“Fake it ‘til you make it.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this phrase. Because in my 20s and 30s I really leaned in on this. And the result was that even when I had success, I felt like a fraud. I knew that I had started out by “faking it.” And there was a part of me that let that sour me. It made me feel like a phony, like an imposter. It’s plagued me for years.

Here’s what I’ve realized…

I only took half the lesson to heart. I was “faking it,” but what I wasn’t doing was acknowledging the second half of the instruction. I wasn’t letting myself “make it.” Or maybe I would have understood it better if it was phrased in a slightly different way.

“Do what it takes to make it real, and then it’s no longer faking it.”

I built a lot of skills and accomplished a lot of amazing things, but I never let go of the “I’m faking it” part of the equation. I just kept thinking, “I’m not really this or that, I’m just pretending.” It didn’t seem to matter that I had actually acquired all of these skills and done all of these things. Because it started as faking it, I was fraud.

I was missing the point.

Here’s the thing—if I say I’m a virtuoso pianist but I can’t even play chopsticks, I’m not going to become Carnegie Hall ready overnight. Everyone knows that getting to Carnegie Hall takes practice, practice, practice.

So faking it isn’t magic. But it is magically motivating.

If I choose to believe, deep down, that I really am a virtuoso pianist, then the next step is to start doing the things that make that shift from belief to reality. That means I practice, practice, practice, for hours every day. I learn the skills and the craft.

And I take it next level. I study YouTube videos, learn how this pianist does that remarkable thing, learn how virtuosos refine their practice, doing it better. Because the real rule isn’t so much “practice makes perfect,” but “perfect practice makes perfect.” So if I’m going to be a virtuoso, I need to practice thinking and behaving at a virtuoso level.

I would study virtuoso pianists. I would learn how virtuosos think. I would emulate them. I would dress like them, walk like them, talk like them, listen to the things they listen to and watch the things they watch. I would model them as closely as I possibly could, in an effort to replicate within myself that part of them to makes them virtuosos.

Or… if no models were available, I would create one. I would determine the qualities I believe a virtuoso should have, and I would obsessively craft those qualities in myself.

That, in all truth, is the reality of “fake it ‘til you make it.”

It’s not about lying to anyone, or deceiving anyone—especially yourself. It’s about deciding what your reality is going to be, and then systematically removing every single obstacle and barrier to that reality. It’s about aligning yourself with that reality, to make it true.

Here’s a secret: Behaving this way, deciding to be this dedicated to crafting your reality, will almost instantly put you ahead of 99% of the rest of the world, when it comes to achieving your goal.

That’s because it’s easy to reach the top 1% of something if most people aren’t even chasing it.

How many virtuoso pianists do you know?

How many acclaimed authors?

How many top-of-their field neurosurgeons?

No one’s telling you to fake being a neurosurgeon… calm down.

But I am definitely telling you that if being a top neurosurgeon is your goal, it starts by convincing yourself that you are that thing, despite any lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary, and that you will do everything in your power to make that goal become your reality.

Deciding is half the effort. The other half is living up to that decision.

If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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