Dare to Fake Till You Make

By Sekhar Kumar Dey

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."- Peter Drucker
So, you've got big plans to go out and achieve great things – may be:

Become an entrepreneur?

A YouTube star?

A coach?

A public speaker?

You may want to follow your dream of working in a sought-after industry where image plays a big part, like fashion, music, or film. Deep down, you know you've got what it takes; it's just a different, more challenging job.

Are you tired of feeling stuck in the rut of mediocrity?
Do you dream of achieving success but feel overwhelmed by the challenges in your path?
"Dare to Fake Till You Make" – a revolutionary guidebook designed to inspire and empower you to reach your full potential in today's competitive world.
Charlie Chaplin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and other legends and luminaries succeeded through this golden path: "Fake it till you make it."
This book is woven together with real-life anecdotes, practical strategies, and powerful insights to help you navigate the complexities of modern-day success. Drawing from years of personal experience and research, I reveal the transformative power of embracing the art of 'faking it till you make it.'
Through engaging storytelling, you'll follow the journey of characters who, like you, are striving to achieve their dreams against all odds. From struggling entrepreneurs to ambitious professionals, each character embodies the universal desire for success and the courage to pursue it when faced with doubt and uncertainty.
But what does it mean to "fake it till you make it"? It's not about being inauthentic or deceitful – it's about adopting the mindset of a successful person, even before you've fully realized your goals. It's about stepping outside your comfort zone, embracing confidence, and taking calculated risks to propel yourself forward.
In this book, you'll discover:

The psychology behind imposter syndrome and how to overcome it,

Strategies for building self-confidence and assertiveness,

Techniques for setting goals and staying motivated in the face of adversity,

The importance of networking, mentorship, and personal branding,

How to leverage social media and technology to enhance your personal and professional development

Whether you're seeking career advancement, entrepreneurial success, or personal fulfillment, It offers a roadmap for turning your dreams into reality.

This book is about redefining what success means to you. It's about embracing your unique talents, passions, and ambitions and charting a course that aligns with your values and aspirations. It recognizes that failure is not the end but merely a stepping stone on the path to greatness.
Embark on this transformative journey and discover why "Dare to Fake Till You Make" is not a book but a blueprint for living your best life.
Sekhar Kumar Dey

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sekhar Kumar Dey
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224107230

Book preview

Chapter 1: Simulated Perception: Is It Really Deceit?––––––––

1.1 My Experience with Fake Donation Box

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

-Leonardo da Vinci

Every day for decades, I go for a morning walk at about 5.30 am IST. I cover almost 5 km in 1 hour or so. On my mid-journey comes a temple where I happen to pray every day.

A few beggars affected by leprosy sit on either side of the entrance of the temple. While coming out of the temple, I donated some money to take their morning tea from a nearby tea shop.

While placing money in their bowls, I always find a few currency notes present in them.

While researching this book, it stuck in my mind that almost every day, I'm the first person to enter the temple, and that is how those currency notes were present in their bowl.

So, yesterday, I asked them about my curiosity. They remained silent for a moment. I assured them that I would continue to pay them daily as usual, but they should share the story.

They spoke the truth. They keep those notes in their bowls when they sit there.

The rest of the story was clear to me: I and others offer them currency notes instead of coins, which are generally of lower denominations.

I went inside the temple and inspected the donation box, which had a transparent cover.  I found the same truth.

In fact, that’s what can be observed everywhere in any donation box.

They all follow the same principle.

Fake it till you make it.

But.

The objectives are genuine.

World-class Testimony: Chalie Chaplin

I was hardly aware of a crisis because we lived in a continual crisis, and, being a boy, I dismissed our troubles with gracious forgetfulness.

Charlie Chaplin, on his childhood [1]

At 26 years of age, Charlie Chaplin was one of the highest-paid people in the world. He signed a contract with Mutual Film Corporation, USA, that amounted to $670,000 a year in 1915.

Chaplin’s childhood was fraught with poverty and hardship, making his eventual trajectory the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories ever told, according to his authorized biographer David Robinson.

