Podcast Transcript | Ep. 38

Faking It Until You Make It

Fake It Until You Make It | Ep. 38

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Order Within Navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis, many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?

[00:00:24] How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism? These questions and many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek.

[00:00:45] Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host, Brandon Ward. Back with another episode of order within I hope you all have been enjoying it. For the new listeners. Welcome for the old listeners. I really appreciate your support. Sticking with me through all this.

[00:01:03] In the last few weeks I've launched. Uh, men's coaching business, which is clarified my focus of work and purpose in a way that I've never felt before, which is incredible. So I'm excited to continue to expand on that. I'm going to layer in content around a lot of the challenges that men face now.

[00:01:21] I'm focusing on men's coaching, but the topics that we discuss on this show. A lot of them are applicable to most people. Because ultimately it's about getting to.

[00:01:34] Reaching our potential and fulfilling our potential and finding fulfillment within our lives. Creating fulfillment within our lives. That's the whole concept of order within is creating order within our lives within ourselves. So today's episode, we're going to be talking about faking it until you make it. I wrote a thread on this earlier in the week.

[00:01:54] And I want to expand on it more because it's just become a very prominent. Idea or philosophy. And the personal development and career spaces. So let's dig in. We're going to break through first. We're going to look at definitions on it. We're going to look at, I'm going to share some personal stories of doing these things.

[00:02:14] I'm going to share some examples of how this stuff works or doesn't work. Look at some pros and cons and then talk about some considerations. For steps we can take to counter this and improve ourselves.

[00:02:29] First and foremost, the definition of faking it until you make it. This is often used in, as I had mentioned earlier. The concept of this is in personal development career development. And a lot of it is. Pretending to be more confident or competent than you actually are in order to achieve a goal or overcome a challenge.

[00:02:54] The idea is that by pretending or faking it. We can embody that confidence, that ability. And we can then execute and achieve at a higher level because we've elevated the sense of self that we feel. Around our ability. So that's the idea of faking it until you make it is we envision ourselves. In a place where we have the abilities, we have the confidence, we have the skills to do the things that we are saying. We can, even if we don't believe it,

[00:03:24] The idea is that we can, because our mind. Does not know the difference between what is real or not in that sense. So all it knows. Is the reflection of what we believe. Our beliefs don't have to be true. It's just, what's true to us. That's the power of self development and self mastery. That's also the detriment of it is that we are both.

[00:03:46] Our master. And the slave in this scenario. In order to master ourselves and create order within. There are things that we have to do on a daily basis to, to nurture ourselves, to create a wellbeing, to create a sense of wellbeing and wholeness within us. And so the idea of faking it until you make it can be a very powerful tool.

[00:04:07] To use in moments. If we're not feeling confident or doubting ourselves, we can leverage that. We can envision the person we're aiming to be. The successful person. The person that's leading teams or providing the insight that they need or helping solve the problems that we want to solve. If we don't have those abilities or confident. Now we can envision ourselves feel that and then act from that place.

[00:04:29] It's meant to be a temporary solution. It's meant to be a tactic. A hack, if you will, that will allow us to feel and envision ourselves in that elevated state and then act from there. It can work. It can work really well. And in certain situations, but when it becomes a strategy for life, And if we're feeling that on a regular basis where we don't feel confident really consistently, if we're feeling unconfident consistently this, faking it until you make it.

[00:05:01] Can make it actually a lot worse. And that's the point of a lot of what I'm covering in today's show is discussing how this happens and what's happening from this. And so in my own life,

[00:05:13] I did this a lot. In my twenties. And early thirties, like when I was a teenager, 18, 19, 17. I started learning about these things and I never felt like I was really insecure as a kid and into adolescence and teenage and young adulthood. I was very insecure. I was, I had anger issues. I'm going to, I'm going to do an episode on like my story. I feel like it will be helpful.

[00:05:39] For people to know a little more about me and learn why I'm. So I guess inspired to do all these things that I'm doing and what motivates me.

