Hello everybody. This week on Ask Cristen I'm talking about faking it til you making
it. I want to know, what's one thing you absolutely, definitely cannot fake til you make? Money?
A car? The competence required to be the United States President? Well.
So this week's Ask Cristen question is coming from TerrifyingSpaceMonkey who wants to know,
'Hi!' Hi. 'I was wondering what the difference is between "faking it until you make it" and
being inauthentic. No one draws a line between being fake and faking to improve.' To me the
challenge really comes in the essence of what you're asking TerrifyingSpaceMonkey. Being
able to break down these very Pinterest friendly inspo sayings like 'fake it til you make it',
'live your authentic truth', into genuinely actionable things that we can do to cultivate
that stuff inside of ourselves that we want to flourish and overtake the kind of fear
and anxiety that at least for me can be easier and safer in a way to live out of because
it can offer a false sense of protection from failure and disappointment and negative judgments.
From the research that I've read and also the personal work that I've been doing that
line that you're asking for between faking it till you make it and just being a faker
is the difference between faking confidence and faking competence. In the spirit of living
my authentic truth I will use myself as an example. When it comes to the Stuff Mom Never
Told You realm of women and girls and gender differences and sexuality and health, I am
extremely competent. I have produced hundreds of podcasts, blogs and videos and all sorts
of social media somethings or others-es about these topics. I know how to track down sources,
interpret those sources and present those sources in at least a marginally palatable
way. But I still have a massive confidence gap that it has taken me close to thirty years
my friends to fully acknowledge and face-down. A lot of us have this kind of confidence gap
and there are things that we can do that are perfectly fine and healthy and can still be
done authentically to fake that confidence because really what we're doing is not so
much faking it but practicing it and cultivating it. Faking it til you make it can actually
be a very healthy and brave thing to do because you are truly exercising some risk-taking,
you are setting aside your fear, you are stepping outside your comfort zone and you are exercising
some confidence. There's a ton of research on how we actually can do this in a healthy
and productive way. For instance, Harvard Business School associate professor Amy J.
Cuddy has done groundbreaking research on these things called power poses which are
essentially poses that take up a lot of space. Don't you see how powerful I am? And as she's
discussed in a fantastic 'Ted Talk' I highly recommend, holding these power poses for as
little as two minutes has a neurological impact of spiking our testosterone and diminishing
our cortisol levels and that translates to nudging up our sense of status and our comfort
with risk-taking. What Cuddy's research really gets to is how confidence isn't just some
magical internal trait that we're either born with or not but rather something that can
be built through an interplay of our mind and body. And in addition to these kinds of
physical things we can do, recent research has also found that mentally priming ourselves
to think about our successes as opposed to our deficiencies can also endow us with more
confidence. If you're about to take a test instead of thinking oh my god I don't know
anything even though I've studied really hard for it, think oh I studied really hard for
it. And that can a positive impact on the outcome. And I also think it's worth noting
since this is Stuff Mom Never Told You which loves all things gender there is a gendered
layer to a lot of this research. Amy J. Cuddy who broke power posing wide open was motivated
to do that research because she saw that the girls in her power and influence class at
Harvard were not embodying the confidence that matched up their academic competence.
This is a pattern, women and girls not embodying and exercising and cultivating this kind of
confidence is a pattern that we often see not only in girls and classrooms but women
in the workplace as well and not to say guys that you don't have your issues with confidence
but I think that it says a lot about how gendered patterns of socialization really influence
the way we think about ourselves and what we feel comfortable doing in terms of risk-taking
and putting ourselves out there and making our voices and opinions known and also owning
our skills and the things that make us unique. I wanted to leave you with a quote from Elizabeth
Gilbert, yes of 'Eat, Pray, Love' fame. "I happen to believe that we are all walking
repositories of buried treasure...The universe buries strange jewels deep within us and then
stands back to see if we can find them." Maybe instead of calling it faking it til you make
it, think of it as a mining expedition to find the strange jewels within you. What do
you think about faking it til you make it and the line between being fake and cultivating
confidence? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks to everybody who watched and commented
on last week's Ask Cristen video 'Why are women shaped like fruit?' BamBamJaby said,
'Ectormorph, mesomorph and endomorph are actually used to describe male as well as female body
types. Those are the three most common shapes for men and women according to ergonomics
and are used when designing work environment and public spaces. I think it's a lot better
than having to consider just one average woman and one average man size.' Dani Morris said,
'I've never seen a problem with comparing body shapes with fruit, but shaming those
fruits is wrong. Fruit is sweet and so is your body.' Finally bonus comment, Geri Poppins
said, 'I miss Tina.' You know what Geri? Tina misses you too. Oh. And as always be sure
to ask me your questions so I can give you some answers.