Next Level University
Confidence, mindset, relationships, limiting beliefs, family, goals, consistency, self-worth, and success are at the core of hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros' heart-driven, no-nonsense approach to holistic self-improvement. This transformative, 7 day per week podcast is focused on helping dream chasers who have been struggling to achieve their goals and are seeking community, consistency and answers. If you've ever asked yourself "How do I get to the next level in my life", we're here for you!
Our goal at NLU is to help you uncover the habits to build unshakable confidence, cultivate a powerful mindset, nurture meaningful relationships, overcome limiting beliefs, create an amazing family life, set and achieve transformative goals, embrace consistency, recognize your self-worth, and ultimately create the fulfillment and success you desire. Let's level up your health, wealth and love!
Next Level University
#1495 - Should You Fake It ‘Til You Make It?
What if the key to your victory lies in faking it until you make it? In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about how this strategy can catapult you toward personal growth or throw you into self-sabotage. The concept of 'faking it until you make it' has been interpreted differently. For some, it can be a valuable tool to reach a place of inspiration, acting as a 'training wheel' towards becoming more confident. Yet, it can lead to self-sabotage and a feeling of fraudulence when it's done for the wrong reasons.
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Show notes:
[2:38] Faking it for the inspiration
[6:15] The manager and firefighter inside you
[9:23] Nicole shares how Kevin and the Next Level Podcast Solutions team seamlessly help her with her podcast and provide a fantastic experience.
[10:11] Use it as a training wheel
[17:24] Safety net
[20:29] Outro
Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level University, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your Wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode, episode number 1494. Regret can come from the right decisions to a very deep episode. Today, for episode number 1495, should you fake it till you make it?
Speaker 1:I remember Alan said to me one time, after he got to know me Better and at a deeper level, he said I used to think you were such a badass back in the day you Would show up to the gym in your loud car and you'd lift heavy weight and you take your sweatshirt off and you'd have your your tank top on and you'd be jacked. And I used to think you were. You were such a badass the bees knees the bees knees, as they say. And as he got closer and closer to me, he realized that that was not the case. Was I faking it till I made it? I don't think so, because I don't know if I was intentionally trying to look Like the bees knees. I just think that maybe that's just the way it it came off. But is there any, is there any constructive pieces to faking it till you make it? I would argue that the definition of faking fake it so you make it means something different to each of us.
Speaker 1:So you've heard me talk in the past about how, for Terrence excuse me, for Terrence birthday one year we rented a nice car and we went to the drive-in and Me renting that car, I was kind of faking it till I was making it, but not for the perception of others, it was for the Inspiration of myself, so much in fact. So we rented a. It was a Mercedes AMG, cla 45, I believe it's a lot of letters. But we went. When we pulled up to the, the drive-in, one of the young attendants said nice car, man, what kind of car is that? And I was like it's not mine, man, it's not mine. So I can't say it's mine. I can't, I can't lie about that. If I was trying to fake it till I made it for the Perception of others, I would have said, yeah, this is my, this is my baby. I've had this thing for years.
Speaker 2:I remember. Whatever you feel really good about I would have made.
Speaker 1:I would have made something up. I would have made something up, but that wasn't my purpose behind it. So if you're faking something or if you're trying to get a preview of what the inspirational life that you're trying to achieve Looks like, I would say that's drastically different than just lying outright or Trying to use that so people will look at you differently. Here's the thing and we talked about this in a previous episode where we're talking about you got to take the training wheels off. But the problem with faking it till you make it is one. What happens if you never make it? That's part one, and Part two is, if you're faking it till you make it, even when you do make it, you're not gonna actually feel successful Because you haven't faced any of the fears, insecurities, traumas, triggers, responses that you actually needed to face in order to get to where you wanted to get to and sustainably stay there.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the bigger piece. You can fake it and maybe you'll get the result eventually, but the problem is it's not gonna help yourself worth. Most likely, it might actually make it worse because you're gonna not feel like you're belonging or deserving of the result you just got. You might start self-sabotaging yourself because you don't think you deserve it. So I think the baseline, that the top layer of this Could it be constructive in some ways? Yes, as long as you're doing it for you, not for other people is first thing. And then second thing is what if you don't actually make it, then what happens? How do you not lose yourself in that? And then part two is say you do make it to wherever it is you're trying to get to. Do you actually feel good about getting there the way you did? Are you fulfilled in the process of doing it? Have you lost yourself in the process of doing it? Is there ever a place for it? That's up to your interpretation more than mine, I would say.
