Fake It Till You Make It vs. Assuming It: The Lesson Abdullah Taught Neville Goddard
Fake it till you make it is the most repeated advice in self-help. Neville Goddard’s teacher Abdullah would not allow it. He never told Neville to act like a man going to Barbados. He told him he was there. Here is the difference between faking a state and assuming one, and why only one hardens.
The Short Version
Faking it means playing a part on the outside while privately believing you are not it. In Neville Goddard’s teaching, that private belief is the assumption that hardens, so faking quietly rehearses the very state you want to leave.
His teacher Abdullah never asked him to fake anything. He did not tell Neville to act like a man going to Barbados. He told him you are in Barbados, and closed the door when Neville argued.
Faking works outside in. Assuming works inside out. Abdullah’s whole method is in Abdullah Unveiled.
What to Remember
- “Act as if” goes back at least to William James in 1899 and Alfred Adler in the 1920s.
- Faking keeps two selves: the one performing and the one who knows it is a performance.
- Neville: an assumption, though denied by the senses, if persisted in, will become fact. The faker’s persistent assumption is I am not really this.
- Abdullah’s instruction was a fact, not a role. The Barbados lesson
- The fix is to assume the state inwardly first, at night, and let behaviour follow. The costume you don’t take off
Go deeper with Abdullah Unveiled, the book on the teacher who trained Neville.
In Plain Words
“Fake it till you make it” means acting confident or successful before you feel it. The trouble is that a small voice inside keeps saying this isn’t really you, and that voice is what you end up practising.
Neville Goddard’s teacher, Abdullah, skipped the acting. When Neville wanted to go home to Barbados with no money, Abdullah told him he was already there, and Neville lived and slept that way until a ticket arrived.
So stop performing and start believing, privately, at night, until it feels normal. If that sounds like being delulu, read delulu and the Law of Assumption, then meet the teacher in Abdullah Unveiled.
Featured Book
The teacher who never let Neville Goddard pretend
Abdullah Unveiled is the story and the method of the Ethiopian-born teacher behind the Law of Assumption, with prompts that walk you through applying each lesson to your own life.
Get Abdullah UnveiledA Story of the Law · Parables of the Law
Don’t Fake It
The most repeated advice in self-help, and the one thing Abdullah would never let Neville Goddard do.
There is a trend going around right now in which people dance happily to a cheerful song while the text on screen admits that everything is falling apart.
It is funny because it is true. Smile, keep moving, look fine, and the inside will catch up eventually. We have a name for it: fake it till you make it. It is probably the most repeated advice in self-help, and it is the one thing the man who trained Neville Goddard would not allow. This is the story of why, and of what he asked for instead.
- Faking it
- Performing a state on the outside, such as confidence, wealth or happiness, while privately believing you are not really it.
- Acting as if
- The older, gentler version of the same advice: behave as though you already have the quality, and the feeling will follow.
- Assuming it
- In Neville Goddard’s teaching, accepting a state as true of yourself inwardly first, privately and without reservation, and letting behaviour follow.
- State
- An identity you occupy. Neville taught that states already exist and that you move through them.
- Abdullah
- Neville’s teacher in New York from 1931, whom Neville described as a Black man born in Ethiopia and raised in the Jewish faith. He taught Neville Hebrew, scripture and the Law.
Faking works from the outside in, and keeps the doubter. Assuming works from the inside out, and leaves him behind.
I
Chapter One
The philosopher who said to sit up
The idea is older than the slogan. In 1899 the American psychologist William James published an essay called The Gospel of Relaxation, and in it he offered a piece of advice for anyone whose cheerfulness had gone missing.
“To sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.”
William James · The Gospel of Relaxation, 1899
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Notice the phrase that would echo for the next hundred years: as if it were already there. James was not wrong that the body and the mind talk to each other. But his instruction starts on the outside, with the posture, the face and the voice, and hopes the inside will follow.
II
Chapter Two
The philosophy of as if
In 1911 the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger published The Philosophy of “As If”, arguing that people live by useful fictions they treat as true. In Vienna the psychiatrist Alfred Adler took the idea into the consulting room. By the 1920s he was using a technique he called acting as if, summed up in a line usually attributed to him: if you want a quality, act as if you already have it.
Adler’s version was careful and clinical, a rehearsal in a safe room. But it shared James’s direction of travel: act first, become later. The self who does not yet believe is told to stand aside and let the actor work.
