Acting As If

Everyone’s talking about it.  It is the backbone of the Law of Attraction.

It’s a theory that says if you can act like it’s already happening –  already in your life, you are already the person you choose to be – you create a better conduit, set up better causes and conditions for it to manifest.

Susan Jeffers explains how it works, in her book Embracing Uncertainty. “If you act-as-if long enough, your mind lets in the possibility that something is so. And, ultimately, you are able to embrace the reality that it is so.”

I’ve recently been introduced to “Ted Talks.”  I listened to a brilliant talk by Amy Cuddy called, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.” She is an expert on hormones and has done extensive study on body language and how the movement and placement of your body can greatly effect your mood and your life.

She spoke about “Faking it until you make it.” Her theory was that some people feel like a fraud doing this.  Her turn of the phrase adds an intention to “Fake it until you Become it.”  If you are striving to become something, it is not being a fake.  And that is really the heart of Acting as If.  Not to fool anyone – least of all yourself – but to practice until you become it.

Many spiritual practices and teachers, including the Buddha, tell us that which we want is always waiting for us to just see it.

The great writer and teacher, Dorothea Brande said, “All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right about face which turns us from failure to success.”

Even C.S. Lewis had something to say about it. “The rule for us all is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you love your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”

I believe it was Caroline Myss who said that money is a substance that faith attracts.  Believing the money will be there, acting as if it is,  is a strong indicator that it will be.  Why the rich tend to get richer and the poor stay the same.

It all adds up to the Conversations With God teaching about how most people say, “Well if I had this, I could be that and then I could do what I need to do.”  But what if we change that up and call it Do Be Have?  If we do it first, if we act as if it’s here already, fake it until we make it, we will Become it and then we will have it.  It’s not hard to believe that could greatly speed up the manifesting process.

Susan Jeffers wondered what we could accomplish if we acted as if we truly made a difference in this world.  Can you imagine?