“Fake it ‘till you Make it” and Three Other Unhelpful Self-Help Mantras

Plus three mantras that really do help us “be the change”

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” J. Krishnamurti

When I entered the New Age world in my early 30s, it felt like I had stepped into another reality.

The people here were…different—kinder, lighter, and more present. Many of them recognized the issues of our culture and sought to “be the change.” They were ambitious, but in a completely different way than the mainstream ambition I was used to—an ambition about ladder climbing, promotion-seeking, and title-coveting.

I eagerly changed residencies from the real world to the spiritual world. And with that change in residency came a swallow-it-whole mentality about what I was taught. Because one thing that I’ve found to be true in both the real world and the spiritual world is a lack of tolerance for curiosity—not just a run-of-the-mill curiosity that wants to learn more, but a curiosity that questions everything, including the system itself.

I will always be indebted to the spiritual community. But now that I’ve moved back to the real world, I can see that even with the (slightly) more awakened consciousnesses and (mainly) good intentions, some of what the self-help/New Age world teaches not only doesn’t help us grow, but actively keeps us stuck.

Here are a few examples:

Fake it ‘till you make it

This mantra is meant to help us move into a different—aka, better— state of mind. Pretend you’re happy, and the happiness will follow; pretend you’re enlightened, and the enlightenment will follow. Whatever it is that we want, this mantra advises us to act as if we’re already there. And from our pretense, it will supposedly become our truth.

This mantra is nothing more than suppression in disguise. This is no different from when women are told to smile or children are told to give their bully a hug.

No, thank you. Our culture is full up on repression tactics. We don’t need more admonitions that the state of mind we’re in is not okay in other people’s estimation. We shouldn’t compartmentalize ourselves and our emotions, especially in a community that says it celebrates wholeness.

Instead, we need tools to help us recognize and express our emotions in healthy, productive ways. And we need to build communities that accept us, no matter what “mood” we’re in.

Besides, why are we “pretending” to be anything other than what we are when the stated goal of New Age and self-help movements is about truth and authenticity? I, for one, refuse to put on faces or masks for anyone ever again.

Create your own reality/manifestation mantras

I loved loved loved the movie “The Secret.” I loved the idea of merging science (left brain) with spirituality (right brain) to support greater and deeper truths. I believe that the Law of Attraction plays a role in what and who we draw into our lives.

Also, it can be a fun and clarifying exercise to create a vision board, or picture ourselves with better health or more wealth. But the create your own reality mantra is ultimately dismissive of the fact that not everything in our lives is within our control to change.

Create your own reality is a mantra of privilege, designed for people who have the resources and the opportunities to change their lives independent of cultural change. It ignores the fact that we live in a society in which inequalities and prejudices not only exist but are the ground we walk on and the air we breathe.

We are a collective, and if we are going to make the Law of Attraction work for us, then we need to do so as a collective. As individuals, it’s not always in our power to call in abundance, wealth, or even better health, given the inequities and barriers to entry experienced by too many in our country to jobs, safety, good food, healthcare, and other necessities. If we want everyone to create their own reality, we need to give them the crayons they need to do so.

Don’t judge

I’m really over this one. How many times in yoga classes has this been said, habitually, without understanding the harm it can cause when not correctly interpreted? The teaching itself has merits, which I’ll get to, but we often take in the teaching without understanding the nuances. Like the “fake it ‘till you make it” mantra, in practice, this acts like suppression.

Our brains judge. They just do. They divide, separate, sort. It’s how we make decisions. It’s how we know right from wrong. It’s how we make sure the what and who we bring into our lives matches our virtues and values.

Trying to forcing ourselves — or our brains — to stop doing something they are designed to do puts us more in alignment with self-loathing than with self-acceptance or self-love.

Too often in both the culture at large and in the New Age world, “Don’t judge” is the reason we look away from bad behavior within the group. So we get cults. We get blind followers. And we get leaders who prey on their community rather than serve it. This behavior is the exact opposite of the truth-seeking and truth-speaking the New Age community professes to do.

Good judgment is critically important as we seek more and greater truth. We must separate that which belongs from that which doesn’t. We need to sort through the various paths of spiritual growth and identify the one best suited to our constitution. We must seek teachers and teachings that speak to us where we are while guiding us to what’s possible.

