‘Fake it Till You Make It’ Doesn’t Work. Here’s Why.

Jennifer Sneeden
3 min readApr 12, 2022
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

‘Fake it ’til you make it’ is NOT a good strategy for your business or your life, yet it’s one that we hear over and over again. Here’s why it doesn’t work…

Everything that you do is a reflection of your energy. Neal Donald Walsch calls this “the thought behind the thought”. When you take action from a lack thought, you are creating more lack. When you take action from an abundance thought, you are creating more lack. ‘Fake it ’til you make it’ is taking action on a lack thought: “I don’t really believe in myself yet, but I’m going to push myself into action anyway.”

When we don’t fully understand this, we take action from the wrong energy, and inadvertently create more of what we don’t want. Here’s an example: Let’s say you want to raise your fees. You love your work and your clients. You want to increase your income, you want to work with fewer clients, and you want to attract clients who are serious about working with you. These are all good things. Go for it. The thought behind the thought is one of abundance.

Or maybe, it’s this scenario I hear much more frequently: You want to raise your fees because you don’t have enough money, you’re struggling to get clients so you have to get as much from you can from those that you have, and it’s not fair that everyone online is making so much more than you are.

Hang on a minute. These reasons are all based in lack thoughts. When the thought behind the thought is lack, you can only create more lack.

Maybe you even recognize that this is coming from a place of lack, but you’ve decided to go for it anyway. You’re going to fake it ’til you make it. You’re just going to raise your fees, and that’s that.

You now set about raising your fees from a place of lack and fear. So those emotions are guiding you. Decisions and actions that come from a place a fear can NEVER move you closer to your dream business.

You start to talk to your current clients about raising your fees, but you aren’t confident about it, and they pick up on your energy. They start to question you and ask for a reduced rate. This creates even more fear: what if you lose all your clients, and you’re not really worth the fee you want to charge anyway?

Maybe you decide that you’re current clients just aren’t going to pay your new fees, so you offer it only to new clients. During that conversation, you are hesitant to ask, and at the same time feeling desperate, you really need to “get” this client. Your client easily reads that energy and decides not to work with you. You blame his decision on your new fees and decide that it isn’t fair that everyone else can charge more, but your clients won’t pay it. Why does everyone else get all the “good” clients?

‘Fake it ’til you make it” comes from the belief that hard work and struggle are the ways to reach big goals. The belief that we have to hustle to get what we want before someone else grabs it first. All of this thinking is based in lack, and hustling more isn’t going to magically cure lack thinking.

Instead of faking it, recognize what’s really happening… You want something that you don’t really believe in yet. Good. That’s a great place to be. Wanting something more and watching it manifest is one of life’s greatest pleasures. But know that the work to get there doesn’t start with forcing yourself into an action that you’re not ready for yet. The work to manifest all your goals is by learning to believe in them first. Believing in your goals MUST come before you take action, if you want that action to succeed.

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Jennifer Sneeden

Therapist and coach sharing thoughts on life, spirituality, and growth. https://jennifersneeden.com