Lie To Me

One of my favourite TV shows is Lie To Me. Tim Roth plays Dr Cal Lightman, an eccentric expert in deception detection who runs his own consulting business primarily assisting lawyers and prosecutors get to the truth. There’s always a story behind the story, and the trick is to work out who’s lying about it. His techniques combine reading of facial microexpressions, body language, gestures and human behaviour to discern the true emotions of everyone involved; often including his own staff.

Having learned the art of stripping away people’s facades to reveal what is really going on underneath, Dr Lightman has an arrogant edge about him, which is tempered by his paranoia and the painful dysfunctional relationships that he finds himself in. He sees through the white lies that other people spin to soften the real truth from him, and relies on his ability to cut through the protective … Continue reading…

Happiness by Matthieu Ricard

A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill

I was put onto the audio edition of this book by a colleague from my Toastmasters club during a conversation about what makes us happy. The book is a fusion of eastern Buddhist philosophy and western scientific thinking on what it means to adopt happiness as a lasting state of mind. A key point reiterated here which I hear a lot these days is that true happiness is an internal state; it is not dependent on external factors. If we are relying on other people or external circumstances for our happiness, then we are always at the whims and mercies of things that are beyond our control. When we are at peace with who we are inside, our happiness can be based on internal factors over which we have much greater control.

I can relate to a lot of what the author … Continue reading…