When you want to feel fake

April 18, 2011 by Joshua
in Awareness, Blog, Leadership, Tips

Why would anyone want to feel fake? When do you want to feel fake?

Developing leadership skills or other types of personal development aren’t like learning typical how-to skills. When you develop leadership skills or develop personally, you change how everyone sees you and how you see everyone.

You change as a person, in other words.

You used to be person A and expect to become person B. As person A you knew what environments, beliefs, and behaviors brought you reward. You knew how to enjoy life. As the person B you will become you expect to know what environments, beliefs, and behaviors will bring you reward so you expect to know how to enjoy life.

In between, you don’t know how much of A you will retain or discard, nor do you know what new things B will require. So you’re some Frankenstein’s monster of mixed environments, beliefs, and behaviors, some of which resonate with each other, others of which strike dischord.

You feel fake. That fakeness is an essential part of meaningful personal change. You don’t feel fake when you learn how to bake a cake because you haven’t changed. You also don’t feel fake when you try to change only a small amount.

After a few meaningful personal changes, you come to look forward to the feeling of fakeness as a sign you’ve taken on meaningful change instead of trivial and are progressing, having discarded parts of A and started experimenting with parts of B.

Fake it till you make it is great advice.

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3 responses on “When you want to feel fake

  1. Pingback: The Method: transformations, stage 3: regular life | Joshua Spodek

  2. Pingback: Goodbye guilt and blame, VI | Joshua Spodek

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