III
Chapter Three
The slogan
By the late 1960s the idea had become everyday speech. Simon & Garfunkel released a single called “Fakin’ It” in 1968. And the exact phrase fake it till you make it turns up in the record of a 1973 federal appeals court case, SEC v. Glenn W. Turner Enterprises, about a motivational sales operation called Dare to Be Great.
III
Figure III. 1973. One of the earliest written records of the slogan sits in a court case about a motivational scheme.
Then, in 2012, the social psychologist Amy Cuddy gave a talk at TEDGlobal about “power posing” that became one of the most watched talks ever, and she ended it by revising the slogan:
“Don’t fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.”
Amy Cuddy · TEDGlobal, 2012
Later studies failed to replicate parts of her findings, and the research became one of psychology’s most argued-over results. But look at what her revision was reaching for. She could feel that making it was not enough. Something had to change in who you are. Neville Goddard’s teacher had said the same thing eighty years earlier, and gone one step further.
Self-help kept revising the slogan. Abdullah never used it.
The teacher behind the Law of Assumption, his method, and prompts for every lesson.
Read Abdullah UnveiledIV
Chapter Four
The one who watches
Here is the problem with faking it, and it is not that the act is dishonest. It is that faking always needs two people. There is the one who performs, and the one standing just behind him who knows it is a performance. The confident voice in the meeting, and the quiet one inside saying you are not really this.
Neville would say the second one is the one that counts. In Out of This World, published in 1949, he wrote the sentence his whole teaching rests on:
“This assumption, though denied by the senses, if persisted in, will become fact.”
Neville Goddard · Out of This World, 1949
Now apply it to the faker. Which assumption is he persisting in? Not the performance. The performance changes with every room. What he persists in, every single time, is the private verdict: I am not really this. That is the assumption he rehearses most faithfully, and it is the one that hardens. It is why so many people fake confidence for years and end up with a well-practised feeling of being an impostor.
V
Chapter Five
You are in Barbados
In the winter of 1933, Neville wanted to go home to Barbados for Christmas. He had no money for the fare. He took the problem to his teacher, Abdullah, and got one sentence back: you are in Barbados.
Look closely at what Abdullah did not say. He did not tell Neville to act like a man about to travel. He did not tell him to pack a bag, buy a guidebook, tell his friends he was going, or walk around New York looking like someone with a ticket. There was no performance to give. He was not handing Neville a role. He was handing him a fact.
V
Figure V. New York, winter 1933. Nothing about the man on the street has changed. Everything about where he sleeps has.
When Neville came back to argue about the money, Abdullah would not discuss it, and finally closed the door on him. There was nothing to negotiate, because there was no second Neville allowed to stand behind the first one and doubt. So Neville did the only thing left. He went to sleep each night as a man already lying in his family’s home on the island.
A letter came from his brother with a steamship ticket. The full sequence is in Abdullah’s Barbados lesson.
VI
Chapter Six
Inside out
Put the two methods side by side and the difference is not effort, or sincerity, or how good an actor you are. It is direction.
James, Adler and the slogan all start on the outside and hope the inside follows. Abdullah started on the inside and let the outside take care of itself. Neville walked New York in his ordinary clothes. Nobody watching would have seen a man in Barbados. The change was entirely in the state he slept in, and that is the only place it needed to be.
This is the same lesson as the costume you don’t take off, seen from the other side. A costume worn to be seen still comes off at midnight. A state worn inwardly, with no one watching and no one doubting, does not. And it is why being called delulu misses the point: the assumption only looks like delusion to people who are still checking the evidence.
Coda
Stop faking
You do not need to look the part. You do not need to tell anyone. You need to stop keeping the second self, the one who stands behind the act and knows better. Abdullah’s method gives him nowhere to stand.
From faking to assuming
- Drop the performance. For one week, do not try to look, sound or act like the person you want to be. Save all of it for the inside.
- Choose one fact. One sentence, present tense, as plain as Abdullah’s: I live in the new apartment. I run the team. I am already in Barbados.
- Settle it at night. In the state akin to sleep, enter one short scene that would only happen if the fact were true, and fall asleep there until it feels ordinary.
- Catch the watcher. When the inner voice says you are not really this, do not argue and do not perform harder. Answer once, from the new state, and move on. That is the mental diet.
- Let behaviour follow. You will start acting differently without deciding to. That is the sign the change happened in the right place.
