Fake it till you make it is the worst advice
It widens the gulf between your true self and a false projection
Fake it till you make it. I’ve heard this a lot. “Fake it till you make it.” Feign confidence even when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Somehow it has become a badge of honour for people to fake it until they make it. Our very success, our ability to bluff and get away with it.
The feigning of confidence is perpetrated in our culture as well. A thousand push notifications informing, updating, and heralding the success of another. At the same time, a downward spiral of society, war, and disease, where everything seems to be at risk of breakdown at a hair trigger.
The two extremes hammering us every waking second question our very relevance.
We are what we are but decidedly inadequate.
The whole world seems to be telling us otherwise. There’s a war blazing, a disease claiming lives everyday, and in the middle, thousands have gone on to gain skills we can only dream of. Social media is saddled with experts who offer courses and share their own views. It’s mind-numbing!
We think we are immune. But we aren’t. Our actions and decisions are shaped by the information we consume. We are very much the deep-seated inadequacies created by the overload of information. We may meditate our way out of it, gain semblance of control, and immerse into self improvement to distract ourselves. But that will not distill the systemic divide or solve deep underlying issues with society. Acknowledging it is the first step. Knowing we shouldn’t fake our way is next.
Faking creates a divide between who we truly are and who society thinks we should be.
Somehow the entire machinery seems to tell us that we should be other than what we are. And in case we are unable to make it per society’s standards, we are lesser human beings.
This is a dangerous precedent. We know it. We still fall for it.
The notion that if you aren’t popular you are worthless needs to be acknowledged first before discarding. It’s easy to convince ourselves that we are above these influences, but think again. Think hard. A simple litmus test is where you consume your news from. Do you take it from a verified source or do you first look at what a swirling mass of people are talking about an issue first?
You wouldn’t be wrong either way. But you would be clouding your own personal judgment through filters that you didn’t know existed. Other people would have given a thousand opinions and they would have consumed, put it through their filters, and would have barfed out their opinions which would now shape your initial worldview. This is who you’re competing with. This is who are at the pinnacles of success. This is why you will never know how they became the way they were. And what do they say when you try to understand how to become better? Fake it till you make it.
But in terms of expertise too, there are such insurmountable bars that you would rather not begin at all. I admire Malcolm Gladwell’s work, and about the 10,000 hours stuff, but it’s a terrible bar if you want to explore something new. And by the time you even begin, media out there is hammering inspirations, influencers, and exemplars who have achieved the much-coveted statuses. If all the top spots are already gained, why would you even begin?
You won’t get very far. It’s nice for the stories, novels, and movies. Real life will beat you down very quickly. If you want to be a perpetrator of falsehood, you might find adequate gain from faking life. But there’s not much else.
It is a brutal world out there. The only thing that can help us survive it is our uniqueness in dealing with life. Existential issue is no longer a philosophical conundrum. It is a very real, visceral reality that can strike us without a heads-up. The least you can do is face it for what it is. Help out where you can. Do not feign, do not give false hope in times of crises. Do not fake your personality.
True expertise takes time, dedication, and concerted effort. It’s one thing that cannot be faked. In a time where death could just be a single moment away, the least we can do is be true to ourselves.
