Fake it ‘till you become it
One of the very first concpets that Cripps introduced us to was Amy Cuddy’s “fake it ‘till you become it” theory. In this, Cuddy says that if one were to change their body language and tell themselves that they do “belong”, that they will finaly fit in.
“Fake it till you become it. Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize it.”
And so, I took this concept as a freshman in college, and tried it out on my own-especially in classes that I didn’t feel confident in. Chemistry.
So, I started to pretend that I was good at chemistry and that I was a good college student. I studied at the library, did my homework early, and went to office hours. All of the material was really hard, and I got fustrated a lot. But I followed Amy Cuddy’s theory and told myself that I belong in this class, and that I am eventually going to understand all of the concepts that we had learned. After countles hours of trying to calculate electon emmissions and absorptions, I told myself that Cuddy was wrong. I could never master this material (or even feel the least bit confident in it).
Then I remembered the last part to Cuddy’s concept.
Amy Cuddy meant that the change of finally “becoming it” will not take a day. It will take a long time. It might be even a month or two into the course where I finnaly feel confident in the work that I am doing. So, I should take one small step at a time. Instead of studying for six hours straight on the same material in one day, I should study for an hour every night. And after a while I will no longer act like successful chemistry college student, I will feel like one.