[00:05:49] But I applied this in my life for many years. Especially in my college years. Uh, I didn't feel confident. Inside. But I got really good at faking it and pushing through and keeping the positive attitude up. And really a lot of what I was doing though, was suppressing what I was feeling inside. Suppressing the negativity suppressing.

[00:06:10] My wounds, my lack of self-esteem. I was just shoving all that down and trying to fake that. I was confident that I was strong. That I was. Uh, high value person. I didn't feel valuable in myself. I didn't like myself because I had not taken the time. To get to know who I truly was. I did not. I have not taken the time to spend with myself to nurture that relationship with myself, nor did I know how to, I didn't know how to do those things. So my, I suffered for many, many years and.

[00:06:41] Faking it until I made it, as they say was making it worse because ultimately I kept faking and pretending. And because that's the idea is that you do this for a bit moments and moments, and then eventually you'll feel confident. That's the whole concept of it is that you fake it until you make it until you have.

[00:06:59] Those skills until you feel confident. But. We never get to the, until you make it part. We rarely do. That's the thing, even when we do make it so to speak, if we don't address the inner things that are creating the feelings in the first place, the lack of confidence, the lack of feeling good about who we are, the low lack of self-esteem.

[00:07:22] It doesn't matter how much success we create in the world. In fact, it may make these inner feelings worse because we're going to now criticize ourselves. For not feeling good, even though we have success or it's not enough for us, we have to keep going and going and going. So this is a cycle that can be created.

[00:07:43] And perpetuated in our lives. And so I did this for many years. I was in college and, I was a bartender in college and I, I pushed myself a lot in university. I had a terrible fear of speaking publicly. When I was a kid, I had an experience in ninth grade where I completely froze in front of the entire science class. And it just mortified me from that period forward until my senior year in college.

[00:08:07] I made the decision because I had been working on myself, been going through some personal development, reading books and working on my anger issues, starting to make some progress. I wanted to tackle my fear of public speaking. So I started taking on all the job, all the public speaking. Projects in college, me and my friend, Adam, actually we both did this and we became the go-to guys to do this. And we got really good at it. And that was in essence where faking it until I made it actually worked because I was terrified the whole time. But I pushed through that fear and was able to grow and expand my skillset around public speaking.

[00:08:45] But. That fear, that inner lack that I felt.

[00:08:52] That inner falsehood. Never went away and. The more I did that. The more I tried to not pretend that I don't care about things, pretend that I am super confident, pretend that I am detached. Pretend that I'm not sensitive. I was. Changing myself. I wasn't comfortable with who I was. And so I was faking it based on this idea of what confidence.

[00:09:19] And. Attractive young men should do or look like a lot of this stuff. I was getting these ideas from magazines and movies and culture. I didn't realize how toxic all that stuff was, how it wasn't healthy examples and how that was fake. It was a false reality in many ways that we were, that I was consuming.

[00:09:38] Because there's a lot of things that we don't see, right? On social media or in magazines or in, in. The movies or television. There's a lot of things that we don't see. It's. We can be easily deceived as the point. And my. Drive my faking it. Made it worse because I was becoming something I'm not, and that's what was ultimately the problem is that I had not accepted.

[00:10:02] And learn to love who I am from within and embrace all that. I am my sensitivities, my thought, like my need to think things through, I think a lot. That was something that I was never comfortable with. And when I was young, The fact that I wore my heart on my sleeve. I was always a very emotionally sensitive person.

[00:10:22] I felt ashamed of that because of I was a man and there was, I grew up in West Virginia in the eighties and nineties. So like the whole concept of sensitivity and being a balanced male was not at all existent. Especially in that culture. So I was ostracized and ridiculed for that. My parents and family told me, I think too much, I'm too sensitive. I wear my heart on my sleeve, et cetera. So there was a lot of not accepting who I was. So I was projecting this image of what I thought I needed to do based on what I had learned from our culture.

