First of all, my apologies for the long gap in my postings… I got on such a roll with Amazing Magical Clothing (now at www.Delightenment.com) that I lost track of blog-time.
Okay, now onto something that makes me want to scream…
This weekend I ran into an old favorite of the transformation biz: “Act as if” (otherwise known as “fake it ’til you make it”).
The premise, not too surprisingly, is simple… wait, that’s not fair… let me try again.
The premise, like most transformational theories, is ridiculously simple-minded.
This one: If you want to be rich, you need to “act as if you’re rich.” Act as if long enough and you will have to get what you want!
Go test drive expensive cars, wear better clothes, eat better food… and you will eventually become rich enough to do these things for real … that’s the idea, at lest. A variation of “vibration/magnetism/attraction.”
And, as Lao Tzu once said, “Insane in the membrane!”
Now, I’m not going to address the issue of wanting to control the universe to get what we want, let’s just look at the technique itself and watch it fall apart, shall we?
Simply look to your own life to check this one out. Think of something you wanted to attain that you, in fact, *did* eventually get. Is the reality of having it even REMOTELY like what you imagined it would be? Was your first time having sex like you thought it would be? How ’bout the prom? Owning a house? Having however much money you have? Being with that dreamboat (or in Boulder, dreamkayak)?
If you picked an example where the result seems close to how you thought it would be, try 2 things:
1) Realize that we tend to manipulate our memories to fit our theories (read How We Know What Isn’t So)
2) Look for more examples and see which you have more of: eventualities that match your prior imagination, or a list “I really thought I’d be richer, thinner, better looking and having more sex” stories?
Even if the result was pleasant (which you wanted), it’s not like what you imagined.
It’s one of my favorite things, finding people who’ve attained big goals and asking, “So, is it like what you thought it would be?” The answer, but only every time I’ve asked, is, “Not even close.”
We simply can’t act as if we’re in some imagined future because we don’t have the ability to imagine well enough or act well enough. Hell, people who act as if for a living — actors — suck most of the time!
In fact, if you ever get a chance, go watch an acting class where the students are doing improvisation as themselves, not by putting on a character. What you’ll see is this: We can’t even “act as if” when we’re acting like US and we’re pretending it’s NOW!
If you really think you can “act as if”, try this experiment: replace your favorite dessert with dog poo and enjoy.
Comments
6 responses to “Act “as if”… as if!”
I’m going right now to demand a refund from my marriage counselor! 😉
i KNEW there was a reason i’d stopped going to AA meetings……..
by the way, i got here by spotting a comment by you at the “meditations on meaning” blog. always enjoy your observations. speaking of which, i have some “spritual teachings” i’ve been posting online anonymously that i think could be commercially viable if you wanted to help me pitch it to a publisher. they might be just intriguingly unhelpful enough for people to want to buy the book.
now i’m going to go see what “Amazing Magical Clothing” is…………….
peace and love and hugs and stuff,
e.
Acting As If…
Have you ever been told that ‘Acting as if’ something were so will, um, ‘make it so’? (Thanks Jean-Luc Picard.) Well, think again ……..
C’mon, Steven. You know that, at the basic level, “act as if” is just a variant of “who would I be if I didn’t have this thought?”
Yes, the examples you cite are taken to the extreme, often by shysters. But at a more basic level…. “Act as if you had self-confidence. Act as if you didn’t need the booze to get by. Act as if you were likeable.” These are all ways to help a person move past the lies they tell themselves. If someone can’t visualize who they would be if they didn’t have that thought, the “act as if” technique gives them some actual experience with it, and that can help them get over the hump and dump the self-lie.
The problem isn’t “act as if.” It’s just a tool. The problem is the mis-application of the tool. “Who would I be if I didn’t have this thought?” will make me just as rich as “act as if”, except that it’s easier for me to be fooled by the latter than the former (but the former still could happen!). In exchange, “act as if” is more experiential than intellectual, providing a different way to solve the same problem.
Hi Ed,
In my experience, “act as if” and what arises to answer “who would you be without your story” (which comes from The Work of Byron Katie) are opposites.
“Act as if” is about making up a new story. “Who would you be without your story” is about seeing life without any made up story.
I know it’s common for people to ask something like, “who would you be without the idea you have no confidence?” and answer “Self-confident!” But, of course, “self-confident” is just another story, a concept added to the worldess experience of considering life without the “not confident” idea.
Sometimes when the answer to “who would you be” is another concept, I’ll investigate THAT one, too… and discover something beyond the entire realm of the concept. In this case, beyond “not confident and self-confident”, beyond the idea of confidence.
But, even if we land on a concept, the action that emerges out of asking “who would you be without your story?” has a very different flavor than what comes from “act as if.”
The former has a feeling of clarity in motion, of something organic and obvious and natural. It’s done for the sake of ones own self, for the sake of living the truth starting in this moment.
The latter, has a feeling of forcing oneself into an ill-fitting suit for the purpose of attaining a goal. It’s done to support an idea of the imagined future, based on a fiction of what people in that situation experience.
In the Quantum Wealth class, there’s an application of The Work, where seeming problems reveal specific action steps that reliably lead to solutions. There’s no need to act as anything… there’s only clear action. At least, this is what’s reported by the people who’ve experienced this process.
Thank you Steven!!!!!!!!!! You are singin’ my song, brother. I just wrote my rant about The Secret at my blog the other day…similar issue. Visualize whirled peas, rather than giving these here peas a chance, as we do with The Work.