As our understanding of truth progresses, and as our minds open to the wisdom we find within ourselves, the harsher judgments—the knee-jerk ones that arise out of prejudice and ignorance—will dissolve effortlessly. This is the deeper meaning of the non-judgment doctrine.

Find your purpose

Recently, a leader in the spiritual community posted a Facebook message about the critical importance of “finding one’s purpose.”

One woman commented that she didn’t have a specific purpose, and she felt despondent and depressed about that.

The leader replied, “I’m so sorry. Seek help.”

For the record, I judged the hell out of her response. I replied before I could even breathe, questioning the condescension of the “seek help” comment and reminding the commenter that it’s okay to feel like she doesn’t have a specific purpose. To just live her life and love herself as best as she can.

The leader replied that I had “put words in her mouth” but then blocked me, so I don’t know how I did that.

There are a lot of us, like myself, that move through life like a snake, shedding skins just as easily as we try on new ones. In this TED talk, Emilie Wapnick refers to people like me as “multipotentialites,” and I think more of us identify with this than with the idea of growing up to be something specific and never veering from it.

If we’re genuinely trying to help people in the self-help world, let’s free them from the constraints of a society that wants everyone in their proper place.

“Purpose” talk is not a New Age invention, either. It’s borrowed from the culture — a culture that puts success and status ahead of happiness and contentment. The culture that demands we figure out who we are and stick to it. The culture that wants us all in boxes with tidy labels. Can you honestly picture Buddha teaching a class in finding our purpose?

Now for a few mantras that really do work as promised.

May I be at peace with whatever comes

I learned this one while studying Yin Yoga in 2008, along with its sister mantras: “May I be free from fear and harm” and “May I be happy as I am.”

As someone who has never been much for praying, these mantras feel like both gratitude and prayer to me. They are mantras of acceptance that allow us to move into wholeness with grace and ease. They’re gentle and loving, patient and understanding. And, it’s easy to replace the “I” with “all beings” to create a powerful prayer for the collective, too.

You have to feel it to heal it

This is not even a mantra; this is simply a truth. Nothing can be healed that we won’t look at, honor, and ultimately, feel.

All of us have wounds that extend back to childhood. Thinking, writing, or talking about wounds only brings us halfway to healing, leaving so many of us walking around half-healed.

To allow our wounds to not only change us but transform us, we must release them through the same pathway they came in: our bodily sensations. You’ll be surprised at what the body remembers, if we ask. And also, how readily the body gives up pain, when we give it the opportunity and opening.

Wherever you go, there you are

Another truth, out of the book by the same name by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

I used to believe that I had to completely change my life or travel to some faraway location to find spiritual enlightenment. But this mantra reminds us that spiritual growth does not happen by moving ourselves around, changing jobs, or leaving all our relationships. If we do not resolve our traumas and wounds, we will continue to get wounded and traumatized in the same ways, again and again.

The truth is, I’ve done most of my best healing work while sitting with myself in silence—not while on some spiritual quest or adventure. When I sit with myself, I can practice the most challenging work of all the spiritual work: self-love and acceptance. From here, and through good judgment, I easily know which jobs, relationships, or locations need to change in my life.

For those of us interested in spiritual growth through self-help, we need to practice discernment (and good judgment) in how we employ the mantras we learn.

We can always use them to justify painting over (or what we call “spiritual bypassing”) our own and the world’s pain and problems. We can cover it all up with manifestation mantras, reframed mindsets, and carefully adjusted attitudes and perspectives.

But like the Krishnamurti quote says, it is not a measure of health that we can simply adapt to society through reframing our mindset.

For ourselves and our society, a healthier option is to commit to seeing things as they are, face them, and seek real, not pretend, change.

The spiritual world might think of itself as separate from the real world, but they are entirely interdependent. So in the West, the self-help world is too often nothing more than a glorified pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps philosophy. That is, of course, the meaning of self-help.

But in a world that is increasingly in pain due to economic issues, racism, hate movements, and so many other issues steeped in inequality, we must stop putting the onus on individuals to change and instead pressure the collective to change.

The spiritual world will always hold a place in my heart, because it remains a place of game-changing possibilities for all of us. But not when we just adapt. Not when we co-opt bad habits from the culture at large. Not when we merely look the other way or pretend to be something or somewhere we’re not.

We all say we want to “be the change.” The only way we can do that is to do the hard work necessary: honor the truth of who and where we are.