Posted On: Wednesday, 10 June 2015 by Rajiv Popat

I've talked about how a lot of programmers and artists go through the imposter syndrome - or put simply, feel like phonies.

While it's easy to cringe at words like Phony or Fake which seem to carry inherent negative connotation; it's hard to ask more honest and introspective questions about the realities of being a phony or faking it.

Scientists for example know that the mere act of faking a smile by sticking a pencil between your teeth; makes you rate a cartoon funnier than it is. Social Scientists also know that synthetic fake happiness can be just as real as real happiness.

If Faking it is so beneficial, why don't we embrace it?

Amy Cuddy, talks about the science of faking it till you become it in her popular TED Talk but what is even more interesting than the science is her own story of faking her way to becoming successful in her academic career. She explains:

When I was 19, I was in a really bad car accident. I was thrown out of a car, rolled several times. I was thrown from the car. And I woke up in a head injury rehab ward, and I had been withdrawn from college, and I learned that my I.Q. had dropped by two standard deviations, which was very traumatic. I knew my I.Q. because I had identified with being smart, and I had been called gifted as a child. So I'm taken out of college, I keep trying to go back. They say, "You're not going to finish college. Just, you know, there are other things for you to do, but that's not going to work out for you." So I really struggled with this, and I have to say, having your identity taken from you, your core identity, and for me it was being smart, having that taken from you, there's nothing that leaves you feeling more powerless than that. So I felt entirely powerless. I worked and worked, and I got lucky, and worked, and got lucky, and worked.

Eventually I graduated from college. It took me four years longer than my peers, and I convinced someone, my angel advisor, Susan Fiske, to take me on, and so I ended up at Princeton, and I was like - "I am not supposed to be here!" - "I am an impostor!" - And the night before my first-year talk (the first-year talk at Princeton is a 20-minute talk to 20 people -That's it) - I was so afraid of being found out the next day that I called her and said, "I'm quitting." - and she was like, "You are not quitting, because I took a gamble on you, and you're staying. You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do. You are going to fake it. You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do. You're just going to do it and do it and do it, even if you're terrified and just paralyzed and having an out-of-body experience, until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.'" So that's what I did.

In her video with an emotional end Amy describes how she not only used the "fake it till you become it" hypothesis for her own advantage but also used it to uplift another student.

It's easy to attach negativity to words like Phony and Fake - but it is when you embrace these words and dissect their true power and potential - that you realize how being a fake or phony can actually be empowering; especially if you keep showing up and continue to fake it till you become it.


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