I know you’ve heard the saying “fake it till you make it” before…
It is a great saying, because I believe that there is more truth to that statement than you’d think.
When I was growing up, every time I would be sad or angry, my mom would force me to slap a smile on my face.
She would say, “You can’t be sad if you are smiling.”
I would get even more angry at her, because I thought she was ridiculous and annoying at that age.
Recently my dad told me a story about a time when I was little and I fell so hard on the ground and he knew I was hurt, but he told me, “It doesn’t hurt, right? You are fine and you feel good!”
I slapped a smile on my face and held back the tears and repeated those same words back to him…
And then I was fine. (It still hurt really bad, though)
Now as I have grown and started my adult life, I have started to realize the importance of these statements that my parents had told me.
There are a lot of things in life that get you down, hurt you, or make you feel sad or angry.
A LOT OF THINGS.
And it can be really easy to let them affect your mood, which in turn affects every other aspect of your life.
I know this first hand, as I tend to let the people around me dictate how I feel about myself or the situation. I have a hard time staying positive when everyone else around me is negative.
Lately, I have found myself down in the dumps and stuck there a lot, and it wasn’t until I remembered my parents words that I realized that it is completely, 100% up to me to change my attitude around.
I started to force a smile when I wanted to cry.
I started to tell myself that I was fine, even when I really wasn’t.
I started to pretend to be happy even when I was sad…
And I truly faked being joyful for a long time.
Then one day I realized that I wasn’t really faking it anymore, because what I thought was faking was actually really happiness.
I decided to stop being so negative and thinking I was sad all the time, and I told myself I was joyful and then it happened.
Maybe faking it until you make it is actually true.
Maybe that saying means we are supposed to fake it until it becomes the truth.
What do you think?