Since I started my personal development journey I have had beautiful discoveries. I have been building a toolbox and one of my favourite one is the Acting as if.
Watching children has always taught me a lot of things. Have you seen them when they play Doctors or Teachers? They can play for hours and you can see that they are taking the roles very seriously by their attitudes, their gestures and the words they use. They become the character they are featuring. Why is that? As they are naturally curious, they observe carefully the world around them and are good at acting as if.
What is it?
Acting as if is one of the greatest evidence of the Power of the Mind. The principle is to act as if you already had something that you want whether it is to change behaviour or to acquire new skills or improve the ones you already have. For example if you wish to have a new apartment you need to imagine what it would be like to have and incarnate the person you will be once you live in this new apartment. The only limit is your own boundaries!
How does it work?
Experiences help us illustrating this process. Changing behaviour or taking actions can generate a change of mindset and beliefs. Even if it is widespread to believe that the thinking precedes the action, the action can also precede the thinking.
By acting as if we can:
— generate positive emotions and feelings
— install new behaviours thus changing our reality
— change our internal dialogue
— change physically.
To be a great champion, you must believe you are the best. If you are not, pretend you are. – Muhammad Ali
What does it bring?
— More confidence: the more you act as if, the more you believe in your capability to attract positive things so the more you will to it.
— Focuson the positive: you can break negative patterns and generate positive ones.
— Creativity: you are using your mind to imagine and live unusual experiences, just because you decided to! Seeing things differently will offer you new choices.
— Fun: it is a very active yet powerful way of dreaming.
In practice
Let’s assume that I want to be an outstanding tennis player.
- I write down my objective.
- I imagine: how do tennis players play? How do they train? How do they behave outside courts? I can also write that down.
- I visualise and let my mind wander and feel what’s like to be a tennis player. It’s important to see through my own eyes, it gives more intensity to the experience. I can add visual, auditive and kinaesthetic elements to increase the emotions associated with the experience.
- I act as if: I practice tennis regularly, I wear certain types of clothes and I do certain types of activity (jogging, gathering with other players). Because I believe that tennis players are confident, I live this confidence by walking firmly, speaking with a clear voice and smiling most of the time.
To add
By acting as if, you extend the possibility field by being creative. You embrace novelty in your daily life thanks to new behaviours, speeches and attitude. You generate different emotions that tend to be really empowering and come to support your projects. Acting as if will help you be in a better position to get what you want in your life.
Let’s hear about you now! Do you remember last time that you were acting as if? What was it like? What results did you get?
[ted id=1569]
A great state to be – as if…
Thank you Yayi for this perspective. I guess most of us are using it without realising the power of it.
Yes! So imagine what happens when you use this purposely!
Maybe you can share a situation where you realised you were acting as if?
Thanks for the insights, always interesting to get new perspectives. This could also work great in a work environment.
Thanks Pierre for your comment! I think it works pretty much everywhere and it takes practice to become an automatism;)
Very good one Yayi, thanks for reminding it to us.
Great topic and very clearly presented. Designing myself is one of my top priorities lately and the exercises you offered reminded me to practice practice practice. I usually take people I like and try to copy their abilities or way of doing/saying/moving etc i even have specific persons associated to specific abilities and I visualize them when I need one particular ability in some situations. Thank you!
Thanks Iulia for sharing this! We generally have good examples or what we want to achieve around us!
I love your “designing myself” concept!
Our body change our mind-very impressive video. Thank You so much for sharing it!!!!!!!
Well done Yayi :). Future History is another label that Muhammad Ali used for this concept, to visualise victories and the identity of ‘The Greatest’ right from the beginning. It clearly work. Great work :).
Yes, I saw it modeling my brother and my cousin when they were practising their sports!
I believe in can be transposable to any other subject in life.
Thx Paddy!
I completely agree and it works. Your article is inspiring as I know it works but often not have time to do it. I start with my positive affirmations and visualisations this evening.:)