Fake It Until You Make It: Your Path To Success

Hello, Warriors! Every time I shine my badges and buckles, the proud feeling of being in the armed forces strikes me. And I get inspired so much that half the bottle of brasso is already utilised by then (pun intended!). I dream of myself marching in the POP and stepping hard on the ‘Antim Pag’ with a rifle in my hand over the classic army band playing in the background under the national flag waving high in the sky. Nothing on earth can beat that proud feeling for a defence aspirant.

This is not to exaggerate my sentiments but are the following compilation of studies by Inc magazine which showed that constantly reminding yourselves of your long term goals actually help you to achieve it. And if you can picture yourselves at that very moment of achieving your goal, you tend to work hard to achieve it.

Scads of studies have found that a wide confidence gap exists between the sexes. Success is just as dependent on confidence as it is on competence. But remember, there are both men and women serving in the armed forces. Conclusion? Low confidence results in inaction. Taking action bolsters one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed. So confidence accumulates–through hard work, through success, and even through, accept it, failure.

But, always being in the world of dreams don’t even work though. Be authentic and grounded. Authenticity is a much sought-after leadership trait, with the prevailing idea being that the best leaders are those who self-disclose, are true to themselves, who make decisions based on their values and are not dependent on others to decide for them. But hey, there’s a difference between taking decision and taking advice!

So this means that play-acting to emulate the qualities of successful leaders doesn’t make you a fake. It merely means you’re a work in progress.

The most successful people excel in both cognitive ability and social skills, something that hasn’t always been true. They know how to delay gratification. An experiment was performed to study how gratification affects one’s behaviour; the classic Marshmallow Experiment of 1972 involved placing a marshmallow in front of a young child, with the promise of a second marshmallow if he or she could refrain from eating the squishy blob while a researcher stepped out of the room for 15 minutes. Follow-up studies over the next 40 years found that the children who were able to resist the temptation to eat the marshmallow grew up to be people with better social skills, higher test scores, and lower incidence of substance abuse. They also turned out to be less obese and better able to deal with stress.

But how to improve your ability to delay things which make you less motivated or will affect your long term performance?

The answer to this is very simple. Choosing one thing to improve incrementally every day, and committing to not pushing off things that take less than two minutes to do, such as studying for 2 hours everyday works toward the goal of cracking those written exams. Committing to doing something every single day works. 

Have a ‘growth mindset’ instead of ‘fixed mindset’. Those with a “fixed mindset” believe things like character, intelligence, and creativity are unchangeable, and avoiding failure is a way of proving skill and smarts. People with a “growth mindset,” however, see failure as a way to grow and therefore embrace challenges, persevere against setbacks, learn from criticism, and reach higher levels of achievement.

Finally beileive in youselves. Say this to yoursleves every morning and make this your morning prayer, “Today is a good day. Today I’ll achieve something that I couldn’t have yesterday. Today, I’ll learn something new. Today is a new beginning, for, I’m still alive.”