Faking It

14Aug08

Two days ago, I finally received an email I’d been waiting for a long time. It was from Lonely Planet, the travel guide company I had applied to for a prestigious freelance editor position before I’d decided on EditQuest. It revealed that I had not passed their editing test.

Yes, I had done well with the map (the thing I’d been most frightened of!), but they were deciding not to proceed with the application because of weaknesses I’d shown in editing the text. I was a little shocked by this since I’d thought I’d done quite well, and though I dismissed the three things she listed as those particular to a house style I was not yet familiar with, the point is this: it was still a very tough blow to my pride. I can’t fail, especially not as an editor. Yes, it had nothing to do with editing fiction, but that was beside the point!

Tears of humiliation stung my eyes and I struggled against the feeling of not measuring up. Reject my stories, reject anything, but just don’t reject my skills as an editor, and just before I launch a new and exciting editor’s site! Talk about feeding the doubt, lack of self-esteem, and feelings of being a fraud.

I don’t know if the LP email is the cause but these above feelings are what I’ve been struggling with this week again and seem to be why I can’t get further ahead in preparing for my site. As Dave Navarro said in his latest excellent post: “You don’t believe, you don’t act.” Lack of confidence can be utterly crippling and, in my case, paralysing. I can’t write a word, whether fiction or for my site, when I don’t believe in me.

Fake It Till You Make It

I’m not accustomed to faking it. I just don’t do it. I can’t lie to myself or to others. I’m a straight-up, tell-it-like-it-is gal. I run on brutal honesty and unforgiving self-criticism, which is why I’m writing about my failures here even though it seems counter-productive as an editor trying to run a business and reach potential clients.

But this kind of honesty, these rigid high expectations…well, they’re not always beneficial. They get me nothing but more of the same shit I continue to struggle with.

The answer? I have to retrain my subconscious mind. I have to change the limiting beliefs I have so I can eventually become confident. Right now, my brain is on negative autopilot. It believes I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. As a consequence, it attracts everything to go along with this situation. It actually perpetuates it.

There are several ways to change your thinking. One is by repetition. If someone is continually told they’re stupid, they’ll eventually come to believe it, whether it’s actually true or not. Using this truth, if you continually tell yourself you can do whatever it is you need to do to realize your goals, you will eventually believe it. Remember that train that kept telling itself “I think I can, I think I can…” It keeps you going.

Sure it totally feels like lying. Because — to you — at first it is. You’re faking it. But give yourself 30 days and see if it still sounds as though you’re faking it. Notice how after you start to believe it, when your subconscious is now on positive autopilot, everything to help you starts appearing. Clients will materialize, everything you need shows up. It’s because your brain creates your reality.

As I said earlier, though, I find it terribly hard to lie to myself, to fake it. So then we take an example from professional athletes. Before an event, they visualize it. They run it through their minds, play by play. They see themselves executing everything the way they want. They see the end, the emotions, the happiness, the success. And do you know that the body and mind respond just the same way as if they were actually doing the activity? It’s because the subconscious can’t differentiate between what’s really being seen and what’s intensely being imagined. It’s a great way to trick yourself. Who argues with a daydream, after all?

At the Men with Pens post “Learning to Fly Without Wings,” John Hoff of the eVenture Biz Blog commented on another good way to retrain your mind:

@steph – one way to combat those feelings of “I can’t” you mentioned is to use the Tick-Tock method.

For every negative reason why you tell yourself “I can’t,” write that down. Then immediately write down 2 or 3 reasons why you CAN do it. Keep doing this every time and after a while you’ll notice you’re training your mind to automatically respond to the “I can’t” thoughts with a couple reason why you can.

Brett of 6weeks added that he finds it works every time if you change the can’t to won’t, and then ask why not?

Think for Success

Today I got some tough love from James, which, as usual, really made me think. He said:

I will say this: if you’re going to be an editor, be MORE than an editor. You’re not an editor, you’re the lady that makes DREAMS happen. You’re HOPE. You’re CONFIDENCE. You’re the woman who is going to take Jane Blow with a crumpled paper short story and turn Jane into Janine Blowme, Author Extrordinaire, because you did such a kickass rockin’ job on editing that she FINALLY landed that damned book deal and got discovered by Stephen King himself.

If you keep sitting there saying, “Well, I’m nobody special, just the editor,” then close up shop. Now. Seriously. Because if you can’t talk the talk and walk the walk and use everything you have to your advantage, it won’t work. How are you going to convince people to hire you? “Hi… yeah, all I can do is make this punctuation perfect. Want to hire me?” Um, no. I’m going to go hire that bullshitter over there who tells me that if I get HIM to edit my book, he’ll do such a damned good job words will leap off the page and shake readers by the shoulder.

You are no longer “just an editor.” Be a friggin’ Editing Consultant. (I just made that up. See how cool it sounds?)

Yeah, I do! It sounds totally cool, and that’s exactly what I had in mind!

Do I feel that way yet? Hell no! But the message here is that I have to fake it to start out or I’ll never even get off the block.

Nobody’s saying I have to fake my skill. I’m not a scam. I’m not going to take young hopefuls’ hard-earned money and give them a shoddy job in return. But whatever I don’t know yet I can find out. I’m already working on that, setting up publishing seminars with the Editors’ Association of Canada. It’s likely I already know a large percent more than my clients about editing and publishing. No one will even notice I may not be an expert in some area. The thing is, I’m working toward it and I’m starting out with a pretty good base.

Although this has really been an ongoing issue for me and others and we all take turns encouraging each other, today especially really gave me pause to think. First I got James’s email. Then I read his post on believing in yourself and persistently trying. Then I read Dave Navarro’s post. Then Brett of 6weeks and I exchanged emails on the subject of determination and confidence, changing our thinking and releasing our limitations, and faking it. He’s writing more about this too in his post today, so I won’t steal his thunder. But one bit he wrote to me was this: “Did you know that Bill Gates did not even have an operating system when he told IBM he could provide an operating system for the first IBM PC? … Take your dreams and run with them. Fake it if you have to.”

Brett’s right. When I think of all the successful people who had to start from somewhere, who offered things before they were prepared or even knew what they were really doing (like Naomi, who offered stuff for a Problogger (!!!) contest before she even had IttyBiz up, or like George Bush, who’s still faking it), I say, hey, I don’t have to start out perfect, I only have to pretend I am. At least for the time being.

Filed under: miscellaneous   |  28 Comments
Tags: belief, confidence, fear of failure, self-confidence, self-esteem, success