have a girlfriend. One of my other friends, who had a date to go to the party with, asked me about my date. I didn’t want to be embarrassed, so I claimed that I had a lot of work to do. I said I could easily find a date even better than his if I wanted to. I also told him that his date was ugly. I achieved power to help me feel confident; however, I embarrassed my friend and his date. Although this lie helped me at the time, since then it has made me look down on myself.

Money causes teenagers to feel stress. It makes them feel bad about themselves and envy other people. My friend, for instance, lives with her family and has to share a room with her sister, who is very cute and intelligent. This girl wishes she could have her own room and have a lot of stuff, but she can’t have these things because her family doesn’t have much money. Her family’s income is pretty low because her father is old and doesn’t go to work. Her sister is the only one who works. Because her family can’t buy her the things she wants, she feels a lot of stress and gets angry sometimes. Once, she wanted a beautiful dress to wear to a sweetheart dance. She asked her sister for some money to buy the dress. She was disappointed because her sister didn’t have money to give her. She sat in silence for a little while and then started yelling out loud. She said her friends got anything they wanted but she didn’t. Then she felt sorry for herself and asked why she was born into a poor family. Not having money has caused this girl to think negatively about herself and her family. It has caused a lot of stress in her life.