I also found that sometimes blindly agreeing to things is the best thing you can do. If you don’t take the time to think too hard about something, you don’t have a chance to back out and then when you do have time to think about it, well, you’re already committed. Personally, I have incredible guilt when it comes to backing out of a commitment, so this method works really well for me. 

I was talking recently to some old friends from when I was a bartender. For an introverted, lacking-in-confidence person, bartending was a big jump from my comfort zone. But, I needed the money, I wanted the confidence and I was hoping to make friends. So, I showed up on day one telling myself to just be assertive, speak up and don’t take anyone’s shit. I did that, found out that my ability to work fast and talk trash with the best (thank you, New York) takes you a long way in a bar with the regulars. I fell in love with that job. I faked it so hard I became great at it and the confidence stopped being fake.

Last year, my best friend from home who now lives in Florida, texted me and said she was going to run a half marathon. No questions asked I just replied, sign me up too. In that moment I didn’t think about how I barely liked to run a 5k (which incidentally a few months before I had also blindly decided I would do about a week before the race), how I hadn’t really run much since the summer, how that only gave me about six weeks to figure out if I could even physically run 13.1 miles. I just agreed, fake it ‘til you make it, right? Right? Well, then I trained, I got on the NIke app, I started running hills and intervals and all the things and then I texted my friend and said, “Are we still doing this?” Turned out we weren’t, she forgot and I was okay with it because come December and Christmas, I didn’t have much time off nor the money for airfare. 

But, once again, I faked it so hard I realized I enjoyed running. It made me feel awake and energized,  like I had accomplished something even if the rest of my day felt like a lost cause. It was something I did for myself, my health, my confidence and my ability to say I did that. It was my  time to listen to hard rock and metal music with no judgments from anyone else and time to think about nothing at all, a hard feat for me.  

With the holidays I lost my stride. I stopped being consistent, stopped running and going regularly to the gym, and I felt off. I felt like something was missing. Until yesterday, when I found a series of marathons and half marathons. I decided that instead of simply running one half-marathon this year, I was going to excitedly and blindly sign up for three. 

So in a few months, I guess we’ll see if my faith in fake it ‘til you make it stands true. If I literally make it to the finish line, or I decide to hit the snooze button one too many times. Who knows? I might even fake it so hard I end up running a full marathon.