Speaker 2:Kev, you and I, way back, we watched the very first Episode of the hyper conscious podcast because I had it on my YouTube channel, my old one. Hmm and it was on an iPhone and we could hear it was.
Speaker 2:It was in First names, only Rachel's house and I showed up 20 minutes late passionately late, at least 20 and you Opened it with welcome to the mother, effing yes, hyper conscious, podcast, yeah, and you sounded you were trying to sound super confident and I was too. We were both unintentionally more fake in hindsight than I realized. What I now understand and I'm gonna go brief about this, but I've talked a little bit about internal family systems. It's a modality of therapy. I have been learning a ton about it and I've been using it in my coaching. It's unbelievable. But the point is is that we have these protectors and there's two types of protectors there's a manager and there's a firefighter, and essentially what that is is your ego, and Kevin and I were driving with protectors. We weren't our true selves. We were so fearful of not being competent. This is all unconscious. We didn't know this.
Speaker 2:It's not like we were like hmm, we're fearful of being incompetent, let's ego up here. There wasn't any of that, but instead of sitting in the truth and the vulnerable truth of honestly, I don't really know what I'm doing. This is my first podcast episode. I am gonna interview Alan, and I'm a little bit intimidated because I think he's a lot smarter than me.
Speaker 1:Sorry, but I think that was probably how you were feeling at the time. Yeah, that was a fact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure Cause you thought I was really smart. I thought you were a badass. Now we both know we're both soft, but at the end of the day, our protectors came up. So I tried to be the intellectual, intelligent one and Kevin tried to be the badass.
Speaker 2:And this was all unconscious. None of this was on purpose. We weren't purposely being egotistical and fortunately it was a pretty good episode all things considered. But it was our first time and now, looking back, if we were to watch that it would be brutal for us.
Speaker 2:And the reason why is because we've grown. We've grown so much in emotional intelligence, we've grown so much in vulnerability, we've grown so much in our ability to speak and articulate things in a way that's powerful and real and authentic, whereas back then we were just living more in ego, living more in protection, living more in fear. So there's two types of people right in this analogy. There's one person who says listen, I'm afraid and I'm fearful and I'm scared and I'm confused and I'm uncertain, but I'm gonna give this a shot anyway. And they're just real, they're authentic about it. The second type of person is someone who pretends they're not afraid, maybe doesn't even think they are, and they just ego up and they act like they're super confident when they're not. You acted super confident, you weren't, and now that's clear, but only because we are now, whereas back then I actually fell for it. I thought you were confident as shit. You know the mother effing hyper conscious podcast. You were trying to be your own unique flavor of Joe Rogan. I think it's cute.
Speaker 1:That's what I thought I wanted at the time. That's what I thought I wanted.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And then the real contemplative question here, the philosophy behind this, is would Kevin have gotten here if he didn't fake it till he made it? I don't know. Could you have been more vulnerable and just say listen, I'm scared, I'm just gonna ask some questions. See how this goes. I think that probably would have been better.
Speaker 2:I agree, yeah, but again, it's better than not doing it at all. So, yeah, our first episode was garbage, but at least we got it done. And then, over time, we learned about vulnerability, we became men instead of boys. And here we are. So, fake it till you make it is one of those things where it's yeah, kinda, but also no. Be your authentic self to the best of your ability, realizing that that's the hardest thing in the world.
Speaker 1:It almost is If you can use that as a training wheel, if the goal is you know what? I'm not super confident, so I'm gonna try to pretend that I am, with the intention that eventually I'll be confident enough to actually be confident. It has to lead to a means, to an end. I had somebody reach out to me recently and I love sharing this type of stuff because if you're not someone who is a business owner or a podcaster or whatever it may be, you might not get messages like this. But Alan and I get messages all the time of hey, pay us $500 and you can be in this magazine, forbes magazine, blah, blah, blah. All this dumb stuff.