[00:10:52] And was. Presenting that to the world. I was miserable on the inside. And ultimately at the end of the day, it didn't work. It didn't get me to that point to where I made it with myself. By being confident. And that's the thing. We can't fake confidence. In our life. Like we can find moments. We may be able to do it in certain areas of our life, certain skills, like I had mentioned earlier around public speaking, that's where this idea started. It's in those moments, these momentary things, where we are lacking confidence, that's normal when we're starting something new.

[00:11:29] Anything that's growth oriented. We're going to make mistakes in the beginning. We're going to be uncomfortable. We're going to struggle. So that's to be expected. And there's nothing wrong with that. But if we don't believe that, and we think we have to have this idea of perfection that we have to be perfect and that mistakes aren't part of the process, then it just, it mucks us up inside. And so much of us, so many of us live like that. And I lived like that for years.

[00:11:56] And I was miserable and the older I got. I got out of university. The economy tanked in 2008, I graduated in 2007.

[00:12:04] I was depressed. I got a DUI. I was a mess.

[00:12:09] But over the years as time went on and I was in the professional force, things got worse. I felt more and more isolated, more disconnected. More lonely, more miserable. And what I learned over time was that was my own disconnection for myself. And I'm going to do an episode. I've done an episode before on, on self parenting. I'm going to do more of that.

[00:12:27] Because that process, this is a huge thing. And I'm influencing that is influenced in my coaching practice as well is the ability to self parent and love ourselves intentionally. There's a process. That we can go through to do that. And it can be unique to each of us, but there are pieces to it that we can leverage. And.

[00:12:45] Engaging and building that connection to ourselves is what allows us to. Be genuine and authentic in our expression. In our being. And that's the key. Is, this is what we can't fake confidence for all times. They're in moments we can. And it can be helpful in moments, but it's not a life strategy. And if we don't feel confident,

[00:13:09] At a baseline, like if our baseline level of existence. Is unconfident insecure, fearful, and that's. Faking that confidence won't fix that. There's deeper things that are happening. Like our lack of confidence, our lack of self-esteem the way we feel inside. Is a reflection of the state of our mental state, of our beliefs, the stories that we've been telling ourselves, whether true or not, they are true to us. And that's all that matters. Without the awareness.

[00:13:38] Of those pieces. We will struggle because the root is within our psychological being. And that's where so much of this stuff is tangled up and mucked up. And there's a lot of people. Who do this type of thing. And so we want to. Avoid that, like I know. And we all know people. Who are never genuine. They're never authentic. They're always putting on.

[00:14:07] Especially in professional settings. You can feel it when you're around people, you know that they're not showing you all that they are. They're always putting on a cheery disposition. It could be a coworker or someone in your family. They deny negativity in many ways. It's this it's toxic positivity really is what it is. Faking it until you make it. It's toxic positivity.

[00:14:27] When it's done improperly. And that's, what's taken over so much of our culture right now is toxic positivity. And this has been happening for a while because we have to be real about things. So we all can think of someone in our life that isn't authentic to who they are, and they're projecting this image of confidence and strength and all of this stuff, but really.

[00:14:49] It's just a facade and when we're behaving like that, Internally we're suffering and it's inevitable. We can deny that our entire lives people get good at suppressing the truth. And how they feel, but if we want to make change, then we have to acknowledge what's happening. Recognize our baseline of feelings.

[00:15:08] Of where we are with ourselves each day. And look at.

[00:15:13] Where we're starting from and then go from there. And if we don't feel good, The majority of the time, if we feel insecure, fearful, Small, then there are things inside of us that we have to unpack and uncover that's. The beautiful thing is we can do it. You can make change. You can become the best version of yourself, that vision of you, that you hold for yourself and your life can absolutely be.

[00:15:39] Built and achieved, but it happens bit by bit, day by day. Through compassion and care for ourselves. And we have to do that through our actions. We have to align our thoughts and our words with our actions. And that's where the work lies.

