‘Many of us put a premium on authenticity. Somewhere, we mix this up with staying the same and not changing.’
Rahul Dravid mistimed a pull shot and was caught by Michael Slater at square leg. The only problem was the replays showed the ball touching the ground before Slater took the catch. The third umpire declared Rahul Dravid not out and an enraged Michael Slater walked up to the umpire and made his displeasure felt. He followed this up by walking up to Rahul Dravid and hurling a bunch of abuses at him.
Rahul Dravid, being himself, remained unfazed by Slater’s stupidity and didn’t react. According to reports, Michael Slater and Rahul Dravid later made up over a beer.
Michale Slater retired from cricket almost 20 years ago and is now a commentator. He isn’t as high profile as some other cricketers’ and I haven’t really followed his life or career closely.
The first inference one makes from connecting the dots between the two incidents is — ‘this guy hasn’t changed one bit. Still getting into fights and creating a scene.’
For all you know, this may be the wrong inference to make as many years have passed between the two incidents.
On the other hand, we see people, and ourselves, getting into the same problems and falling into the same patterns time and again. It isn’t as if we don’t want to change but we frustrate ourselves over and over.
Many of us put a premium on authenticity. Somewhere, we mix this up with staying the same and not changing.
In other words, we fear we will be seen as fakes if we attempt to change some aspect of ourselves.
When someone sees us after a long time and remarks ‘you haven’t changed one bit’, we can either take it as a compliment or a rebuke. If they’re saying we look the same, that we haven’t put on much weight, that we’re still as calm as ever, then it can be taken as a compliment. But if what they’re saying is we’re still impatient, still boors, still not giving others a chance to talk, then it might be more of a rebuke.
Actual change for the better involves discomfort. A caterpillar must be feeling the same way. One day it’s a worm and the next day it has wings to fly. And anything that makes us feel uncomfortable makes us feel like a fake, like we don’t belong. The impostor syndrome is built on this fallacy.
If the change we’re trying to bring about is making us feel uncomfortable in a bad way, then it’s probably not the change we should be seeking. This happens when we pretend to respect someone we don’t respect or when we try and change to fit into a crowd that doesn’t match our wavelength and makes us compromise on values that we cherish.
You may or may not believe in the axiom ‘fake it till you make it’.
In this wonderful blog post, author James Clear writes about how to ‘fake it till you become it’:
When my friend Beck Tench began her weight loss journey, she repeatedly asked herself the question, “What would a healthy person do?”
When she was deciding what to order a restaurant: what would a healthy person order? When she was sitting around on a Saturday morning: what would a healthy person do with that time? Beck didn’t feel like a healthy person at the start, but she figured that if she acted like a healthy person, then eventually she would become one. And within a few years, she had lost over 100 pounds.
I’m sure thinking like a healthy person at first made Beck feel like a fake. All she did was rephrase it and moved towards a better version of herself.
Superficial change is fake, unsustainable and lacks depth. It’s like a fake Rolex that looks nice on the outside but will go kaput very quickly.
Authentic change is hard and if we get through it, sustainable and empowering.
To get to a more authentic version of ourselves, we have to fake it every now and then.
