Fake It 'Til You Make It
I’m not sure why, but the phrase “Fake it ‘til you make it” has always bothered me.
It seems to imply that you need to deceive others in order to be successful.
However, there is something absolutely true about that statement. And you start to see it if you reframe it without its deceptive connotations.
A baby learns to walk by first pretending it can walk. It seems arrogant, doesn’t it? A non-walking being has the audacity to attempt something that everyone in the room knows it can’t do. Faker!
But that is actually the learning process for everyone.
You learn through a series of failures. And you only fail if you try to do something that you don’t know how to do.
In short, learning works like this:
Imagine something you want to be able to do that you can’t do right now
Attempt to do it with rigor; that is, imitate someone who does know how to do it
You’ll get a few things right, but you’re fail at most of it
Think about what you learned from your failures
And do these steps over and over until you succeed
In other words, act as if you know how to do the thing, fail, course correct, and do it again.
Of course, you often need to break things down into small learning chunks or else you’ll be discouraged or cause harm. For example, don’t pretend you’re a surgeon if you have no idea how surgery even works.
But, also know that every surgeon cut a living person open for the first time…
What do you think?
Joseph