Honesty and Compassion

When to Fake It Till You Make It (and When You Shouldn’t)

Faking it for the right reasons can change you for the better. Here’s why.

Posted Jun 27, 2016By Amy Morin

One day, a client came to see me because she felt socially awkward. She knew that her inability to make small talk was holding her back both personally and professionally. As a shy person, she hated going to networking events. But making connections was vital to her career.I asked, “What do you usually do when you go to a networking event?” She said, “I stand awkwardly off to the side and wait to see if anyone will come talk to me.” I asked her, “What would you do differently if you felt confident?” and she said, “I’d initiate conversation and introduce myself to people.”

Right then and there, she discovered the solution to her problem: If she wanted to feel more confident, she had to act more confident. That wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear. She’d hoped for a solution that would immediately make her feel more confident. But the key to becoming more comfortable in social situations is practice.Her instinct was to wait until she felt more confident, but that confidence wasn’t going to magically appear out of thin air—especially if she was standing around by herself. However, if she started talking to people like a confident person, she’d have an opportunity to experience successful social interactions, and each of these would boost her confidence.

Acting “As If”

Acting “as if” is a common prescription in psychotherapy. It’s based on the idea that if you behave like the person you want to become, you’ll become like this in reality:

1. If you want to feel happier, do what happy people do—smile.

2. If you want to get more work done, act as if you are a productive person.

3. If you want to have more friends, behave like a friendly person.

4. If you want to improve your relationship, practice being a good partner.Too often we hesitate to spring into action. Instead, we wait until everything feels just right or until we think we’re ready. But research shows that changing your behavior first can change the way you think and feel.

The Biggest Mistake Most People Make

Faking it until you make it only works when you correctly identify something within yourself that’s holding you back. Behaving like the person you want to become is about changing the way you feel and the way you think.If your motives are to prove your worth to other people, however, your efforts won’t be successful, and research shows that this approach actually backfires. A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people who tried to prove their worth to others were more likely to dwell on their shortcomings. Ambitious professionals who wore luxury clothing in an effort to appear successful, and MBA students who wore Rolex watches to increase their self-worth just ended up feeling like bigger failures. Even worse, their attempts to project an image of success impaired their self-control. They struggled to resist temptation when they tried to prove that they were successful. Putting so much effort into faking it used up their mental resources and interfered with their ability to make good choices.

How to “Fake It” the Right Way

Acting “as if” doesn’t mean being phony or inauthentic. It’s about changing your behavior first and trusting the feelings will follow. As long as your motivation is in the right place, faking it until you make it can effectively make your goals become reality. Just make sure you’re interested in changing yourself on the inside, not simply trying to change other people’s perceptions of you.

The function of anger is to protect vulnerability and neutralize threat.

The threat humans cognitively perceive is almost always to the ego i.e., how we want to think of ourselves and have others think of us. Anger neutralizes ego-threat by devaluing, demeaning, or undermining the “power” of the person perceived to be threatening. Humans get angry when they don’t get what they want, when they’re disrespected, or when they perceive something is unjust/unfair. Anger, the emotion, is a chemical messenger. It communicates to us, to others, and motivates us to act, speak, do something. Healthy responses to anger include being assertive, feeling empowered, protecting ourselves and love ones from ACTUAL threat, setting boundaries with others, and making social change for justice (for example). It becomes unhealthy when we become passive-aggressive, violent, vengeful, spiteful, aggressive, resentful, sarcastic, “moody”, rude etc.

Receive the message and respond from a wise, calm place after the intensity of the emotion has past. Sometimes we have to act in the moment. Our ancestors may have required this for fight/flight survival. These days, we can generally PAUSE and calm the self before responding from a mindful and compassionate heart and mind. Remember: Hurt people, hurt people.

Retrieved and edited 06/12/2021 from “Voice of Experience: Three rules for identifying abnormal child sexual behaviors” by Gregory K. Moffatt, a veteran counsellor with more than 30 years experience. If you are a survivor of sexual trauma at any age, I encourage you not to read this article.

From the perspective of Moffatt’s professional experience, childhood sexual behaviours can be grouped into three categories: 1. normal behaviours, 2. behaviours that are not normal but not unusual, and 3. behaviours that are abnormal or statistically rare. For the purpose of this post, I will be replacing the word “normal” with “natural” and/or “common” moving forward.

Rule No. 1: Natural or common sexual behaviours in children are never forced. The exploration is mutual. While one child likely had the idea first, both children must participate freely. This doesn’t mean that two children might willingly agree to engage in abnormal sexual behaviours, however, therefore read the next to rules for clarification.

Rule No. 2: Natural or common sexual behaviours in children are never painful. Children who behave within cultural and developmental norms will stop what they are doing when they realise they have caused pain.

Rule No. 3: Natural or common sexual behaviour in children is never invasive. Natural childhood curiosity does not include inserting objects or one’s own body parts into the cavities of others — anus, vagina, mouth, etc.

I’m unsure why Moffatt didn’t make this a 4th rule – he did add that most of the time, this type of childhood behaviour occurs between children of similar age. It is highly unusual for a young child to sexually engage with a teen without violating one of the three rules above. That behaviour definitely calls for further investigation. And, certainly, any sexual interaction between an adult and a child is cause for mandated reporting.