There’s a phrase that I love and hate at the same time: “Fake it ‘til you make it.” It’s a common thing that a lot of people say – in business, in school, and in general life. I love it because it’s helpful to boost your confidence in a lot of unknown situations and I think it also helps to see how amazing you can be when trying something that you might not be familiar with or that you are confident in. However, I also hate it because sometimes, I feel that it’s not authentic and that bothers me a bit.
But I have this problem of having a lot of fake confidence. There are days that I feel like I’m still faking it to make it and I’m wondering when I’m going to make it. At times, I also wonder if anyone notices that I am displaying fake confidence.
I’m naturally an outgoing person with an extroverted personality. One would think that making friends would come easily to me and that I would be at ease in social situations. In all honesty, I have always had a hard time making friends and being in social situations. I love being in front of people, but all the rest of the stuff – it scares me. As a kid, I had one best friend. I was a bit of a bully when I was in elementary school (it’s terrible, I know, but I was). The rest of the kids were more like acquaintances. I never felt like I fit in with any group of friends. To this day, I still feel a lot of insecurity in my friendships with the exception of a close college friend. You would think that 30 some years later, I would’ve worked through that. Guess I’m still working on it.
The other night, though, I was having drinks with some other bloggers and I felt my fake confidence coming out again. These are some amazing women who have been blogging for a lot longer than me – they are my blogger celebrity friends and I can’t believe that I know them in real life. It’s pretty cool. But as I was sitting there, I felt nervous and was over-thinking what I was saying and had said. I hoped that they thought I was interesting and worthy of their company. I tried hard to appear cool and confident, but inside, I knew I was faking it til I made it. I was still me, but it was this ramped up version of me that had a lot of makeup on with high heels that were too big for my feet. I felt like a “child dressed up in her mom’s clothes” version of me.
I have discovered that I’ve been doing this a lot recently – it’s my stage me and then the home me. I flip a switch and it sometimes feels like I’m playing the role of me outside of my home. Other times, I’m playing the wife and other times, it’s mom. On this blog, though, I try to be core of who I am. I try not to play the role depending on my audience, but try to be the stripped down version of me regardless of who may be reading. It’s been therapeutic for me at times.
Part of this fake confidence comes from how I view myself as well. I have been realizing that in the depths of me, I am uncertain, uncomfortable, and sometimes very unloving to myself. I’ve definitely been realizing this more and more as I watch my daughter and think about her own confidence. She is a confident girl and she is confident in her abilities and who she is because she loves who she is. I think I’m going to take a page from her book on that one.
I hope to look back and say that one day I found a true sense of confidence that’s rooted in loving and accepting myself. No more fake confidence. More than that, though, I hope that I have modeled genuine confidence for my daughter and that she will never have to rely on fake confidence.