For Some People, It's Fake or Break
Worshipping False Idols Under the Illusion of Control
It took me 38 years on this planet to come to a realisation I only wish I’d known sooner. Nobody (and I really mean nobody) knows what they’re doing.
I was raised by two very dominant parents who had different but equally effective ways of strong-arming a conversation to go their way. They were the epitome of confidence. Knowledgable, capable, successful in whatever they set out to do. Yet I see with full clarity (now) that neither of them actually knew what they were doing.
I use my parents as the example here because so many of us are seduced by the illusion of confidence. We marvel at the ease with which some people seem to move through the world. I’m not suggesting it’s deception so much as a self-induced delusion which helps them to feel in control. It’s nothing more than a highly effective survival strategy and a thoroughly convincing one at that.
Our own survival instincts have us gravitate towards people who know better so they can keep us safe, and these people do a great impression of having it all figured out. I can’t count the number of times I ignored my own instincts because I assumed someone had a better handle on life than I did. Alas, following another deluded control-freak into the fire, again!
Ok, control-freak is too strong, and these are certainly not bad people. Far from it. They’re just trying to find a way through this mad maze like the rest of us. However, we should be wary of projecting superiority onto these types as they’re not the adequate leaders we hail them to be. Anything rooted in control is extremely vulnerable and always on alert, which means it can easily break when the framework disturbed. You don’t need to scratch far beneath the surface to watch these types unravel if something strays beyond the world they have command over.
In fact, often the strident confident types are unconsciously protecting a deep vulnerability, so they’ve crafted the world around them to ensure they remain seen in the way they can control.
One client was telling me she feels inferior to her intelligent charismatic friend. She feels she has nothing to contribute because so much conversation is stifled unless it’s a topic he’s interested or knowledgeable in. He shuts everything else down or gets instantly distracted. Her understanding of this is that she’s not interesting or smart enough to keep his attention. From a different perspective, this friend is demonstrating a lack of social dexterity (I can assure you my client is both smart and interesting) and seeking to control the narrative to ensure he appears intelligent on subjects he can discuss. Entertaining any curiosity outside of what he knows would be far too risky. Interestingly, because of his confident façade, it’s she who feels ‘less than’, when he’s the one who’s limited in this case.
This is particularly prevalent in (but certainly not limited to) men. We’ve been conditioned to put a huge amount of pressure on men to be able to take care of everything. Despite encouraging them to open up, we still find it evolutionarily repellent when they don’t appear ‘strong’ (as much as we misunderstand the term). We therefore celebrate men who exude confidence, so we’ve trained them into hiding their curiosity. They feel they’ll be rejected, laughed out of town if they don’t know what’s going on. Their primal competitive nature would go into gale-force meltdown. So the majority feel they must pretend, at all costs, that they absolutely know what they’re doing. I’m basing this on the countless number of Alpha’s (for lack of a better term) that have sat in front of me sobbing under the stress of it all.
It’s not just men of course. Everyone’s masking, everyone’s managing. Everyone’s lost, but crucially it’s the curious ones who more equipped for searching. It’s the ones who question rather than close-down topics that will find answers. So many of us are plagued by the fear that we really don’t know what we’re doing. We wish we could be more like those who do. We ironically look to them to show us the way, when in fact, they only know a very small passage of the way. A corridor for one that they’ve decorated with things that remind them how great they are, and that they dare not move from incase the decor changes.
As terrifying as it might sound, there’s freedom to be found in the understanding that nobody knows what they’re doing. Sure, some have honed their small area of control, but what we’re seeing is just their oxytocin of nesting in their illusion.
Overt outer confidence rarely correlates to inner confidence. Inner knowing is what we need to seek to be truly confident, but that requires curiosity, and curiosity is the kryptonite of control. Even if we don’t exude the confidence of others, we can at least find confidence in accepting that in the outer world, none of us really know anything!
The Theory…
The concept that any of us know what we’re doing in this world is mostly an illusion. We’re all lost in the maze together, we just have different strategies with finding a way through.
We should be mindful in following someone because we think they know better than us. We are better served by retaining our own curiosity and following our intuition.
There is freedom in the not knowing. The world is big, expansive and infinite. Ask questions, seek explanations. We’ll never ever know it all - but then, no one will.
What’s Your Feeling?
Notice your instinctual response to this. You might have a strong or passive response. You might reject it, relate to it, feel confused, inspired, or utterly and completely irritated by it … All valid, but try to examine why.
What is at the root of what you feel? Is it linked to a belief or value? Does it remind you of something? Does it challenge or reinforce something that’s important to you?
How Might You Work With This?
Who are the people in your life that you feel really have it all figured out? What are the qualities or behaviours they possess that make you feel this way?
How much of this impression is projected by them, and how much is projected onto them by you?
Putting It All Together
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My first thought on reading this was the George Burns quote : "The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you've got it made." I agree with what you say, but in some circumstances exuding confidence is exactly what's needed. I'm thinking in particular of when I've had a computer glitch, the last thing I've wanted is someone scratching their head and saying ""Never seen this before". It's worried me that they might REALLY screw things up.