Fake it till you make it?

There’s an aphorism in English: fake it till you make it. It’s so popular to be even often referenced by lots of people from non-English speaking countries. Simply put, it says you should act like a winner before you succeed.

I partially agree with this. The only part I take is you should be optimistic even you’re far from your success. Pessimism is absolutely an enemy of pursuing something good, and it’s only good at making things worse.

Something might not be accomplishable, perpetual motion machines can be an obvious instance, and this is why I refuse to accept this viewpoint fully. So, if your vision is to invent a machine that could run forever without any energy supplement, how could you possibly fake it till you make it? OK, I know that the perpetual motion machine is just a hypothetical one that everybody knows, well then, how about that lady who wanted to invent the machine that would be able to examine plenty of health issues just by one single drop of blood? You must know whom I’m talking about, but I don’t want to name her directly because she might once really believe that could become true. But after some years, people realized the whole thing became a historical business fraud. Lots of start-up ideas could be the same, someone believes in a perpetual motion type of vision, but he never gets success even he could pretend to be a winner forever.

In my opinion, I would like to change this aphorism into Suffer it till you make it.

You will suffer a long distance while making dreams true, you don’t know where the next clue is and when it will come. Kind of like marching in the dark forest, you might not be aware of how far from the next village, and not clear if any beast ambushes around, but the only thing pretty sure is you must not stop forward. You can’t stop even it hurts, you may doubt your belief, again and again, face challenges from others as well, and you will feel lonely and helpless. But nobody could take these pieces of shit for you, that’s the price of your dream. The longer you suffered, the more clear you would be how to trim your rudder towards the right direction, or if your destination is reachable.

If you are optimistic enough, you can even enjoy it while suffering. That could be very important, it brings fun and makes you feel easier to get success. No one wants to give up easily, but it’s hard to stay without instant success. I suggest to be optimistic about your work and be a little bit pessimistic about your plan. Keep both senses simultaneously and call it Cautious Optimism.

Suffer it till you make it, have some fun, and trust yourself.