Why I hate "Fake it Til You Make It"

And what to do instead...

I hate “fake it til you make it”. The problem is that it can work for some people so they teach it others as valid strategy.

The risk is when it doesn’t work. Which is often. The result is your sense of self worth is shattered. You acted inauthentically - which feels terrible - and you ended up worse off. Now the next attempt will be even harder.

Is there a way you can get the upside of “fake it til you make it” without the risk? Yes. In order to do this though you have to understand confidence.

The Confidence Mistake

Many people think that in order to be confident you need results. This is an “if, when” fallacy. If results created confidence none of us would have any because we all start with no results.

The cause (results) isn’t the effect (confidence). Instead, it’s confidence that creates the results.

Which means confidence is an attitude.

For some people, repressing their feelings (faking it) can work. It does wonders for sociopaths who didn’t have the normal emotional restraints towards inauthenticity that the rest of us have.

But could there be a better attitude than faking it?

The Mother of All Confidence

I used to not be able to close. I couldn’t ask for the order to save my life.

When I finally could close, I’d do it at a low price. I was scared.

Now I quote fees that make “buttholes puckers”:

How I got over this lack of confidence

I drilled it repeatedly in my mind.

The thing about the mind is it has trouble knowing the difference between real experience and imagined. Especially if you put enough senses into it.

Think real hard about sucking a lemon and your mouth waters. Imagine a rusty nail running across a chalkboard hard enough and it physically hurts.

I’d drill me closing and asking for big numbers in my mind and seeing my face, posture, hearing my tonality and feeling calm. Do that a couple hundred times over a week or two and it feels as if you have results.

Then it’s easier to practice it in person.

Then easier to do it for real.

Preparation creates confidence. Then confidence creates results.

Hacking Confidence

The big problem with preparation though is it’s hard, long and takes a lot of work.

The older I get though the more I realize - everything is hard. You just have to pick your hard.

Not being prepared is easy in the short term but hard in the long run. Being prepared is hard in the short term but easy in the long run.

Boring is hard. But boring is where the money is - drilling the fundamentals over and over again with an aim at a slight improvement over time.

Being broke is hard…. harder than boring.

And it doesn’t have to be being forever.

You can shorten the preparation curve if you alter only ever so slightly this “confidence is an attitude” belief. How? By tapping into the unobvious, powerful truths already inside you.

The Powerhouse of the cell Confidence

At any given point you have trillions of mitochondria which produce the energy that can be used to help you accomplish your dreams.

Trillions.

Within you in an unfathomable chemistry of potential and it just requires you to fire and re-fire off that chemistry in different ways until you hit upon the right combo to propel you to your goal.

Notice “fire and re-fire… in different ways”. I’m intentional about the language. The phrasing here allows you to screw up and still be able to move forward. It keeps you from falling into delusion.

If you just have to keep trying with different combinations the conclusion is you will get there as long as you try.

But if you think “fake it til I make it” and you keep not making it, then you can feel conflicted.

Confliction is the antithesis of action.

You = Learning Machine

Once you couldn’t walk, talk or even go to the bathroom on your own. You couldn’t feed yourself and didn’t know how to make a single cent. And look how far you’ve come!

You learned language before you were even formally trained. You went from not being able to sit up without falling over to walking, despite the fact you fell down and cried a lot as you learned.

You have the capability to learn things in the next year that seem impossible right now.

The more you can stay in connection to that, the more confidence you can have, the easier it is to do the preparation and that gets results.

Now results can create confidence. But think of this - even if Michael Jordan missed several shots in a row - did he hesitate to take the next? No.

So use the upside of confidence - you know the tangibles you can produce - but don’t identify too hard with it… because then if you fail only once it can shatter your confidence.

Confidence is an attitude.

The better you can cultivate that attitude without using delusional thinking (fake it til you make you it) and the more you can associate excitement to preparation (positive visualization) the easier it will propel you to action.

You are capable of far more than you know. I see it in all my customers. If they saw themselves as I saw them, it’d be so much easier to help them become more of who they already are.

-Jason Fladlien

P.S. I wrote this in an indoor waterpark while the kids frolic.

We head out in a few minutes to drive to the temple where we will read the the Bhagavad Gita in full - all 700 verses in the original Sanskrit. Takes about 4 hours. And then we head home.

We get on the elevator and a parent notices I have the laptop in hand and says: “Dad, you’re supposed to leave the work at home.” Funny.

I usually do. But there are other commitments, too. I’m committed to publishing these articles for you.

And that goes a long ways to confidence. If you know it will get done no matter what, even if inefficiently… then there is no room for doubt.

That’s when confidence becomes optional.