“Be ever careful what you say. Never take for granted that it is the truth because someone told you so.” -Theron Q. Dumont, Advanced Course in Personal Magnetism The Secrets of Mental Fascination

This rule may seem a bit out of place, at least, it did to me when I was reading it for the first time. It wasn’t until I met someone, let’s call him Ted, who showed me how important this rule is. Ted and I were at work and it was a pretty boring day to say the least. Not much was going on at the time so we were chatting it up to pass the time.

I had just met the guy, but it didn’t take me long to see that he was full of shit. Ted was a smart guy, you could tell, but he let his intelligence get to his head and he would often make statements that I knew were false and he say them as if they were fact. I noticed and I started to challenge what he was saying and quickly the validity of everything he was saying fell apart. Ted would make excuses or run off on tangents that lead nowhere to try and save his ass. I soon decided not to trust anything he said because I knew he was pulling it out of his ass and it totally turn me off to his personality.

I wouldn’t want to be this guy’s friend, much less have to be around him. As I was thinking that, I realized what he had done. Ted’s lying and bullshitting made him unattractive to be around; he was destroying his magnetic ability by not speaking with truth. He would just say whatever was on his mind without having anything to back it up. Ted thought that because he was smart and knew a decent amount about something that his following assumptions on the subject were valid and that maybe the people he’d tell his assumptions to wouldn’t notice and think he was oh so smart.

Interacting with Ted made me think about other people in knew in my life who did similar things. They would tell stories and add a little to it or take something away to put themselves in a good light or in order to put someone else in a bad light. Maybe they did it to try and become popular, gain status or destroy someone else’s status, or to protect their ego.

We all know someone like that, and maybe we do it ourselves to a certain degree, but what happens is that eventually people will see through the lies or see that you don’t really know what you’re talking about and become unattracted to your personality. Instead of pulling people towards you with a strong magnetic personality, you will push them away.

If you don’t know the full story or think that what you heard may not be true, then don’t tell it. If you have an assumption about something, then wait until you have done your own fact-checking before you tell someone. If you do repeat something you are told, then give the authority the information came from. Avoid the embarrassment and the mistrust that comes with being exposed as a bullshitter. Once it is lost trust is one of the most difficult things in this world to earn back.

Most people have a good sense for bullshit. Make sure that you know what you’re talking about. If you know someone who is honest and that you can rely on to tell you the truth, or who can admit when they don’t know something, think about how magnetic they are. You are drawn to their truth, and you can trust them. Those qualities are incredibly magnetic.