This week I've come across a plethora of people who are disingenuous. Not that these people are bad people, just, in a way, liars. We live in a world where people are grasping for honesty and realness, we cling to any little bit we find.

We crave it so much that we even created television shows that portray realness in a fake way. Even reality TV is now a facade…imagine that. Transparency is a beautiful thing. It’s enticing, exotic, and enabling. People are drawn towards others who are an open book, like a moth to a flame.

My topic of choice comes from a former co-worker of mine. She just graduated college, works as a sales associate at a retail store, wrote and self-published a book, and has her own fashion line of bodysuits being introduced at our local fashion week event. Wow, right? I thought the same thing. She wasn’t bragging when she told me these things, at least not obviously, she would just drop these little tidbits into normal work conversations.

After hearing about all her accolades, I literally wanted to melt into a puddle of water on the floor and stay there for the rest of my life, because I clearly am not doing something right. The cogs in my brain (a.k.a my palace of anxiety) started cranking and immediately began spewing out negative questions.

Why are you so lazy? Why don’t you work harder? Why can’t you wake up earlier and get more stuff done in the day? Why didn’t you put in more intern applications over the summer last year? Why didn’t you start working out six months ago? It just kind of continued on from there.

That day at work, I learned that this girl was more lost than I was. She wasn’t bragging about all her endeavors to me, she was bragging to convince herself. She didn’t know what she wanted out of life, so she tried a little bit of everything. I know a couple of people like that.

They dabble a little bit in everything unsure of what they want to do with their life, only knowing that they want to be happy and fulfilled. Not knowing what you want to do with your life is okay. Trying out different hobbies is okay. Being scared is okay. And guess what? It's okay to admit to all those things as well.

I urge you to start looking at people for the way they act and their character as opposed to everything they’ve accomplished. There are people that are put on this earth simply to make you feel bad about yourself. This girl, unknowingly, is one of them. She also, unknowingly, pushed me to do better. She forced me to ask myself ugly questions that I didn’t want to bring to light.

Instead of looking at her as this goddess among mere mortals, I looked at her as an inspiration. While I may never write a book and definitely will never create my own fashion line, I want people to look at me the way I now look at her. I want to inspire people. I want people to think, “If she can do it, I can do it."

Keep in mind as well, that people are not always genuine. They build themselves up to be these well-rounded, hard-working icons, when really they are as lost and dependent as you are. A quote by Margaret Thatcher comes to mind, “Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

That’s exactly how I feel about people who blast social media pages with all their accomplishments, or drop little hints about their achievements in conversation. If you are as goal-oriented as you present yourself to be, it will show. If you are as hard-working as you post to be, we will be able to tell.

Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by disingenuous people, draw near to the transparent ones. The ones who encourage you when real life gets to be too much. The ones you can learn from because they’ve made mistakes as well. These are the people that you will become better because of.

After some serious thought, I realized that life isn’t as easy as publishing your own book and starting up your own fashion line of bodysuits while working as a sales associate. It sounds nice in theory, but it just isn’t possible, especially not after graduating and having college loans. Look deeper into people, love them for who they are, not for who they pretend to be.

There are people in this world that thrive off knowing they are better than other people, or knowing that they are “successful” (whatever that may mean to them). I’m happy to admit that I’ve screwed up...a lot. I have experiences behind me and more ahead of me. I want people to see me as honest and as genuine.