Immediately after graduating college, I spent some time living in Chicago. My then-boyfriend (turned now-husband) had gotten a really good job offer post graduation and I was still looking, so I decided to move with him and see what the big city could offer me. What it had to offer was anxiety, loneliness, and a distinct lack of jobs and money for a mechanical engineer who wanted to do product development. In one of my days trying to find ways to fill my time cheaply before my husband got back from work (which was sometimes 7 or 8 pm), I picked up one of my favorite go-to mangas at the time that was comprised of a selection of essays by a famous Japanese manga production team called CLAMP. In the first essay, a girl is struggling to apologize to her significant other after an argument. They are at this point full of bitter stubbornness and can’t bring themselves to be honest and make up. So one morning she puts on a brand new kimono and goes for a walk. She wanted to use a soothing confidence-boosting outfit to bolster the side of her that wanted to be open and honest but was being outmatched by the version of her that was hurting and wouldn’t let go. It was one of the early examples I had seen of “dressing the part.”

Honestly, my description of the essay is longer than the essay itself, and I wasn’t sure if I believe the theory 100%. But I needed to do something to shake the funk, so I put on one of my favorite summer dresses and went for a stroll around the neighborhood. For a moment I felt subconscious, like someone was going to call me out for dressing nice for no reason, but then I realized that it was kind of nice to get out into the sunshine and at least look like I was someone who was enjoying the day. I didn’t instantly feel cured, but it was a start.

That was my first introduction to “fake it ‘til you make it.”

“Fake it ‘til you make it” can seem like a dubious tactic on the surface. Some see it as an endorsement of using a false sense of entitlement or arrogance to cover up a deficiency in confidence or to lure people into liking a false version of you who has beliefs and interests that aren’t genuine.

So let’s be clear right off the bat: “faking it” refers to pretending you have a genuine sense of confidence in yourself and what you put out there in the world. It does not promote being disingenuous or masking our problems through arrogance and dismissal. It’s an important distinction. Being flagged as a disingenuous person is very damaging to your character, and it’s no good to just cover up an issue instead of working on it. What you want is the confidence to bring your true self to the table, do what you need to do to grow and invest in you, and share it with everyone.

Confidence is, believe it or not, something we all have as young children and is either nurtured or discouraged as we grow. You can have tremendous natural ability, but if your confidence is shaken as a child it can be very hard to get back.

So, what do you do when you know you want to push yourself ahead and reach for lofty goals, but do not have the confidence to do it? You fake it!

By faking it, you are practicing it, and by practicing it, you are nurturing it. Eventually you have faked it so much that you wake up one day and realize you aren’t really faking it any more. And that’s the place we all want to get to.

I’ll share two tricks I have been employing on a nearly daily basis to help me build my confidence at work.

“If you’re confident on the outside, good things will happen!” From Unberakable Kimmy Schmidt, Season 1, Episode 4, “Kimmy Goes to the Doctor!” via GIPHY

Amy Cuddy, who gave a famous TED Talk in 2012 and wrote the book Presence, introduced the idea of using confident poses and posture to alter our brain chemistry enough to give us the ability to shine in interviews, presentations, and meetings.

When I found out I was going to start supporting a large weekly meeting, I was a little panicked. This meeting routinely has 3 or more directors from my area in it, with even more teleconferencing in, weighing in on and making decisions on various topics. I was going to be taking minutes (something I hadn’t had to do before, ever) and helping make sure everything moved along as smoothly as I could. But I didn’t feel at all comfortable in the room, and I knew I had the tendency to display my discomfort through body posture.

I didn’t want any of these people perceiving me as uncomfortable in the room, so I made constant conscious efforts to make sure my posture at the table was both attentive, thoughtful, and relaxed. It required a fair amount of effort (that I also had to split with teaching myself to take detailed meeting notes) but after a couple months I found myself feeling much more comfortable listening to all the feedback getting tossed around the meeting, going in early on my own to set up the projectors, and welcoming people who walked in with a verbal greeting and a smile. It will always be a work in progress, but I feel drastically more confident through constant practice than I thought I would have.

Switching from looking outside-in to inside-out, you can also default to choosing optimism. Even when it feels like the roadblocks are getting pretty hard to overcome. Especially at work, where you want people to see you as someone who isn’t afraid to take on problems than someone who just wants to whine and avoid them. Confident people see the positives waiting for them on the other side of the problem, and know that even in failure there is a chance to learn. Pessimistic people who employ sour attitudes can rub off on others and create an environment that stifles growth. Why would anyone want a team member who always complains or pushes against change because they’re afraid of the potential for failure?

Early into my new job, I was working pretty hard on a project with a skill that was fairly new to me. I was doing what I thought was pretty good work and had put a lot of time into one particular aspect of the project, when my boss came over and informed me that there was a possibility that they would scrap the piece of the program that I had been focusing on.

The knee-jerk response that came out of my mouth was a deflated and sarcastic, “Oh…great,” and was immediately followed by regret. I was still new to this team, and I did NOT want to look like I could so easily be taken down by a piece of new information. Especially when I knew that expectations shifted all the time, and we all had to deliver on whatever the new outcomes were no matter what.

Ever since that moment, I have tried to default to optimism. Instead of complaining about how much something would set me back, or how hard it would be to deliver on a tight deadline, I will think instead, “Great, a challenge approaches, bring it on!”

When I got my constructive feedback in my performance review, I didn’t complain or get defensive or upset, even though on the inside I felt like every comment was tinged with a undertone of “Look at what a failure you are.” I smiled through it and took notes and responded, “Thank you for the feedback. I value your input and I know that you are trying to help me succeed. I know this is an area I’ve been struggling in, and I need to go back and think of ways to work through it, but I appreciate it.” I tried to be genuine, grateful, and optimistic that I would overcome my shortcomings. The meeting ended on a high note, and I spent the rest of the day trying to focus on the positives.

But I’m not perfect. I definitely went home and once I was in a safe private space I felt a wave of frustration with myself wash over me, and I definitely struggled to pick myself back up and find a way to work through it. I felt like I was having my own “face down in the mud” moment that Brené Brown describes in her book Rising Strong. It was hard to be optimistic when I felt like I had really let myself and my boss down.

But time and optimism did ultimately help. I was eventually able to reckon with the fact that I am a work of constant improvement and I was willing to put in the work to show them that. No problem is ever insurmountable. Sometimes we need to stop, reframe our view of the problem (hey there, Rule 3), and maybe adjust our expectations. Maybe it requires more work than we thought to follow it, but there is always a path forward! That is the power of harnessing optimism.