What's the worst advice about confidence out there?

Hello there friends,

What's the most terrible, horrible, no good, very bad advice you can take on?

"Fake it 'til you make it".

One of the reasons I really hate this phrase is that it endorses inauthenticity as a premise; that you should pretend something to others and ultimately to yourself.

For an indeterminate amount of time.

Until someone (You? An invisible other?) judges you have "made it", which no one believes they have, anyway.

Fake it til you make it is the least powerful thing to tell someone who thinks they haven’t made it and the whole thing just feels super arbitrary.

Telling someone to be fake – not their genuine self – is just a real bummer and just makes you feel even worse.

Because you're not being you. True power doesn't come from pretense: it comes from deciding you're comfortable in your own space.