[00:15:53] There are many examples of this throughout around us. You can probably think of people too yourselves. But the pros and cons of this section, we talked a little bit about already, but. So the pros of faking it until you make it as has been discussed, pretty extensively, obviously in moments, this is a great strategy to deploy. If we're feeling unconfident, sometimes we just have bad days, even things that we're good at, and we know we're good at it. We don't feel good that day.

[00:16:18] So we get into that, fake it until you make it envisioning ourselves in a state and we can elevate ourselves. Uh, those things are tangible. It's great. Tony Robbins is really made his whole career around this type of stuff. I'm not a fan of Tony per se. I haven't really read too much of his work. I've read a little bit, I've watched a ton of his videos and stuff, but he's been around forever.

[00:16:38] So there's like exercises and movements that he teaches people that can work, that can activate your energy, that can make you feel powerful in the moment. That's where faking it until you make it can be helpful is to get a little extra jolt to get that force that we need in the moment. That's the whole point of it is to use it in moments when we need it.

[00:16:58] But the con is what I was describing and what so many people are doing now, which is living. In authentic lives. That's what I did. I was deceiving myself for many years because I was living up to a standard based on external objectives of whatever masculinity and confidence and esteem looked like.

[00:17:18] That society had shared with me. And I was trying to emulate that. And I was failing and I was miserable. But I wouldn't let people know that because I was faking it. So I just, I was internalizing my suffering until it got to the point to where I couldn't do it anymore. I was suicidal. I was. I didn't want to live anymore. So I, luckily I found the inner bonding process and that changed my life. Things haven't been have been not the same at all since then. And then the growth mindset came after.

[00:17:45] So there's absolutely hope for us. No matter where we may find ourselves now. But. The downside of this is that when we apply this to the whole of our life, we end up living lives that are not a reflection of who we truly are from within. And we are going to be living a life. The longer we do this. The more things we put up, careers, families, all this stuff around us that are not a reflection of who we truly are.

[00:18:13] The more we're going to become imprisoned. By the world that we've created around us. Authenticity is crucial for life fulfillment. And until we discover that we're going to continue to suffer as a species, it's just, it's inevitable. And so understanding that and recognizing that momentary. Usage of this is fine, but life strategy as a whole is not, it's not good and it's going to create more problems than it helps. And so the key is though,

[00:18:43] Is to look at our baseline. Look at our baseline of existence. Look at where we are today. And move away from so we can start to get to actually feeling and being the person that we desire to be, which is where we're going to not faking it, but becoming it. Becoming the thing that we were attempting to fake.

[00:19:06] Sometimes we may realize.

[00:19:10] The reflection. And connection with ourselves that.

[00:19:16] What we thought we initially wanted to be, was not at all who we really are, and that could change completely. Or it could also just validate what we've always wanted, but now we actually have a means to go about doing it. And so that's the difference is we have to be honest with ourselves and that's where this comes from. When we start getting into.

[00:19:35] Steps we can take action. We can take. It all comes back to. Self reflection. It all comes back to.

[00:19:45] Holding. True to who we are. Spending the time to nurture that relationship with ourselves. Daily. Inner bonding and self parenting. Is the way that we can get to know ourselves. So if you're not doing this, if you don't have a process in place to where you can establish a relationship with yourself,

[00:20:06] And this may seem weird. But I can promise you. The relationship that we have with ourself. Influences every relationship that we have in our life, every single one. There isn't anything that's impacted our life. That's not influenced by our personal relationship with ourselves. So knowing that. It's the foundation to health and wellness is the relationship with ourself.

[00:20:32] So understanding how to care for ourselves, understanding mental health, understanding how to navigate our emotions, the dark ones, the negative ones, the deep ones, the mucky ones. Understanding our mind, our thoughts, how to observe them. How to become aware of them, how to manage those things.

