fake it 'til i make it

I’m not sure if this is the right goal for this entry, but I decided to write about this topic here because it does involve “faking” in a sense but without the “making it” part. I’ve been thinking a lot about a recent post by CrunchyBread where she wrote about the problems of not understanding the social boundaries with regard to revealing too much of oneself. I relate to a lot of what she wrote, and I realize that I have my own (albeit not highly successful) way of coping with these issues. I’m so afraid of offending anyone that I keep quiet most of the time. I don’t approach people or initiate conversations. If I wait for them to approach me then I can be sure that I’m not imposing myself on them or boring them. I’m not sure, but I think this may give the impression that I’m aloof or uninterested, but maybe that’s better than giving the impression of being overbearing. I also prefer to let the other person steer the direction of the conversations unless I’m totally sure they have an interest in what I’m about to say.

I’m very careful about getting all that close to anyone both because then they will realize I don’t quite understand all the social rules (i.e. they would know I was faking it) and because people’s intentions can’t be taken at face value (which I figured out through some bad experiences) and I’m not always good about discerning when people are genuine. That said, when I do find someone that I don’t have to “fake it” with, I have the tendency to unload too much on that one person and to misinterpret the level of depth or closeness of the relationship. I’m trying very hard to be careful about this, but I find that the way I’ve been doing that is just by keeping more distance which doesn’t seem to give the most satisfying result.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this entry other that to express that I’ve been doing a type of “faking” but not getting the best results…

I wasn’t sure whether to file this under my “be more assertive” goal or this one because it relates to a problem that arose from my not being assertive enough. Resolving the problem, however, will involve some “faking”, so here it is…

In a project I was working on I discoverd a flaw in a particular existing methodology that was in wide use. My initial instinct was that this flaw was minor and did not materially impact any analyses relying on the method, but I didn’t speak up loudly or authoritatively enough at the time and so was asked to devise a new method to deal with the problem. So, after hours and hours and hours of work (some of it a team effort) over several weeks, I have a new methodology that is much more complicated and has its own serious flaws. I think I may need to revert to old methodology as being a better method.

So, my task is, if I decide I need to revert to using the old method (with a bit of tweaking), to justify the value of having spent so much time on testing a new method (i.e. not look like a wasteful fool). I know I can do this. I will show the value of the understanding of certain process that were acquired in the testing of the new methodology. Now, I need to be very organized and thorough to be convincing…

I wasn’t really sure what goal to file these thoughts under, whether this was a random thought under “just wanted to say” or ideas about figuring about how to fake something to be successful. It’s sort of in between. My thoughts relate to some things I have been thinking about since I was invited several weeks ago (with another friend) to visit a friend at his house (someone I viewed as one of my two closest friends and believe it or not in three years we’d never been to each other’s places before). During the visit I saw a side of his life that I never got to see before, and it made me realize how much I really don’t know about him and that I’m really not such a significant part of his life or at least not as significant as he is to me. I don’t know why I should care so much about it, but I find that I do. I guess this is the way it is with most people I’ll ever meet, but it doesn’t mean that I want it to be like that. I hardly have friends and I always want to be closer than I ever seem to be able to get, and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be and I need to learn to be comfortable with it. I just haven’t learned how yet. Keeping yourself further than you want to be is faking, I guess.

When I arrived for the visit, my friend’s wife greeted me, quite pleasantly enough, suggesting having a vague recollection of having met me before which she had. Of course, I appreciate she doesn’t have the familiarity with me that her husband has, but I felt like she was speaking for the both of them in saying I was like a neighbor down the street that you smile and wave hi to occasionally and nothing more, like he didn’t give her the idea that I was in any way more significant to him than that and he didn’t even talk to me much during the visit. I realize I’m being totally selfish in caring so much about my own significance to someone else, and I feel guilty for thinking this way.

My life is very different from his; I don’t have a family and don’t come from the same culture as he does, so it sort of made me wonder if, no matter how well I got along with him or what things I shared with him or he shared with me, I could ever really connect with someone like that in a deep way. I feel like no matter how close I think the relationship I think I have with this person is, it could never be as special to him as any relationship he may have with someone in his particular situation or who comes from the same culture as he. Whatever element of closeness I thought there was, it felt like it was really an illusion, that I read more into it that what’s there. When I was in his house, I felt like I was a stranger and that I was intruding on his family’s life. I know that’s natural when I’m not acquainted well with his whole family, but I didn’t want to feel it from him. I don’t know why I felt like I was really nobody to this person or not more than just someone he might have a passing interest in but who is not a close, regular part of his life. Maybe this is all in my head and me projecting my own insecurities onto the situation, but I don’t know, I should really just be happy that he invited me into his house at all and was willing to allow me to see this other side of him and maybe he’ll let me see more of it…

