Masked: What Mask Do You Wear?

A young CEO walked to her car. It was cold and dark; she didn’t realize she had worked that late. The young CEO had worked very hard to get to where she was, and everyone always told her how good of job she had done or how proud they were of her. The young CEO was thankful for the comments, but deep down she couldn’t be flattered. Yes, she had worked hard but she was guilty of using her work to hide some of her insecurities. Instead of dealing with them she buried herself in her work and success. Many people saw her as this powerful, confident, and successful young CEO. Although she was all of those things, she was haunted by her insecurities. She used her accomplishments as a shield or a mask. Are you guilty of wearing a mask?

A mask can be many different things. It can be success, work, fashion, sports, food, or whatever one may use to hide what they are not proud of. Our insecurities are what we consider flaws. Often we are so critical of ourselves and find the smallest thing to call a flaw. We take the flaw and make it bigger than it really is. We give that flaw or imperfection life, not realizing that it’s probably not that big of a deal. We try to mask the flaw from the world, when in reality others may not notice it.

We find ourselves doing everything to get rid of this flaw. When we can’t get rid of the flaw, we decide that we will cover it up by indulging in or shining the light on something else.  We become determined to show people that mask only. We want people to see what we are good at or what we are proud of. We don’t want them to see what is giving us pause or troubling us.

Recently, I got sick of wearing my mask. The mask was suffocating me. It was no longer curing my problem or giving me that quick fix. I can identify with that young CEO because I buried myself in my work, studies, and desire to become successful. I realized that I had carried around an insecurity from a young age. That insecurity was my driving force for so long. Some may say, well that’s a good thing if it motivated you to accomplish things. That is not true. That insecurity drove me to cover up a problem that I should have faced years ago.

All of us have something that we think we could master, but there are some things that intimidate us or make us feel inferior. It is common to develop insecurities at an early age and allow the insecurities to grow with us as we age. We find ourselves saying things like: I may not be good at this, but I am the best at this, I will never be able to do that, let me find something I am good at. My point is, it is ok to be great at whatever one wants to be great at, but do not use it as a mask to cover up insecurities. Lift the MASK and embrace the insecurity, you may be surprised at how others view it or who may be dealing with the same situation.