Is it hypocritical to act differently than how you feel inside? If you don’t like someone, are you a hypocrite if you put on a friendly face and treat them well, even though you don’t really feel like it? Isn’t doing so being inauthentic—aren’t we just putting on a mask over how we really feel?
Yes and no. Sure we may be acting differently than how we feel. But that in itself doesn’t always equate to hypocrisy or inauthenticity. Part of it depends on who we truly want to be.
In this case, do we actually want to be a loving person? Or even, do we want to want to be a loving person? If so, then acting in terms of who we want to be, even when we don’t feel like it, is not hypocrisy—it’s training.
If I want be loving, but don’t feel like it, I can still choose to go ahead and do the loving thing. Or, in another situation, maybe I don’t feel that courageous, but I go ahead and act like a brave person would. It’s these actions, even though they may not feel authentic at the time, that eventually help us change into someone who does these same things naturally.
Over time, these repeated actions become part of the fabric of our character—the things that seemed so hard or strained will become second nature. And when that happens, it won’t be necessary to force ourselves to do what we know we should do. Instead, it will be our natural response because it’s who we’ve become.
Acting differently than we feel may feel hypocritical or inauthentic. But in the end, it can actually be a form of training, helping us become who truly we want to be.