What this lesson is not saying
- MisconceptionThat Neville taught “act as if.”ActuallyNeville’s instruction was to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Outer behaviour changes as a result, not as the method.
- MisconceptionThat faking is harmless practice.ActuallyEvery performance you give while privately disbelieving it is also a rehearsal of the disbelief.
- MisconceptionThat assuming means lying to people about your situation.ActuallyAbdullah did not ask Neville to announce or perform anything. The Barbados assumption was invisible.
- MisconceptionThat you must feel it completely on day one.ActuallyNeville’s word was persist. The state is settled night after night until it is natural, as in training season.
The Abdullah Cluster
He did not teach Neville to fake it. He taught him to stop needing to.
The Barbados instruction, the closed door, the years of Hebrew and scripture, and the prompts that walk you through applying his method yourself. By the end of Abdullah Unveiled you will think, speak and assume differently.
Get Abdullah Unveiled- Fake it till you make it
- Self-help slogan advising you to perform a quality until you have it. The exact phrase is attested from the early 1970s.
- The Gospel of Relaxation
- William James’s 1899 essay advising readers to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
- The Philosophy of “As If”
- Hans Vaihinger’s 1911 book arguing that people live by useful fictions treated as true.
- Acting as if
- Alfred Adler’s therapeutic technique of rehearsing a desired quality through behaviour.
- Out of This World
- Neville Goddard’s 1949 book, source of the line that an assumption, though denied by the senses, if persisted in, will become fact.
- Abdullah
- Neville Goddard’s teacher in New York from 1931, who told him he was already in Barbados and refused to discuss the means.
Fake It Till You Make It and the Law of Assumption: Common Questions
What does “fake it till you make it” mean?
It means behaving as though you already have a quality, skill or status you do not yet have, on the theory that the outward act will eventually produce the real thing. Confidence, success and happiness are the usual targets. The phrase assumes that the performance comes first and the reality catches up later.
Where does the phrase “fake it till you make it” come from?
The exact phrase is first attested in the early 1970s, including in the record of a 1973 federal appeals court case, SEC v. Glenn W. Turner Enterprises, which concerned a motivational sales operation called Dare to Be Great. The idea behind it is older: William James advised acting as if cheerfulness were already there in his essay The Gospel of Relaxation, and Alfred Adler built a therapeutic technique called acting as if in the 1920s.
Does fake it till you make it work for manifestation?
Not in the way most people practise it. In Neville Goddard’s teaching, what hardens into fact is your inner assumption, not your outer performance. When you fake it, the performance says one thing while your private belief says you are not really this, and that private belief is the assumption being persisted in. The outer act can help only when the inner state agrees with it.
What is the difference between faking it and assuming it?
Faking works from the outside in: you perform the state for others while inwardly knowing it is a performance. Assuming works from the inside out: you accept the state as true of yourself first, privately and without reservation, and your behaviour changes as a result. Faking keeps two selves, the actor and the doubter. Assuming keeps one.
What did Abdullah teach Neville Goddard about pretending?
Abdullah, Neville Goddard’s teacher in New York from 1931, did not ask Neville to pretend. When Neville wanted to go home to Barbados with no money, Abdullah told him he was already in Barbados and would not discuss the means. Neville was to live and sleep in that state as a fact, not as a role. When Neville came back to argue, Abdullah closed the door on him.
Is “act as if” the same as the Law of Assumption?
They are related but not the same. Act as if, the advice associated with William James and Alfred Adler, starts with outer behaviour in the hope that feeling will follow. Neville Goddard’s Law of Assumption starts with the inner feeling of the wish fulfilled and holds it until the outer world reflects it. One moves outside to inside, the other inside to outside.
Why do I feel like an impostor when I try to manifest?
Because you are performing a state you have not yet assumed. The impostor feeling is the private voice that says this is not really you, and every time you perform without settling that voice, you rehearse it. Neville’s answer was to do the work inwardly first, in the drowsy state before sleep, until the new state feels natural rather than borrowed.
How do I stop faking and start assuming?
Stop performing for anyone, including yourself. Choose the state, then build one short scene that would only happen if it were already true and enter it each night as you fall asleep, until it feels ordinary. During the day, catch your inner conversation when it says you are not really this, and answer from the new state. Let your behaviour change on its own rather than forcing it.
Images: William James by Alice Boughton, about 1907 (National Portrait Gallery); Alfred Adler; Parmigianino, Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, about 1524 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Via Wikimedia Commons.
