Fake it Till you Make it

‘Just fake it till you make it’, they say, but who really lives this idiom?

Spoiler alert – as far as I know, no one does.

Definitely not me.

I get it though. It’s sometimes worth giving ourselves a pep talk, shooting from the hip and putting ourselves on the chopping block with all we’ve got, even if we are not sure we’ve got it at all.

There’s merit in this, sure.

But what happens when the ‘make it’ part doesn’t eventuate?

I’ve implemented the mantra and seen results, but sustainability?

Nope.

My experience has been that I could keep on faking it for ___ years but there’s no guarantee it will transpire. The effort produces little to no ongoing fruit and when the outcomes do not materialise I am left feeling unsure of who I was before ‘faking it’ became my mantra.

I’m normally a pretty positive and ‘half glass full’ kind of person but I get stuck on this hyper-positive phrase so often that I’m just going to say it how I see it.

There is no ‘fake it’ till you ‘make it’.

I just don’t believe people who try to evangelise me into this kind of thinking.

I’ve not seen it referenced in the Bible, either (happy to be proven wrong, of course), and I am not sure that Jesus himself ever ‘faked it’ till he ‘made it’.

In fact, a reference of him telling his mother that his ‘time to be revealed had not yet come to pass’ comes to mind…

I am not trying to be a negative Nancy with this but let’s just take a moment to think about it.

What are you faking until you make it?

Why are you faking it until you make it?

Who are you faking it till you make it for?

---

Taking a moment to reflect on these three questions, I can see my own subconscious faking episodes playing out in my life, even this week – it’s so ingrained in my culture that the subtle pull is often difficult to recognise. So there are no stones being thrown from this blog, that’s for sure. I am as influenced by these hyper-positive, hyper-unrealistic idioms and want to say just one thing about them.

Stop.

Stop faking it.

Stop trying to fake it.

Stop burying that imperfect, wild, untethered, whacky, unpredictable, timid, freaking awesome human that you are, right now.

And most of all, stop apologising for being who you are, today, this minute, in this season of your life. Just. Stop. It.

---

You still with me?

Awesome. Take some deep breaths. Now, start.

Start working toward it.

Start trusting the process.

Start celebrating the small consistent wins.

Start being who you are today and memorialise the steps you’re taking toward making it.

---

No one said it had to take X amount of time to make it… by the way…

Thanks for reading,

Miriam E. Miles