Fake it

I’ve recently been doing a lot of introspection, evaluating what I have and who I am against what I want and who I’m not.

Thing is, nearly everything I’d like to have and don’t comes down to being a better version of myself, and having the confidence to pursue and acquire the things I want. In other words:

I want to be the top pick in almost everything I do.

I want to feel confident in my ability to pull it off.

I want do my best, to make my world bigger.

And I want to see and experience the best possible results.

Hence the impasse. Because everything starts with being. As Zig Ziglar said, you have to “be before you can do, and do before you can have.”

If you’re not already great at what you’re trying to accomplish, if you don’t already believe you can do this thing, you’re never going to feel like you can pursue it and get the response you want.

This is were self-help gurus will tell you can make yourself confident by thinking positive thoughts; striking a pose; repeating affirmations; and acknowledging that you already are the person you really want to be.

Given the gift of experience (and evidence), however, I’m here to tell you that it’s not so easy. Because you can’t feel like someone you’re not when you don’t already have ample experience to support those beliefs. You can’t feel confident until you get a favorable response, and you can’t do that unless you try.

It also turns out that no amount of thinking or theorizing or reading or writing or affirming the ideas you would like to have about yourself will ever make you feel like less of a fraud.

Which means that the solution can't be to will yourself into feeling or thinking or believing.

The solution that works is as simple as the positive reframe, but significantly more difficult: Be a fraud until you aren’t. Stop waiting to see or feel or be the person you want to become, and simply do.

Take risks. Learn from your mistakes. Be at your best. Build confidence by way of competence. Do what you fear so often and so readily that it becomes automatic, so that you can’t remember the resistance, or recall what it felt like to be a fraud.

Do the work long enough and everything else—feeling, seeing, being—will inevitably catch up to you eventually.