Total faker!
I’ve met people who are divided on this idea. To some it seems an inauthentic way to live, while to others it’s more about behaving in a way you want to become. I happen to fall into the second camp.
If you want to be something, you have to start acting like something.
A friend of mine was doing spoken word in her spare time. When she met other people at poetry slams, they would refer to themselves poets. While she competed and did a lot of writing and speaking, she didn’t feel like she had “earned” the title of being a poet. I also know someone who takes amazing photos in their spare time and is working toward figuring out how to make a living at it, but she refuses to call herself a photographer because she hasn’t had any formal training and doesn’t view herself as an “expert”.
The first person you have to convince about “what” or “who” you are is yourself.
You have to try on a new way of thinking and behaving, and it will feel really weird at first. But the more you keep “faking it” – ie: practicing it – the more natural it will become. You are what you repeatedly do.
After writing my book it gave me the willies to refer to myself as an author. It was like I was putting one someone else’s clothes. Why I wasn’t already referring to myself as an author was a mystery: I’d already been a published contributing author on another book, was writing for Huffington Post and had been blogging for years. But the more I said it, the more I believed it and the more real it became. If you write, that makes you an author.
So when do you actually become what you want to be?
The moment you decide to start faking it.
What are you going to start faking today?
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