Fake it til you make it?

 I was taught something totally different than what people seem to interpret "fake it til you make it" to mean these days. As a newly sober/clean addict, I was told that sometimes you have to fake it til you make it. This was not intended to be in the spirit of F.E.A.R. (f*#k everything and run), but in the spirit of overcoming in the sense that I didn't have a clue as to how to live differently than I had before. It is a nice sentiment to say, overcome your F.E.A.R.  by facing everything and recovering. But I didn't have a clue as to how to live in recovery mode, facing life as it came to me. So through mimicking the actions of others who were successfully living a life I desperately wanted, I might be able to learn. But it will not be my first instinct or a natural response. Possibly not ever. But for sure as a "newbie" to recovery or in regard to any new challenge. In order to build muscle memory, I have to do the action. I have to fake it, when I don't really have confidence that my life will work out if I take this action, and take the action anyway. Because. Well, because I have done such a fine and upstanding job of making my life work out the way I have wanted it to by doing the same dysfunctional things over and over. In order to build new habits, instincts, and neuropathways in my brain, I have to repeat actions that are not instinctual to me at this time. I have to "fake it." This is often messy, embarrassing and occasionally humiliating. It is full of the Face Everything and Recover kind of fear. The John Wayne kind, being courageous enough to saddle up in the midst of my unknowing, the middle of being scared shitless. And not waiting until I feel brave or empowered of equipped. Just do it. 

This is different, however, than damn-the-torpedos-throw-all-caution-to-the-wind-and-act-with-reckless-abandon. This is doing the thing I know to be right, even though I don't actually know how. This is asking for help, accepting advice, and uncomfortably doing things in a way that I have not done them before. This is step work and taking my own inventory and realizing just how many times and how many ways I have NOT accomplished whatever it is that I have to become willing to face and act upon in the face of my fear. 

All of this "jargon" is stuff I learned in recovery. Some of it spoken with the intellect I hear all over the workplace today. And the talk of trauma and re-wiring our brain and all those education buzz words. Well, I have heard it before it became popular. Some of it spoken through the wisdom of others who told me, "you can act your way into a new way of thinking, but you cannot think your way into a new way of acting." Change requires action. And if I don't have the strength, knowledge or ability to successfully maneuver this path, I will have to borrow this from others who have gone before, who are willing to share their experience, strength and hope with me. I have to trust them and then saddle up and do this action that I don't understand or even believe in (yet), and be willing to do it over and over until I've built a new muscle memory and carved new grooves in my brain, lighting up new dendrites and growing new habits and instincts. But until I have uncomfortably faked it over and over, I cannot face it instinctually and be in a new path. 

Fake it til you make it is not bullshit advice. It is deep, it is real, it requires an action, even though I don't like the action, or feel comfortable with it. Until I know better, I cannot do better. In order to do better, I have to do the thing that is not natural to me. 

Today's rant is brought to you by this photo that facebook "suggested" to me. This photo has some amount of validity. But don't you think that "face it til you make it" requires you to fake it? It requires acting like you know something when you don't and just doing it until you do know it. In my not-so-humble opinion...