One of the most common falsehoods to come out of the self-help industry in the last 50 years is the idea of being able to fake it till you make it. When I first got into personal improvement about 15 years ago, several people told me there was a method I could use to help get from where I was to where I wanted to be.

Eventhough I know their intentions were pure, the advice was pretty misguided. They told me that I needed to act as if I were already the person I wanted to become. My marching orders were that I needed to fake it until I made it. I'm this concept has done more harm than good.

The purpose of fake-it-till-you-make-it is to help you tie your vision to the proper emotions. When we tie emotion and mental images together, our subconscious minds take over and start working to make our outside picture match the internal image. That is unless our conscious mind gets in the way.

The biggest problem with fake-it-till-you-make-it is that most of us feel like we are lying to ourselves when we do it. We can convince ourselves that things are different for a little while, but then the rest of the world weighs in. Apparently they are not in on our little game and they come crashing down on us.

Not to mention that a continued effort to lie to our conscious minds will result in full scale rebellion by our brains. Trying to convince our minds that things are different than what they are is like trying to keep a secret from our brains. You can't keep secrets from your brain because that's where you keep all your secrets!

The idea of fake-it-till-you-make-it will absolutely cut the legs out from under anything you are trying to do. That being said, there are incredible benefits to tying emotions and vision together. But there are other ways to make it happen than fake-it-till-you-make-it.

I talk about those ways in Flip the SWITCH, my latest book. If you want to learn more, I'm offering two chapters for free so that you can preview the book. Just go to http://themindsetmaven.com/fakeit and follow the instructions. Additionally, I'll give you 12 videos with tips to make your daily life better by engaging your mindset.