LIFE LESSONS | ADVICE | WRITING
Why ‘Fake It Until You Make It’ Is Horrible Advice
Confidence doesn’t come until you do what needs to be done.
I get why “fake it until you make it” is such a widely-circulated, popular bit of advice.
It was something I clung to myself in the earlier days of this blog. I thought that if I simply kept calling myself a “writer” — even while feeling on the inside like I wasn’t yet good enough, or didn’t have enough “social metrics” to prove it — then it would make the dream come true.
That, at some point, I would magically feel like the thing I wished to be.
These days, however, I’ve performed a complete 180 on the notion that we can become something by simply pretending to be that thing until we are it.
I’ve learned that there’s no way to truly feel like you are something until you begin to embody the qualities of that thing during every waking moment of your life.
Put another way, the hard-to-accept truth is that we will never feel confident calling ourselves something until the habits that make us that thing are baked into the very fabric of our DNA.
With writing, I was tremendously overthinking the problem.
A writer is a person who sits down and writes.
That’s it.
A writer is someone that is sincere in their quest to become better with the written word because they believe in the value of their perspective — whether they have the following to show for it or not.
You can’t “fake” being a writer — or anything else for that matter.
You know whether you are one or not based on how writing makes you feel and how motivated you are to keep doing it.
Can you give it up for months on end and not feel like something is “off” or “wrong?”
Then you’re probably not a writer, at least not yet. The drive to write hasn’t been internalized in you to the point where you can’t live without it.
But if you can’t pull yourself away from self-reflection and from the keyboard because you just have to get more words out, then you’re closer to knowing what you are.
To illustrate the problem with “fake it until you make it” in a more concrete, easy-to-see example, take basketball.
Can you fake being a basketball player until you make it?
Obviously not.
You either go on the court and can hold your own with the other players, or you realize that you don’t yet have the necessary skill to hoop with people who are better than you.
The only way to get the skill is to embody the qualities of a basketball player, and that means practicing your ass off until your competency matches the desired level of play you wish to compete at.
You would never in your wildest dreams tell a basketball player to “fake it until they make it” because you can see immediately how absurd that is.
So why do we tell people to do that when it comes to other skills and domains of life?
Just the other day, I was wrapping up some 21 with a couple of guys I hoop with at the park when I said, “Alright, peace out. I’m going to go get some pull-ups in before heading out.”
To my surprise, they followed me to where I do my pull-ups.
Thank god I wasn’t “faking it until I make it” with pull-ups, otherwise, I would have made a fool of myself.
Luckily, I’ve been putting in the work, and seeing me crank out ten, proper-form pull-ups inspired one of the guys to try a set of his own.
The point of this story is that we should never fake being what we aren’t. We should be humble regarding where we are — progress-wise — and take concrete, actionable steps to become what we wish to be, and above all, be patient with the results.
There’s no shame in admitting that we’re learning how to be something, but there’s a lot of shame in racing ahead to call ourselves a thing before we can produce consistent results.
Now, writing is a bit different than basketball and physical fitness.
It’s more subjective, no doubt.
It’s easier to judge the performance of athletes than it is of writers because writers are reaching into themselves to pull something out, and that’s less of a competition and more of a “personal taste” sort of thing.
But the basketball analogy is still apt.
You gain more confidence on the court by doing drills off the court that improve your ball-handling, shooting, etc.
Similarly, you gain more confidence as a writer by turning your life into a work of art that you’re proud to share with others via writing, and by honing your competency with the written word day after day.
Without fail.
Put another way, I gain more confidence as a writer the more I deal with my own shit in life — my laziness, my toxicity, and my bad habits.
When I know I’m not doing what I need to be doing in that regard, I never produce confident writing.
If I’ve slacked for a few days, guess what?
All my motivation to write disappears.
When I know that I’ve been working hard to make sure I’m the best possible version of myself, the confident words flow easily.
I don’t have to “force” myself to the keyboard when I’ve been on top of my game. I naturally want to sit down and pour my mind and heart into a post.
It’s as simple as that.
Maybe faking it until you make it works for you. If so, fine.
For me, however, I never feel worse than when I write and say things I don’t really believe because I’m trying to convince myself and others that that’s what I am — even though it isn’t.
The far better path, at least to me, has been to stop wishing upon a star to be something, and instead start doing the work that will eventually turn me into that thing, eventually.
Because when I call myself a writer or a person who cares about staying physically fit in the future, I don’t want to feel like I’m faking it.
I want to know that it’s the unequivocal truth.