‘Fake It Till You Make It’ Is A Confidence Killer

It’s reasonable to postulate that everyone on the planet, at least one time has experienced a lack of confidence in themselves or their abilities. Confidence is an internal resource that you build as you stretch your comfort zone boundaries.

The opposite of confidence involves that part of you called your imposter. Let me be very clear, it’s normal human psychology to have an imposter self. Your imposter part formulates the thoughts, feelings and behaviours associated with your defensive survival program.

Your imposter part believes it is keeping you safe.

To clarify, your imposter is that part of you that fears failure or needs control, or things to be perfect.

Your imposter part is responsible for your overthinking and worrying about every little thing.

It’s worth stating again — everyone has an imposter, which is normal. Stressful experiences will cause your imposter to behave like it’s on steroids and amplify those negative traits to keep you safe.

It is often your confident part that can reassure you to have a crack, the negative feelings will pass. If however, your confident part is hiding, or is being sat on by your imposter part, guess how easy it is for you to remain focused, concentrate or succeed at anything?

Guess which part is out on deck yelling “The sky is falling”??

Yep, it’s tough to feel confident when you’re experiencing fear-based emotions.

So what is confidence?

Confidence is defined as the internal embodiment of your ability to trust in yourself — your abilities, decisions, or character. Your confident part demonstrates a strong presence to the outside world, is often assertive, and capable of making clear decisions.

Confidence is that trait that becomes the driving force for you to maintain learning new things, even when the lesson is hard. Confidence drives your motivation to continue through the perception of failure.

What isn’t normal, and can become quite destructive to the human psyche, is when your confidence account has run dry. This can occur when your imposter has been left unchecked.

“Confident” describes someone, who is self-assured, while “Confidence” is the feeling or belief in one’s abilities or qualities.

Without confidence, your natural capacity to value your worth will be challenged. This is a dangerous place for the human psyche, for a person lacking in self-worth or confidence will struggle to face life and its experiences.

One of the worst pieces of advice I’ve heard, read and witnessed is the “fake it till you make it”. If your imposter part is operating at Olympic pace, faking and pretending to be something you perceive you can’t do will feel impossible, and further reinforce negative thoughts, feelings and actions.

You risk reinforcing the misperception of lowered self-worth and confidence. This can so very easily become the root cause of anxiety and depression, especially for vulnerable or traumatized children.

Instead of ‘faking’ anything try these tips instead…

1. Know your worth

I wish I had a dollar for every time I told a clinic client that everyone is deserving and worthy of unconditional love, just for being born. I am constantly reinforcing self-worth for clients working through their stress patterns.

For whatever reason, some people have had negative experiences that make them question their belief in themselves. Experiences such as bullying, cultural, or sexual discrimination can leave a person feeling disposable, unlovable, or just not good in some way. This type of negativity erodes your confidence foundation.

The reality is that only you can define your worth. You’re in charge of allocating the confidence credit score system. If your confidence has rusted in any way, implement positive action(s) with techniques such as affirmations, tapping, or therapy to address the root cause of your feeling good.

Your self-worth infiltrates every aspect of you and formulates the foundation of confidence in all ways, so deal with the confidence rust as soon as it appears.

2. Know your good qualities

An important aspect of confidence is understanding the associated good qualities that have built your ability to trust and believe in yourself. This is an all-knowing kind of thing. Awareness of your good qualities contributes significantly to having a strong sense of self-worth.

Knowing and acknowledging your good, positive qualities, involves honest self-reflection. You gain so much power when you can recognise that there are things about you that are good, maybe even great.

​Indeed, we all have good qualities. This is what makes us unique and individual. We all have something to offer the world. Be sure to make a list, as this will become your future evidence that you can refer to on days when you feel challenged in the future.

But if your imposter part is spending your mental energy thinking about the qualities that you perceive you lack, little time or energy is remaining to explore the good or positive qualities. Getting into the habit of regularly self-reflecting, also supports you to identify when you have a garbage thought (negative self-talk) and do something about that.

If your confidence has begun to rust and you’re struggling with identifying all your positive qualities seek support from someone close to you. So often when the imposter has been running wild, your perception or sense of the world becomes blurred and you can so easily lose sight of what others see in you. Simple things like humour, determination, humility, knowledge or skills. Then it’s just a matter of shifting your mindset to focus on these good qualities.

3. Recognize things to be learnt or mastered

Tony Robbins can be quoted as saying “There is no such thing as failure, only results”. What Tony references in his teachings with this statement, is that if your mindset is open and positive, you can never fail only learn.

When you allow yourself to attempt a task, especially if it is new, then adopting an open mindset and allowing yourself to become curious will naturally boost your confidence.

How?

Your perception of the outside world is based on failure, it’s based on curiosity and seeking more information. Your mindset remains open to being fed more information, rather than closing down and operating a survival-based program.

As you identify things to learn, you are creating milestones for a future-forward path. This builds momentum and motivation and your confidence can soar.

4. Be kind to yourself

When your imposter is out for air, you can experience a myriad of fear-based thoughts and feelings associated with failure, and needing to be perfect or in control. Your imposter can so easily become a cruel inner critic if left unchecked.

Quite frankly, your imposter can be a bit of a bastard. But here’s what I’ve learned working clinically for over two decades — your imposter shows us self-doubt, perfectionism, needing control and all of those behaviours when you ignore its presence.

What would happen to your imposter if you loved it?

When you can observe those self-critical inner thoughts, you can meet the imposter’s negativity with kindness. Try using re-framing statements like, “I did the best I could”, or, “I’m proud of myself for the effort I put in”, or “I’m glad I had a go”.

Alternatively, you could call bullshit on the garbage thoughts and feelings. Take a couple of deep breaths, go for a short walk, scream into a pillow, or even tap.

This self-talk can help you re-write internal scripts that can help you become more confident.

5. Give everything your best effort

By doing your best, we have a locked and loaded response to your inner critic. When you hear those inner monologues starting to put you down, you can respond with, “I did my best.” And that is all you can do. When you do your best (while not striving for perfection and telling yourselves you could do more), you may be able to give yourself a bit more of a break and perhaps be more self-accepting.

Conclusion

Boosting self-confidence can be challenging and even at times, quite difficult. Focussing on these key skills can help. I hope that these suggested strategies can support you on the right path towards increasing your self-confidence whilst you soothe your imposter part.

First published with Illumination, a Medium Publication. Click here this piece.

If your IMPOSTER self is running your life and training like an Olympian, then maybe it’s time to show it some kindness?

Did you know I run a one day retreat? I’ve created an experience that allows you to meet your Imposter and call forward an internal cheerleader – so that you can soothe the fear of failure or imperfection, overthinking, or need for control.

We are all deserving of unconditional love and kindness – just for being born. We also deserve to ackowledge our internal imposter doesn’t need to run our life!

Prefer audio – visit the I am Change-ing podcast!

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