Speaker 1:And somebody messaged me recently and said hey, do you want help with your social media? I know how to make things go viral. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go and look at this person's page and every single one of their posts have hundreds of thousands of likes and a bunch of fake comments, and that's a really good example of faking it. So you make it.
Speaker 1:The problem is, they're most likely not gonna make it. It's not the time that you spend on faking it. You're not spending on making it. You're not spending on creating. You're not spending on becoming that type of person. You're not spending it growing. You're not spending it doing that stuff. You're spending it saying how do I look as good as possible? There was a podcast that I was gonna go on recently, and I always do research before I go on podcasts. I wanna make sure I'm a fit, I wanna make sure I know who the person is and who I'm talking to, and I started to see signs, hints, that this show might be faking a lot of what they were doing. So one of the things you can do and again, if you're not a podcaster, it doesn't really matter, but if you look at somebody's show and they have 500 five star ratings and nothing else. No four, no three, no two, no one, no zero. Most likely it's not really.
Speaker 1:And they all say great show.
Speaker 1:Yeah or a lot of the stuff is misspelled and it doesn't make any sense. Odds are those are not real reviews. So I said interesting, that's a red flag for me. Then I went and looked at this person on social media. They have 500,000 followers and they get three likes per post, and that's fake too. And I just started to do some research and I said this person is faking it till they make it.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing if the show's not good, none of that matters. If the social media content isn't valuable, none of that matters. It looks really good in the moment, but it's not going to sustain longterm. So to your point, alan, I would say as long as you are faking it constructively, with the goal of not having to fake it forever. But even that, I could go start a page and buy a million followers and then say I'm gonna teach people how to make money with their podcast and I know how to do that, so, but I want people to know how successful I am. The only way to do that is to have million followers, but then I'll eventually be able to help enough people, so it'll be worth it. You could argue for that. You could have an argument for that.
Speaker 2:But this goes back to the episode we did recently on the crutches not the crutches, what was it? Training wheels? That is exactly what we're talking about again, which is If you put a filter. I talked about how, when I was doing the fitness modeling, snapchat made me look so much better than the iPhone. Yeah, the iPhone camera doesn't. You really took a picture of me in the gym yesterday. Oh, my god man, the iPhone. I know it's not just the phone.
Speaker 1:You and your fitness journey.
Speaker 2:Dude, I'm sitting here looking in the mirror, looking at the camera, and it's like no way which one is real. You know, I know everyone else has probably experienced something similar, but anyway, snapchat me used to make us look awesome. I mean, I look jacked, right. So, anyways, I used to use snapchat for my photos instead of. I remember I remember Matt. He said what are your photos? It looks like it was made in the 1800s with like a felt pen. Because of how much you Doctored that thing. You know, I had a very brief time where I doctored photos, very brief break, and eventually it was like this is useless. This is not not good, but here's my point if you use filters, because that helps you Put yourself out there and then eventually, you take the training wheels off, that actually could be a constructive fake it till you make it. I think that more often than not, though, people put those training wheels on and never take them off, and we've witnessed.
Speaker 2:There's someone who is Really, really really successful on Instagram who Used to edit her podcast. Every single, um, every single like, every. I mean it was over edited. My truth is, it was way over edited. It was. It was. You're not a strong speaker, you're just making it look like you are, which is a short-term win for a long-term loss, because when she was on stage she couldn't hang and that was really devastating for her and I actually like this person a lot. So I'm not trying to be mean, but at the end of the day, kevin and I Knew after that day it's like, oh, this person may never speak again, because that was devastating for her to get all that feedback.
