Can you fake it ’til you make it?

You know how it goes. You’re anxious about a situation, you’re not sure you have what it takes; can you live up to these crushing expectations? And upon confiding in someone about your qualms, you get the oh so reassuring shrug and response: ‘Fake it ‘til you make it!’. But in reality, how feasible is this? And are the effects of it healthy?

I’ve been in two minds about this for a long time and today I think I finally hit the nail on the head. But first, let me explain the two sides of that shiny coin…

1. Yes, definitely fake it ‘til you make it!

I’ve always thought that to achieve this, you need to be extra confident, extra flamboyant, extra-everything-you’re-not. By faking it and putting on a façade that yes- you really are this bubble of positivity, confidence, and power- you’ll eventually form a habit. A health psychology researcher at University College London conducted a study and found that it takes 18 days to form a habit, and 66 days for it to become an automatic behaviour. So you could argue that by forcing yourself out of your comfort zone and mimicking behaviours seen in others, you can slowly adopt these characteristics as your own and be the person you want to be. Hmm.

2. Nope, fake it ‘til you break it…

Faking personal traits to make yourself seem something you’re not is exhausting. I know we’ve all been there. Perhaps it was a job interview: you felt tiny, shy, unknowledgeable… but you strode in, smiled, shook their hand, asked questions, answered questions, acted like you knew.your.shit. Of course, some people are naturally like this! But if you’re not (which is not a bad thing), it can be hard to pretend to be this way even for a short while. Eventually, you may lose track of who you are, what you’re doing, and yup… break.

Faced in situations like this- job interviews, networking events at university and so on- I’ve struggled a lot. I’m not a naturally hugely extraverted person, but in the right frame of mind I can put on a good show. But equally, there have been times that I’m too tired and anxious to even try and push myself to act this way. And the outcome of this is so much worse than if you didn’t bother faking it and were true to yourself in the first place!

And that’s when it clicked.

Maybe where we are going wrong with the whole concept of ‘faking it ‘til you make it’ is that we skip the stage where we manifest it within ourselves. Instead, we jump straight to a stage of trying to project it onto other people. It’s never going to work! How can we ever make a story believable unless we believe in it ourselves?

If you have a vision of how you want to be, to perform, or to present yourself to new or influential people, I think it is so important not to merely fake it before first communicating it to yourself. If you want to be more confident, it might not be the most successful tactic to rock up somewhere and force yourself to act this way, when you have no strategy of how to achieve this. After all, if you knew the answer, you wouldn’t be struggling with adopting it in the first place.

So, how can we manifest these goals within ourselves before blindly stumbling into the world exercising them? Through affirmations. Affirmations are powerful tools for really making yourself believe you can be or do anything. They are good for the ego and utterly empowering. By focusing on one affirmation a day, saying it loud and clear to yourself in all moments of doubt, you’ll slowly start edging towards believing it is true. And once you believe it’s true, I guarantee you’ll have the rest of the World sold too.

Or, you’ll just look awkward. See above for a depiction of ‘awkward’.

So my response to the feasibility of faking it ‘til you make it? It’s feasible only if approached in the right way, and from within. Hence, don’t fake it because you think you should be a certain way or because you want to please other people. Only approach it if it’s something you want to achieve for the sake of your own personal growth, and only approach it if you’re willing to make yourself believe it before inflicting it upon anybody else. Why? Because otherwise, the short- and long-term effects will be excruciating.

Believe in yourself, manifest, self-assure… and you’ll be making it in no time with no faking necessary.