Fake It 'Til You Make It.

The first time I heard this catchphrase was a few years ago from a recovering alcoholic. It was something he had learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, and he firmly believed it. My reaction to him was something like 'Why would you want to fake anything, don't you know that you're only fooling yourself?'

But for some reason that phrase, as foolish as it sounded at the time, has always stayed in the back of my mind, and one day as I was reading C.S Lewis when it finally made sense.

CS Lewis wrote "When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality is to start behaving as if you had it already."

Jesus said the exact same thing in Luke 6:27-31. "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you."

Now we all know actions like turning the other cheek, doing good to those that hate you, blessing those who curse you and even praying for those that mistreat you are not actions that come naturally to us humans, for we would far rather retaliate and seek revenge. For more than anything it's our "PRIDE" that needs to be satisfied (but that's a topic for a whole new discussion).

So in a way we have to go against our nature and feelings and "fake it" to a certain degree.

There is even an ancient Buddha saying from around 500BC that goes "What you think, you become."

Hence the phrase "Fake it 'til you make it."