Speaker 2:Because again, with a podcast you can edit stuff, you can make it look nice, make it feel and look like you're a good podcaster, but when it's live there's nothing you can do. You know, if you're gonna do an interview on live TV one day, maybe you're gonna have to actually be who you are, and so I'd rather you develop the skills or in my case, the real abs Then to just fake it. And If you're always just looking for looking better and this is my quote that I used to say, and I get why it doesn't land, but I think it will hear because of the context we've provided, you can either look good or be good. If your focus is on looking good, then you're probably not at that great. I've I've interviewed a lot of people. I have a lot of clients. The people who are the focused on getting better are the ones that are Amazing the focus. The people that are focused on looking better are usually way less Behind the scenes than you think, and I think that all of us in high school did a little bit of that.
Speaker 2:I know I did, for sure you definitely did, and we grow out of that. You got to grow out of that. That's my truth. You got to grow out of that because in real life, in your real marriage, in your real household, in your real craft and your real skills and who you really are, your real knowledge, your real consciousness, your real money in your real bank account, helping real people in the real world that's what's gonna fulfill you. So, if, if for nothing else, just know, trust me, I did some of that.
Speaker 2:I used to wear glasses because it made me look smarter. I used to pick the perfect outfits that made me look more intelligent, and I was selling Industrial automation equipment to CEOs of billion dollar companies and I used to fake it. I used to fake working harder than I really worked. I used to, and it just was so deeply unfulfilling. It was so deeply unfulfilling. So, if nothing else. Try to get better in your real life and improve your real life, and then let that be a byproduct, let looking good be a byproduct of that, and I promise you'll be more fulfilled. I can't promise you'll be more successful, but I can promise you'll be more fulfilled.
Speaker 1:My next level nugget would be there is a big difference between faking it and creating a safety net. A Safety net is I'm gonna go do this speech and I'm gonna have a cheat sheet in my pocket in case I forget what I want to say. Perfect that Versus faking it till you make it would be doing pretending you're on stage, and I've seen this. This is real. This has happened many times pretending you're on stage but not being on stage and doing a quote-unquote speech and then using that as content for social media, even though it wasn't a speech. It's not real. That is a safe Wait. You've seen that. Yes, I've seen that. And that's not a safety net. That's a fake. So you make it. Yes, I've seen that, yes.
Speaker 2:People are doing that.
Speaker 1:I, it's not rampant, but I've seen it. Well, I'm tapped into.
Speaker 2:You talked about fake weights one time with a lot of people that yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot of people that do fake weights a lot of people. There's a lot of their. There's a lot of people in the fitness industry who photoshop their photos, talking about how confident they can help you get, and they sell programs on how to lose weight. That's unreasonably common. Unreasonably common. They have. They have filters for video now, just because somebody puts up a video does not mean that's the way they look. You can filter videos now. There's a way to do it. It's gonna get worse. It's gonna keep getting worse and worse. The the goal and we have to hop because I have a coaching call. But the reason I like doing these episodes is because there's probably more people faking it till they make it than you realize and if you think they're not, that hurts your self-esteem, that hurts your confidence. That hurts your belief in yourself.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you, everyone is less confident than you think. I can promise you that, including the old me same same.
Speaker 1:I have seen pictures of people who won first place at a fitness competition, photoshop that picture and then put it on social media, even though they won the entire thing. Now this is a deeper conversation of body dysmorphia and all that. It's a much deeper conversation. But If you're influenced by that, you're getting taken advantage of and I just don't want that to happen for you. Yeah, what's? Your quick next level nugget quickly.
Speaker 2:Next level nugget is everyone is less confident than they appear socially and and everyone struggles behind the scenes, and you're just not alone in that and you need to remember that, particularly when it looks like everyone else is More confident, every one, almost everyone, is less confident and less successful than they appear on the outside, and you need to know that. Otherwise You'll think you'll compare your real life to their fake life and that's just a losing game.
Speaker 1:Next level nation. If you are looking for a place where you can be real and you don't have to fake it, so you make it. Please join our private Facebook group next level nation tomorrow for episode number 1496. Oh, I didn't know we were doing these back-to-back. I'm excited. Three phrases to avoid if you're trying to Improve your fitness game. I have had to unfollow so many people recently because I cannot stand how much they're lying to you about what they're doing. So we're gonna do an episode on that tomorrow, very excited, as always. We love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and I know you. We did not a fans, we have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow focus on improving your real life.
Speaker 2:Next level nation.