I have a very hard time relating to people, and it’s rare that I find someone I think I can connect with. The relationship I thought I had with this person was among the two most significant I had. I would think of this person like family or even more important than family because I believe that the connections you build that aren’t tied to blood or blind obligation (like the relationships you might have siblings or extended relatives which often involve blind obligation) are the most real and special that can be. I don’t know anyone who has my way of thinking on this…

I don’t know how to deal with the idea that you could mean something to someone but not nearly as much as they mean to you. How do you let it go? I only ask this rhetorically because I know there’s not an easy solution and no one can answer this satisfactorily. Maybe it’s just me, and it’s nobody else’s problem; maybe I don’t connect with anyone because I’m a selfish jerk. That’s a possibility, but I’m not sure. I’m inside my own head most of the time that I can’t see myself clearly. If I could just figure this out, I think I would be less scared and less likely to close myself off from meeting and getting close to people and be okay with giving people their space. Still, I don’t want anybody to mean anything to me if I can’t mean the same thing back to them. I would be better off if I changed this way of thinking…

In a conversation yesterday with my boss, who was enthusiatic about some work we had done, she noted that I didn’t seem happy. She said I should be happy, I should be smiling and jumping up and down that we got through most of our preparation for our big meeting to impress one of the new “big wigs” on Tuesday, but I wasn’t. Truth is there were some outstanding issues I had yet to resolve I felt like it was too early to be happy. My boss seemed assured that the issues I had were minor and could be easily resolved.

I wonder if I’m not able to view things in the proper proportion like making small problems seem bigger than they are and if my doing this affects the attitude of the people around me and hinders my ability to be successful in interacting with them…

How do you make facial expressions that convey what other people expect in such a way that doesn’t look fake? I think the people who know me very well know how to read me. Well, it’s either that or I express my emotion differently to those people. I’m not sure which is the case.

I’ve been told that I seem emotionless. This couldn’t be further from the truth internally, but I’m not sure how to show it outwardly or how to show it appropriately. I could be listening intently, and then the person I’m listening to (e.g. my boss, a colleague, an acquaintance, etc.) will say “Why are you looking at me like that?” or “Do you not get what I’m saying?” or “Am I scaring you?” or “Do you disagree with it?” or “Do you find it ridiculous or think I’m crazy?” or “I’m boring you, aren’t I” or something else as if my facial expression or body language is conjuring up the idea within them that I don’t appreciate what they’re saying. Even if I am truly sincere, I have a hard time appearing sincere. I almost feel like asking them to tell me what type of expression they want me to show (or better yet have them show it to me) and then I’ll do my best to replicate it. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, however…

I have been thinking a lot the past couple of days about something that was said in an exchange I had here . This is the comment:

If you are more different than you ought to be in any given situation, then you are not sufficiently developed in what it takes to be a success via getting along with others by making them as comfortable as possible.

This is a big problem for me. In most situations where I am in a group or talking to an individual with whom I do not ordinarily interact, I tend to focus on how awkward I feel or how different I am rather than attempt to do what I can to make the others comfortable; or, better yet I do everything humanly possible to avoid situations involving a lot of interpersonal interaction. I am not comfortable and make no effort to be, which in turn makes others uncomfortable and probably gives them a less favorable impression of me which will subsequently hinder my ability to be more successful.

I am giving myself a task this week: I am going to try to find at least one situation where I could practice being more accommodating and less internally focused and make note of the result.

I have a friend involved in acting (no, he’s not a famous actor but like most actors ekes by on small roles here and there and supports himself doing massage therapy on the side). He told me he thought that even though I had no intention of ever going into acting that he thought it would be a good idea for me to take a beginning acting class. He said it might improve my comfort level and ability to interact with other people. Someone else told me something similar recently as well, saying that if only I could work on my people skills then my personality would be complete.

Acting seems like quite a challenge becasue to pretend to be someone else you need to UNDERSTAND a full range of human emotion and be able to COMMUNICATE or convey them effectively.

I was wondering, can you use acting as a tool to help change yourself or is it just playing a game of pretend and you are being fake and deluding yourself? Hmmm…

I knew that when I first saw this goal I would have to adopt it eventually. Whatever I’ve been trying so far hasn’t been working well. Maybe if I just pretend to be the person I want to become it will eventually become reality… I hope…

When I was taking swimming lessons late in the summer, my instructor James was teaching me to dive. The first couple of times I panicked when I fell into the water, and James had to rescue me. He told me I had the skills to do it and said I didn’t need to be so afraid. He said he would try to appeal to my ego as a grown man. He told me to not let him see me afraid. I was still scared as heck but when I dove the next time I pretended to not be afraid and things actually did go better. My fear is still there but it’s not as much as before since I started pretending and acting like I wasn’t afraid.

Now, applying this to other aspects in my life…