In What Ways Do You Pretend?

This post was written by CoachJulieRN on December 24, 2009
Posted Under: Self-Improvement

Do you pretend to be happy? To like someone? To care? To be smart?

Do you pretend to have money? To be more successful than you are? To be happy in your relationship? Or your work?

Pretending is hard on you because in your pretension, you lie to yourself. You feel like a fraud. And this makes you feel even worse. And it eats away at you.

Pretending shows up in your energy and is picked up by others. As a leader, it is important to know how others feel in your presence. So although they may not know in what way you are lying, they know you’re not being honest. This leads to mistrust and keeps people at a distance.

Here’s a little secret: we all pretend. It is in our nature as humans to pretend. We don’t even realize we are doing it most of the time!

We pretend in order to compensate for feelings of inadequacies. Perhaps you believe that you “SHOULD BE” better in some way, at a different place in your life – a bigger house, higher net worth, more income, happier – whatever.

The gap between what you think you should have or be at this point in your life and your REALITY can be quite painful. In order to compensate, your Self-Esteem goes out of its way to impress others or pretend. It’s a way of dealing with the pain you are experiencing.

Notice, however, that this pain is all in your head. This is not truth; it’s just you thinking that you are not where you should be in your life. Who says?

Stop setting these expectations and reacting to your thoughts that tell you your life “should” be different or better than it is!

The most important step we can take in our lives is to become mature and authentically ourselves. For us to do this, we must be REAL which means, we have to give up lying to ourselves.

When you choose to stop pretending, you are able to be more authentic and genuine in your relationships. Your confidence improves as the real YOU begins to emerge – you start to feel better about yourself. This impacts every area of your life including reducing your stress.

To practice transparency as a leader, which is an emotional intelligence competency, you must give up pretending. The person who is hurt the most from your pretending is, after all, YOU.

Here are three steps to becoming more real and authentic:

1) Notice in what ways you pretend. If you can name it, you can tame it. Awareness is extremely powerful for healing and for maturing.

2) Accept your reality as it is – rather than as you think it should be. Who says life should be different? What is life supposed to be like anyway? Who decided upon this standard that you feel you ‘should’ live up to? What if right now is perfect – what if you are perfect just as you are?

3) Adopt a life of integrity. This means that you identify and correct the ways in which you are not living in integrity – ways in which you are not being true to yourself.

Integrity is important for living a free life. If you are not in integrity, you waste valuable time looking over your shoulder and trying to find ways to get away with things rather than just doing the right thing. If you strive to do the right thing, you eliminate a tremendous amount of stress and fear (fear of getting caught, that is).