[00:20:47] How to clarify. The root of these things, how to explore our feelings so that we can. Uncover our story. And look at. Who we are and understand. The things that are coming up to us, feelings and emotions are signals. They're not to be ignored, they're incredible gifts. Our feelings are our emotions. Because they are indicators. If we're angry or upset or sad or lonely or depressed.

[00:21:15] Those are there for a reason they're communicating to us that we are out of alignment with ourselves that something is wrong and we need to do work. We need to look. Within and find where that root is. Of what is stopping us of what is potentially blocking us. And this connection with ourself, developing a relationship with ourself allows us to do this.

[00:21:37] It allows us to establish a trusted relationship with who we are that we can begin to cultivate and build on. And start to understand why am I feeling depressed? Why do I feel so isolated? Why am I lonely? Why do I feel lonely all the time? Why do I think I don't want to live? Why do I want to take my own life?

[00:21:57] Some things get dark. But as we get in there and we start exploring. Stories will emerge. Our whole process of inner bonding is connected to our inner child and all of us carry within us, our child. That we age through so that psychological child is still within us. We don't lose our five-year-old self. We just grow from it. But.

[00:22:23] Like the foundation of my 37 year old self is built upon all the ages up to that point. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, et cetera. Our youth, is the foundation. Of the way our brain set up the beliefs that we have, the things that we, the way we operate. All of that lives within us. And it starts with our inner child and that child stays with us throughout our life. And but that child is the secret to our joy, our creativity. Our fire, our purpose. It's where all of that comes from. It's our innocence. It's also what connects us to the universe, to life to God. That's the seed of. The infinite that lives within each of us. That's the power we hold is that inner child, that inner child is our greatest gift.

[00:23:10] And as we learn to cultivate that relationship and explore that inner child and get to know that inner child more. Envision yourself, whatever it may be at an age. For me, it was always at five to six range. I feel like when I'm talking to myself as a child, And start to explore some of this stuff.

[00:23:26] That little kid will have stories for you. They will tell you. Why they feel the way that they do, they will tell you where this hurt is coming from. And they will tell you what they need from you now, because the upside of becoming adults is that we don't have to rely on anyone. We can become the parents.

[00:23:43] That we always desire and needed. And this is how we cultivate an authentic. Relationship with ourselves. And we can overcome this, fake it until you make it stuff. And so start with journaling. If you have a journal, if you like to do it on the computer, whatever. And just start checking in. Asking yourself, how are you doing today? How am I feeling? Explore those feelings.

[00:24:06] Envision that child. What do they look like? What age are they? And what would you do if you were an adult and you saw a child on the side of the road or on the sidewalk crying? And they were by themselves. And they were upset. And there was no one, or it looked like there were no parents or adults around. We would stop. How would we address that child? We would come down to their level. We would bring care to it. We would bring attention.

[00:24:33] We would be concerned for them. We would want to understand, Hey, where are you? Why what's, why are you upset? Why do you seem to be alone here? And the child would communicate with us. I lost my parents. I don't know where they went, whatever it would be. And then we would care for that child. We would help them. We would help them find their parents. We would lead them.

[00:24:47] We would protect them because they're children. And they need protection. They can't protect themselves. We have to do the same thing for ourselves. That little child in you. Is still there. Yearning for love for care for attention.

[00:25:04] And inner bonding allows us to do that, allows us to cultivate and build that relationship with ourselves and.

[00:25:11] Experience the most wonderful thing that we can experience in life, which is truly a connection to who we are, which allows us to connect with everyone around us. Again, I said this earlier. When we're disconnected from ourselves when we're disconnected from our authenticity. The joy that we bring the love that we carry within us. We can't feel those things in other people.

[00:25:29] It's impossible because again, our relationship with our self is a reflection. What we're having with others is going to reflect the relationship that we have with ourselves. So if we can't connect with joy and love within ourselves, we won't be able to do that with our partners, with our friends, with our family.

