Not a fan of “fake it ’til you make it”? Here are some alternate formulations:

• Fake it ’til you bake it: Pretend you have baking soda (even though your nine-year-old used it all in an experiment to see if pouring it down an ant hill and following it with vinegar would piss off the ants – which it did, by the way, big time). Then pretend you intended to make unpleasant flat tooth-breaking disks, not cookies, all along.
• Fake it ’til you rake it: Pretend it isn’t autumn. Let the leaves pile up day after day. Realize you haven’t seen your nine-year-old in hours. Rake the damn leaves and discover him, bewildered. Offer him a tooth-breaking disk to comfort him.
• Fake it ’til you shake it: Pretend to have completed medical school. Rise to a senior position at a prestigious West Coast hospital, all the while looking over your shoulder, terrified of being exposed. Feel the world lurch sickeningly one day as the city is hit with a megathrust earthquake, and feel a sense of profound ambivalence as the floor buckles under your feet.
• Fake it ’til you… continue faking it: Be one of two Soviet deep-cover agents sent to the West to pose as a typical American married couple. Establish and maintain a false identity for decades, raising a family. Watch from afar as the USSR crumbles. Realize to your horror you’re probably a travel agent for life now.