FAKING IT UNTIL YOU DON’T MAKE IT…
We've all heard the phrase, fake it til' you make it, right? I've lived by this motto for many things in my life and most times it works out. But what happens when it doesn't? What happens when you are faced with the reality that you just aren't making it?
We never go into something expecting to fail, a marriage, a job, a venture... we say 'yes' because we believe we can do it, we believe we can make it work and be successful. Sometimes we aren't exactly sure how but we know we can, so we jump. We hit walls, we have struggles, we have breakthroughs and realizations, we learn, we grow and we make it. But there are times when the strides we are making just aren't enough. The partners we have just don't gel and our ideas don't meld. We begin to see the damage, we begin to see things falling apart all around us, we begin to think... is this right? Because it doesn't feel right, it feels awful, painful and sad. Two choices begin to emerge, to do something or not.
We can continue to try faking it or we can sit back and have a heart to heart with ourselves. (side note: be careful if you decide to reach out to friends because we tend to reach out for people who will tell us what we want to hear, not what we know we need to hear. The truth.) During our heart to heart we share bits of truth but we find ourselves sharing more excuses and grasping for justification. If we listen closely we begin to hear ourselves blaming everyone else and not truly looking inside, because it's painful. It's hard to take a honest look in the mirror, we might not like what we see. Now, another decision has to be made, to keep looking and dig deeper or decide we've had enough and look away.
It is okay if you decide to look away, only if you make another choice. And that choice is to stop faking it an truly walk away. Stop the agony, stop the dread and the stress of trying to make this work and find something else because this simply didn't work out. Not for a lack of trying, not for a lack of desire but it just didn't work out and that's okay. If you say "NO!" then you are ready to stay looking in that mirror of truth and start doing the work to "make it".
Remember, that not everything works out but we have an opportunity to learn something from experience. Often, we learn the most from the painful ones. We cannot keep repeating our same actions and expecting different results in our lives. We are created to learn and grow, honor that mandate.
My hope is that you are brave and choose to do the work to begin to figure out what you learned from this experience. Working with a good therapist or coach is worth their weight in gold so don't hesitate to reach out for professional help. It's always scary to reach out but take the risk with a positive spirit and you be glad you did.
This is all part of the journey of life... onward, friends.
