Sweatpants can make you fearless. How?

I can wear sweats – and so can you. What a concept.

Personally, I feel more secure when I get up late, and go to school the sweater I wore to bed, socks sticking out of my shoes, sweatpants yanked on. Dressing like that seems to be a physical reminder to myself: “Hey, I really don’t mind what people think of me. Check out that tomato stain on my pant leg. Nobody’s commented on that yet. They probably won’t judge me on anything less obvious than that tomato stain – like my personality. Why is life so good?”

If I dress like nobodies watching, I’ll act like nobodies watching. And when you act like nobodies watching, life never lets you down.

On the flipside …

You know the saying ‘fake it ’till you make it’?

Self-help gurus and motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Earl Nightingale preach it like their pants are on fire.

Vanity – and faking it – can work against you.

Sometimes I feel I might be the most secure person in the world, but dressing like I’m not can change that entirely. Vanity is a well-known characteristic of a person who is – deep down – insecure and unsure of themselves. By embracing vanity, one can unconciously become that insecure person.

I can spend 2 hours each morning making myself look like a porcelain doll. Coat my face with mascara and makeup. Lather myself in perfume. Wear clothes that give me wedgies and increase my risk of being arrested for public indecency by 50%. Make my hair defy gravity, put spikes on my heels, anything to make me feel entirely unnatural and fake but slightly goodlooking. Look at myself in the mirror a few extra times, to verify my existance. Make sure I’m still there.

Then I go out and I feel fake, like people are seeing, smelling, and evaluating every inch of me. I act like everyone’s watching, and thats a good recipe for stage fright.

Moral of the story? Wear your dirty sweatpants and forget about your worries.

Know what you fear – it’s all you ever need to know