He was an invulnerable all his life. In youth and middle age, his childhood poverty was predominantly of shame and grief. His childhood was a haphazard stew of equal parts humiliation and delight. He subsisted on odd – very odd – jobs: glassblowing, making toy boats. With his mother in the madhouse and his brother at sea, he worked with a group of woodcutters and slept on the streets to avoid having his landlady turn him in as an orphaned indigent. Clearly, he was determined to stay out of the workhouse by any means.

After his step-brother Sydney returned from the sea, taking care of Charlie became a preoccupation. Still, the fact remains that it was definitely a grim childhood: a mother in the grip of profound mental and physical illness, an alcoholic father who drank himself to death, a child cast onto streets, workhouses, and orphanages. His childhood defined high-risk., an environment calculated to breed sociopaths. The psychiatrist Stephen Weissman estimates that roughly 10% of such children managed to transcend environmental and emotional catastrophes and become successful adults. These are what is known as invulnerable."

What shook him more was to think what could happen to even successful practitioners of his parents’ profession as he saw the plight of Eva Laster, who had once been a star of music halls, descended into poverty, and was a vagrant being tormented by street urchins.

In Charlie Chaplin vs. America, Scott Eyman explores the life and times of the movie genius who brought us such masterpieces as City Lights and Modern Times. It’s one of the finest surveys of the man and artist ever written (Leonard Maltin). This book is a sobering account of cancel culture in action (The Economist).

However, the plight of his enormous childhood suffering is pertinent to know before he metamorphosed into a global label of fame that was unparalleled in the history of cinema.

––––––––

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

- Albert Einstein

I wish every aspiring person to know the suffering that molds a person to fight back in life rather than cursing their luck, parents, society, and everyone else in life. You achieve despite all bottlenecks and hurdles. It’s because only you are the architect of ‘making it happen’- what you dream of in your life in the future. It would be best if you took full control and charge of your life. It’s the business of none.

None can do it. It’s only you who can.

Her mother, Hannah Chaplin, began their descent into poverty, on whom 0nce the ad in the theatrical paper Entr’acte in November 1888 reads: "The original and refined Lily Harley—terrific success nightly after her indisposition. Bedford, special concerts. Open for pantomime."

His mother stayed in mental hospitals and went on for longer and longer periods while her children were remanded to institutions. Subsequently, he was placed in the Newington Workhouse.

Once, while in Hanwell for his formal education, he was flogged for something he didn’t do, and an infection of ringworm caused his head to be saved, after which he was placed in isolation. He remembered, The treatment took weeks and seemed like an eternity, My head was shaved and iodined, and I wore a handkerchief tied around it like a cotton picker. But one thing I would not do was to look out of the window [of the isolated ward] at the boys below, for I knew in what contempt they held us. That same year, his father was arrested for failure to make support payments. His father became bankrupt.

When Syd was eleven and went on board the Exmouth as preparation for a career at sea, Charlie became alone and came back to their mother in 1897. But owing to poverty, he frequented trips back to Lambeth workhouse or West Norwood.

In December 1897, his mother was adjudged insane. In her medical records, the abbreviation syph, i.e., syphilis, was entered, which she might have contracted from her husband or her lover, or she could have been working as a prostitute.

At the end of 1898, Charlie Chaplin began his career in vaudeville when he joined The Eight Lancashire Lads, a clog-dancing troupe, occasionally attending schools in the towns in which the troupe played. Hannah had tertiary neurosyphilis, said Dr. Tracey Goessel, a film historian and medical doctor. Charlie came to know it after almost half a century, which was the most mortifying secret of his life. It left him terrified of sexual diseases.

The horror shows of disease, instability, and madness inflicted on a powerless young child shadowed Chaplin for the rest of his life. His lost paradise consisted of the times he was with his mother before her natural personality was obliterated. He remembered her as a mignonne.... With fair complexion, violet-blue eyes, and long light-brown hair that she could sit upon .... Those who knew her told me in later years that she was dainty and attractive and had compelling charm.

Chaplin told of her attempts to maintain shards of respectability as she and her boys downshifted from one sad state to another. She accepted nothing from her children but proper standards of speech and behavior and did her best to mend their ragged clothes. Chaplin would watch his mother observing people from their apartment windows, commenting on how they dressed and moved, then imitating them, causing her son to laugh at the accuracy of her impersonations.

