Fake It Till You Make It

A few months after I left vocational ministry in 2005, I got a commission only job as an executive recruiter. My job was to find banks in the Chicago area that were in need of commercial bankers, then find talented, high producing commercial bankers to fill those positions. The problem was I had never done sales before. I had never taken out a commercial loan before. I had no idea what I was talking about. I was way out of my league.

A few days into the job, my confidence was shaken by all of the rejections I was receiving. Every call I made was a “no.” One of the guys sitting in the cubicle next to me took off his headset between calls. He said, “Hey, I can hear the insecurity in your voice…so can the employer. You have to be confident when you call in to an HR manager.” I said, “I’d love to be confident, but I have no idea what I am talking about. I am using banking terms that I don’t even know the meaning of.” He said, “The key to success in the early days is fake it till you make it.”

The ironic thing about that statement was that it described my life up to that point. I had become an expert at faking it till I make it. Insecurity will convince you that life is best lived faking it till you make it.

Pretend you have it more together than you really do

Pretend your marriage is better than it really is

Pretend your addiction doesn’t really have control over you

Pretend your closer to God than you really are

Pretend you have more money than you really do

Pretend your healed and whole when you’re really wounded and hurting

Fake your happiness

Fake your contentment

Fake your spiritual life

The problem for many of us that become experts at faking it till we make it is: we never make it. So we just keep faking it.

Insecurity isn’t defeated by faking it, faking it only grows our insecurities.

So how do we change? How do we stop faking it? How to we become the person we are actually pretending to be? It is possible!

The answer isn’t “just stop faking it”. That is behavior modification. The solution to faking it is found in answering this question, “Why are you working so hard to hide your insecurity?”

So you don’t have it all together

So your marriage isn’t doing well right now

So you are in debt up to your eyeballs

So you are in a season where God seems far off

None of those things get better by pretending they don’t exist. The life we long for isn’t found in pretending we’re okay. God heals the brokenness we are willing to acknowledge. The first step to making it is in being honest that we are faking it.

Insecurity isn’t as powerful as authenticity. Authenticity is the path to transformation.