Fake it Till You Make It: How to Get What You Want

The biggest hurdle to overcome while getting to where we want in life, is ourselves and our fears. Whether it be fear of failure, of not measuring up, or just plain fear of life, ultimately what's keeping us stuck is internal conflict and our incessant drive to control life. There are some who endlessly try to control the outcome of their efforts so much so, that often times no steps towards action are ever taken. Its like they worry about what the public thinks about their product while the product still sits in the warehouse hidden. And all the while this product sits undiscovered, it's re-done over and over a tweak here and there in an attempt to reach perfection. What these people, the procrastinator's, the one's who live in fear, don't realize, is that perfection is not something you can predict. It may seem perfect in your eyes and horrendous to the world, or it may seem like a flop in your eyes and a masterpiece to the world. In the end, its through the perception and reactions of others that ultimately gauge what is good or bad, a success or failure. And even at that, who's to say the public is right?

This holds true with everything in life, relationships, work, starting a job, a new hobby, simply advancing or continuing what we normally do. Every day we're constantly choosing, evaluating and acting based on our perceptions of what is good or successful. Obviously, most of these choices come autonomously, often subconsciously, to where we hardly notice them, but its in this conditioning where we let the passivity of our decision making cripple us in fear when making conscious decisions. Our biggest villain...time. If given the time to think about our decisions, the more and more they paralyze us from action prompting us to re-do, re-work and withhold ourselves from fear of failure or rejection. But where does this come from, the fear, the anxiety? Maybe an abused past, or consistent rejection.

I don't have that answer, but what I do know is that with our thoughts we progress and extrapolate scenarios that we live out in our minds, where we play both producer and consumer in determining what to do. Its a conflict of interest, to evaluate AND decide. Its why its so easy sometimes to give the greatest advice and see things so clearly for others, but not yourself, because you're only playing one role, evaluator. There is truly no vested interest in anyone like the one you have in yourself. Ah ha! So the only one truly holding ourselves back is ourselves? Correct.

In order to set yourself free from the anxiety and worry, you need to simply evaluate your decisions from a single perspective and not fight the conflict within yourself evaluating both perspectives of your decisions. In a way, you need to cast aside your self-interest perspective, the one that is self-serving. Instinctively you aren't going to physically hurt yourself or abuse yourself, so give no thoughts to harmful failure or outcomes, they simply are manifestations of your own devise that aren't real or realized. Embarrassment, failure, of what? whom? Reactions of others are merely guides along a forward path, not a reflection of you, the person who has years of history making decisions. What does one adverse reaction really mean to you? It shouldn't mean much, but we paralyze ourselves from it because we generalize it and cast it into a big shadow of doubt about who we really are, when in reality, its merely a guide to ignore or listen to, depending on where we want to go. So in the end, does holding back and worrying about the right way matter, since ultimately, the way forward has to be our way anyway. If everyone sat at home and gauged what they do based on what society would want, we'd have no interaction.

Try to please a few, you might as well try to please them all, since ultimately someone is going to be disappointed, mainly yourself for trying to "game' life. Life isn't a game, to be played with and won, its a dance, you learn as you go. So when all else fails, and all of your evaluations come up leaving you stuck in inaction, do something, anything, even if you don’t know what or how. There's some honesty to the phrase, "fake it till you make it". I think at times, we get ourselves into situations of doubt or fear where sometimes the best thing to do is run with what you've got, figuring things out and hoping you pick up fast along the way. In the end, it may just be that you excel at what it was you thought you didn't. But give it time, too much thought, you may never know.