But his poverty was scalding: I didn’t feel the hurt so much as the humiliation. [My mother would] stagger from one side to the other as though she was drunk, but she was just weak ....... All that is very vivid to me....... I suppose within three months, we must have lived in four, five, or six places. Then suddenly, the pity of it – this poor woman with two children – went from one room to another. One room.... he remembered.

But all that began to recede slightly when, probably by his father’s arrangement, young Charlie became a show business professional with the Eight Lancashire Lads. He stayed with them until the end of 1900.

Within five years, Charlie Chaplin’s days of want would basically be over. In a deeper sense, they never ended. He became a star in the theatre, but his environment was definitely infirm, marked by alcoholism, mental illness, and sexually transmitted diseases. Between heredity and the free and easy atmosphere of the music hall in which they grew up, it’s easy to see why sexual conflagration was a frequent feature of Charlie’s and Sydney’s lives, acquired fourth-grade education. Still, a precociously natural talent for performance redeemed his imperiled life. A quick rise through the music halls, where he played with some of the era’s greatest stars – Dan Leno, Harry Lauder, and Marie Lloyd – enabled him to learn the craft of show business while simultaneously getting a sense of its possibilities as an art.

Charlie eventually latched on to a job with William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes, which lasted for more than two years until 1906. Here, he joined as a Comedian Pantomimist and was paid a weekly salary of British 3, 10 shillings, with a second year available at 4 pounds a week.

Charlie Chaplin was about to turn nineteen years old, and his days of financial want were over.

Chaplin came to America for the first time in 1910. By this time, he was a star in a successful touring show – in the third year of his contract, his salary would rise to 15 pounds a week.[2]

Sir Charlie Chaplin, KBE (16 April 1889-25 December 1977), was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, The Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry’s most important figures.

His brand is iconized by his derby hat (an inexpensive one), gloves, smart suit, fancy vest, two-tone side button shoes, and carry a cane.

He was an actor.

A comedy genius.

––––––––

1.2 Hippocrates vs Actors.

––––––––

The most famous speech in As You Like It is the Seven Ages of Man, which begins, All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players (Act 2, Scene 7)

- William Shakespeare

Actors are hypocrites or vice versa?

The word hypocrisy first appeared in English around the 13th century, derived from the Old French word ypocrite, which itself came from the Greek word hypokrites meaning an actor or a stage player. The term was used in religious texts to describe individuals who pretend to be morally good or pious to deceive others.[3]

The Greek root hypokrites is a compound noun formed from hypokrinomai, which means to play a part or to pretend, and hypo, meaning under, combined with krinein, meaning to sift or decide. This reflects the theatrical origins of the word, where actors in ancient Greek theater wore masks to portray different characters and thus interpreted the story from underneath their masks.[3]

The concept of hypocrisy, particularly in a religious or moral context, has been discussed throughout history, including in The Bible, where it is associated with individuals who claim to be pious or righteous but engage in deceptive or immoral behavior.[4]

For further historical context and references, you can explore detailed discussions on the evolution of the term hypocrite and its usage over time in various historical, religious, and philosophical texts [5][4]

The word hypocrisy is used by Jesus, e.g., in Matthew 23:27-28 while talking about religious people in Aramaic in English. Some people act holy, but they’re not. To get over your religious hypocrisy, just be honest. [6]

Getting people to change their behavior is not easy. Governments allocate substantial resources to get people to change their attitudes and behaviors with respect to things like living a healthier lifestyle or acting in a more environmentally friendly way. In many cases, these efforts are unsuccessful, as individuals are often resistant to direct attempts to change their behavior. In the past couple of decades, social psychologists have developed a series of innovative strategies designed to help people consider for themselves the need to change their attitudes and behavior. Here, we want to introduce one particularly fascinating strategy – getting people to think about whether they are hypocritical.

When people don’t practice what they preach, they are normally labeled as hypocrites. We often think of hypocrisy as saying one thing but doing another, and we like to feel that we are consistent in what we say and what we do. This makes it potentially distressing to recognize our hypocrisy, and seeing our inconsistency might motivate us to change our attitudes and our behavior. This is an important question – can hypocrisy elicit change? Of course, the best way to address this question is to review evidence testing whether making people feel hypocritical has powerful effects on attitudes and