Keeping it real is making it. “Fake it till you make it” is a common piece of advice that served me for a long time, especially when I was younger in my career, suffering from imposter syndrome, wanting to achieve more but unsure of myself.
Years ago, I asked T how she thought I could be get promoted to a partner at the firm. She responded with a version of “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” She said, “Forget the promotion. Just act like a partner. Show up to the office like a partner. Lead like a partner. Make the actual promotion a no-brainer, administrative step, because you’ll already be one.” That sparked something in me. I set my mind toward doing that, and it worked. It worked then, and for several other career-related achievement cycles afterward.
Today, I’m in the midst of a life transition, a path towards something different than the one I’ve already travelled. So I’m looking around and questioning everything-the stories, the tools, the feelings, the systems, the beliefs, and the advice that got me here. And I want to throw most of it out of the window. What got me here won’t get me there.
That’s why I’m discarding “fake it till you make it.” Because faking it got me farther from myself than I liked, and now I need to come back. These days, making it seems like the very opposite of faking it.
So, while “fake it till you make it” served Past Me, “keep it real and you’ve made it” is for Now Me.
There is nothing that I can think of that I could say is correct and true all the time. […] There are things like principles that have guided me well through certain periods of my life and then are completely untrue in the next part of my life.
There’s a lot of advice out there in the world, some of it truly great, and none of it is true all the time for everyone. Pick, choose, and revise what’s right for you.
Pay attention to the things that expand your heart. When a person, a work of art, an essay, a film, a song, a photograph intrigues you, makes your chest feel bigger, gives rise to that warm feeling in your body, take note.
Lean into the possibility and expansion. Pull on the thread. Where else can it go? Ride the wave all the way to the shore. Ask yourself: what about this connected with my true self? What is the thing it’s saying for me I haven’t said yet?
One way back to yourself is reconnecting with the things you loved as a child.
When I was 11 years old, Harriet the Spy was my bible. In retrospect it’s so obvious: A tomboy writer in NYC carries around her marbled composition book, taking notes on the world, and learning more about herself–and her relationships with friends when they read her words.
When you experience something in life–and as much as I’ve experienced in the game of basketball–the beautiful part of it for me is to give back. You don’t experience things to keep. You experience it to give it back.
– Basketball great Teresa Weatherspoon on what she brought from her start as a player in the inaugural season of the WNBA to coaching today.
Lately I’ve noticed a clear and consistent pulse of an old feeling I haven’t had for a long time: I want to share more of how I think, what I learn, and what I like online. That is, I want to give it back. But not on cookie-cutter content platforms where we’ve all signed up to work a data entry job feeding an LLM. On my own webpages, on my own domain names, with my own code. Let’s do this.
Bookshop. I’m working on breaking my Amazon habit by patronizing independent bookstores through Bookshop. Check out my favorite books on creativity, making stuff, and living well at my Bookshop.
