You’ve heard the old adage: “Fake it til you make it.” It’s common in self-help and spiritual communities. It means you may actually achieve what you’re pretending to have or to be. Play being a success and you’ll eventually succeed. Act like you are wealthy, and abundance will come. Pretend you’re actively loved, and you’ll soon feel it.
What happens when you have been faking it, but you never make it? Or when you realize that faking it feels — well — just fake? You may ask yourself: Isn’t being authentic and real what’s important, and what will satisfy and empower us?
Faking it til you make it depends on how you fake it. Follow these 9 steps, and you’ll make it:
1. DEFINE AUTHENTICITY — FOR YOURSELF.
Check in with your own definition of authenticity. Are you authentically expressing a thought, a feeling, or an emotion — which is a thought plus feeling? Then ask yourself: Where is the thought, feeling, or emotion coming from? Is it a belief you hold? Is it a perception? Or is it reality? And are all of those things actually the same?
2. ASK YOURSELF A KEY QUESTION.
It’s important to ask yourself: “Am I willing to be happy rather than right? Then consider this: once you move into being happy, will it still matter that you’re right? By being happy, you’ve re-set the board of creation. So maybe “fake it ’til you make it” is a much better way to go. But there is a catch.
3. RECOGNIZE YOUR OLD SCHOOL ROOTS.
While the saying works on a metaphysical level, for so many, our understanding of what it means to fake it is rooted in an old-school approach to creation. For some, it led to the exact opposite of what they wanted, which winds up creating more resistance, hurt, and self-hatred. Then it’s easy to wonder, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I create what I want?
4. NOTICE YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS RESISTANCE.
“Fake it til you make it” can trigger resistance at the unconscious level. When you mentally try to will yourself to make it and then don’t see results, you may feel anger and disappointment. But what if expressing these negative feelings doesn’t fit into your understanding of what it means to fake it? Then you hide it, and the anger and frustration eats away at you until they become connected to how you feel about pretending. The thought of pretending or playing with energy is soon faced with automatic resistance. It feels — fake, and bound to fail. But it’s not.
5. KNOW YOU’RE NOT WASTING YOUR TIME.
The energy bubbling under the surface and swirling around the subconscious has to manifest in some way. If it comes out sideways, it can seem like it was all a lie, and we feel like a failure, wondering, Why didn’t it work for me? But the good news is there are lots of levels to the psychological and energetic understanding of this phrase, and there is some truth. You haven’t been wasting your time, only your energy. Because creation is actually much easier than faking it!
6. REALIZE YOU ARE OPENING YOURSELF TO CREATION.
Feelings — not mental will or force — fuel manifestation and drive the engine of our creation. Our thoughts and directions are the steering wheel and gas pedal all in one. By opening up to all that you are, you open up to infinite possibility, a space wherein the universe has infinite ways and means to bring you what you desire, and where you can now BE in the energy. In this state, you’re actively creating through choice and expression, and becoming aligned with who and what you want to be and say you are.
7. LET YOURSELF OUT INTO THE WORLD.
Creation is about unfolding and letting yourself out into the world instead of putting a band-aid over what’s really there. Here’s an example: You accidentally bang your knee. If you’re faking it, you don’t show pain. You smile through it, chant, play healing music, until the bruise heals. You said, “Okay. This happened. Now how do I choose to deal with it?” You made a choice to love yourself and take care of your injury. You know you are moving towards healing and becoming whole. You became the energy of Self Love, and the expression of love in action.
8. BELIEVE IN ABUNDANCE
“Fake it til you make it” often creates confusion around money and what energy exchange is all about. Pretending you have more money that you do only works until the next credit card bill. Being stung by reality can re-enforce our inability to create: by faking it, we drive ourselves deeper into debt. But you can create a new scenario and be abundant. You can be energy in action. Creation is about taking the actions that are in alignment with who we say we are. It’s about loving that process, and loving ourselves enough to be still and feel what it would feel like to be abundant.
9. PRACTICE THIS GROUNDING EXERCISE.
Try this exercise: What would it feel like to be abundant, or be loved? Put yourself there, in the “end result.” If your mind acts up and you feel overwhelmed by what you or others would have to do, be, or say to get you there, just press pause. Consciously re-adjust and focus on what you would like to feel — to have money follow you around and land in your space no matter what you do, who you are, or where you go; or to not only be loved (because you already are), but to actually feel loved? Take a moment, and direct yourself to feel that.
The door is open. Your part is to now walk through that door — by consciously choosing in life the thoughts, feelings and people that are in alignment with creating more abundance and love. That is creation — and there is nothing fake about it.
**Originally published at Care2