The lie you have been told about “fake it till you make it”

Imagine your manager calls you and offers you a project that’s bigger, more visible, and well outside what you’ve done before. For a few seconds, you’re genuinely excited.

Then the self-doubt starts:

Am I really ready for this? What if I’m not as good as they think I am?

So you do what everyone tells you to do: you fake it. You show up to the first meeting with your shoulders back and try to look confident. And within couple of minutes, you feel like a fraud - because deep down, that voice is still going.

Sound familiar?

I’ve been given “fake it till you make it” advice more times than I can count. And every time, I had the same reaction: how, exactly? When I stepped into my first team leader role, having never led anyone before, what would faking it even look like? When I was Chief of Staff, worried I didn’t have the authority to challenge the C-suite - how do you fake that?

The advice never sat right with me, because it felt like it was skipping something important - like being handed a plaster when what you actually needed was surgery.

So I went down a research rabbit hole to find out: does it actually work?

Here’s what I found. And the answer is more interesting than a simple yes or no.
 

Why your inner voice is the first thing to fix, not the last

Most people treat the inner critic as the thing they need to push through. They try to act confident first, and hope the feeling follows.

That’s the wrong order.

Here’s why. If you have a self-limiting belief running in the background - I don’t deserve this promotion, I’m not a natural leader, I’m not senior enough to say this - it doesn’t stay neatly inside your head. It affects how much enthusiasm you show. It changes the words you choose and shows up in your body language.

Think about a job interview. You walk in believing that you’re not quite right for the role. The interviewer doesn’t hear that thought - but they sense that you hesitate. They read it as low motivation, or low confidence in the role. They don’t offer you the position. And your inner critic takes that as proof it was right.

The “fake it” advice completely skips this step. And that’s where it becomes dangerous.

Here’s something worth knowing about that inner voice. It originates thousands of years ago, where overestimating your abilities could genuinely get you killed - challenging the wrong rival, wandering into the wrong territory. Your inner critic evolved as a protection system. Its job was to keep you small and safe. That was the right response then. It is the wrong response now, sitting in a performance review or putting your hand up for a new project.

Your inner critic is not your enemy. It used to be your friend - and now is outdated, in a situation it was never designed for.

So what do you do with it?

This week’s action:

Before your next high-stakes moment - a meeting, a presentation, an interview - take five minutes and write down exactly what your inner critic is saying - the actual words.

Then ask yourself these two questions:

• Where did this thought come from?

• And is it actually true?

When I did this years ago, my inner critic said: I’m too quiet. I don’t come across as confident. When I traced it back, it came from a teacher who marked me down for oral contributions at school. That was a twenty-year-old piece of feedback about a teenage girl, being applied to a highly experienced engineer in a leadership meeting. When I realised that, that thought immediately lost its power.

Then I reframed it: I’m thoughtful and reflective. When I speak, people listen, because I don’t waffle.

And that gave me more confidence at work. Not because I was faking it. The actual reason: I was more self-aware and had worked on my beliefs.

Your body is talking to your brain - and you can use that
 

Once your belief system is working with you instead of against you, your body language becomes a powerful reinforcement tool.

This is the part that “fake it till you make it” accidentally gets right - but for reasons most people don’t know.

Long before human beings had language, our primate ancestors communicated hierarchy entirely through posture. Who took up space and stood tall vs who made themselves small. Your brain is still wired to read your own body as a status signal - not just the bodies of people around you. When you hunch over your phone, or pull your shoulders in, or make yourself smaller in a meeting room, you are not just lookingunconfident. You are sending your own nervous system a submission signal. Your brain receives it and responds accordingly.

The science on this has been debated - and it’s worth being honest about that. The most high-profile studies on power poses have had mixed replication results, and the precise hormonal mechanisms are still being studied.

But the broader principle is supported by decades of research, going back to William James in the 1880s: your physical state sends signals to your brain, not just the other way around. When you change your posture, your nervous system reads it as a status signal. When you smile - genuinely, even when you don’t feel like it - your brain reads the physical cue and responds. Your body and mind are in constant dialogue.

The practical takeaway isn’t “stand in a specific pose for two minutes.” It’s simpler than that: be deliberate about what physical signals you’re sending yourself, not just the room.

But - and this is important - this only works as a reinforcement, not a substitute. If your inner critic is running the show, no amount of standing up straight will drown it out. Fix the belief first, then let your body reinforce it.

This week’s action:

Notice one moment this week where you tend to make yourself small - scrolling your phone or sitting at the back in the meeting. Simply become aware - awareness is the first step to change.

The difference between faking it and walking in your future self’s footsteps
 

Here’s where “fake it till you make it” causes the most confusion - and where it contains the one piece of advice that is actually worth keeping.

When you push for the next level, it will feel uncomfortable. The new meeting dynamic, the different way you need to show up, the decisions you’re expected to own - none of it will feel natural yet. And many people read this discomfort as inauthenticity. This isn’t me, I’m pretending. So the advice of “fake it till you make it” might motivate you to stay with the discomfort, and help you grow.

But actually this discomfort not the same as inauthenticity. Instead, it’s a gap between where you are and where you’re going.

The question worth asking is “what would I do differently if I’d already closed that gap?” Would your future self wait to be asked for her opinion in that meeting - or would she have already mapped who in the room has the influence to move her work forward, and spoken directly to them before it started? Would she say “this might be wrong, but...” - or would she have prepared the evidence and led with it?

This has nothing to do with performing a version of yourself that doesn’t exist, or faking. You’re making deliberate choices that are slightly ahead of where your confidence currently is at.

So does “fake it till you make it” work?

Partially.

When it comes to body language, yes - because your physical state genuinely influences your mental state, and this goes back millions of years. When it comes to pushing outside your comfort zone, partially - because growth always involves stepping somewhere unfamiliar (even though we have learnt discomfort is not the same as faking it).

But the part the advice skips - the part that makes everything else either work or fail - is the belief work. If your inner critic is running unchecked, all the power poses in the world will not save you. Your own voice will undermine you faster than anyone else can.

The real sequence is this: understand your inner critic and reframe it, then use your body to reinforce your new belief, then step into your future self’s shoes from that grounded place. That’s how real confidence is built.