[00:25:44] So the relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship of all. It dictates and defines every other relationship we have in our lives. And when we learn to do this, it can truly transform. The way we live, the way we feel and the experiences that we have every day. Now, that's not, this is not a panacea, right? It's not a quick fix. This is.

[00:26:05] It takes work and more importantly, above all. It's daily showing up in little moments. Checking in with ourselves daily. It just has to be a few minutes each day. It doesn't have to be this crazy thing.

[00:26:19] But uncover what's bothering us uncover what's limiting us, uncover what we're excited about. It's not just negative stuff. This is the fun part. You get to explore what makes you, who you are, and you can come to realize what makes you great, whatever that may be. Maybe it's your quirkiness. Maybe it's your weird love for bugs. Maybe it's science. I don't know.

[00:26:38] It could be anything. As an example from, for me, I became to realize that I love my sensitivity. I loved that I thought about things a lot, all the things that I saw as problems when I was young, became my greatest gifts as an adult, as I become to learn and embrace myself and accept who I was.

[00:26:55] It turns everything upside down. But it starts with compassion. And patience with ourselves. That's a hard thing to learn. A lot of us don't learn this because we learn it from our parents and our parents don't know how to do it. They don't do it to themselves. They can't teach us. This is stuff we have to model.

[00:27:12] So we can go about modeling these things and building that relationship with who we are to overcome this need to fake it until you make it. It's a good thing to do in moments where we're feeling maybe down or a lack of confidence, but it's not a life strategy. And if we feel again, the baseline of who we are.

[00:27:30] Is low confidence, low self-esteem, low worth. We're sad, isolated, depressed. The majority of the time. There are things inside of us that we have to uncover. Because those are signals. They are signals to us that something's wrong in our life. Inside us. In our environment, maybe a combination of those things.

[00:27:50] But it's amazing what can happen and change outside of ourselves when we do the work within. How jobs can fade away. Relationships can change places to live. There's so much stuff that can happen. And when we align with ourselves and we put, we start putting in the work universe, takes note. The universe responds to that type of stuff. We are creators. It's not a saying we literally create our lives.

[00:28:13] Our lives. From our minds, it starts as visions. Thoughts. Mental energy and we bring that stuff into life. To physical form materialization. The universe responds to that process. So as we connect to ourselves and we love and begin to love who we are. We can start to build and create and expand. And the universe will pave a path for us of our own making.

[00:28:36] It's the most enriching and fulfilling process I've ever experienced. It's why I do all this stuff because it's so many people are suffering unnecessarily. Once you understand how these things work and they're. Are so much that we can do to influence and impact. Our ability to feel good on a regular basis and feel good about who we are.

[00:28:56] And. More importantly, above all find fulfillment and purpose in life in our expression so we can make a difference and feel good about the life we're living. That's an incredible place to be. That's all what we all strive to do at the end of the day. And. That's the objective. Authentic expression of who we are.

[00:29:14] To find fulfillment. In ourselves. And live a life of purpose. That's what we're aiming for. And that's what it's about. All right, y'all that's all I got for today's episode. I'm excited. Oh man. I'm so stoked about this men's coaching practice. Can't wait to keep growing that I'm expanding the content. I've been making a ton of progress on the site around the blog posts, the threads I've been taking all my Twitter threads, expanding them.

[00:29:38] And reformatting them. So for you, who happen to follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn? If you check out my website, the content is getting expanded from there. So you can check it out. If you want. You can also subscribe to my sub stack. You can follow me on Twitter. You can connect me on LinkedIn. All the information is in the show notes.

[00:29:55] Twitter is at Brandon Lee ward. LinkedIn is Brandon L. Ward. And then my website is BrandonLeeWard.com.

[00:30:03] So I hope y'all are. Oh, dang, happy, happy new year, 2023. Y'all happy new year. I'm feeling great about 20, 23. So I hope you guys are too guys and gals. If you're not. We can work to get you there, to get you feeling good about it. That's what it's all about. So with that being said, Until next time y'all.

[00:30:21] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.