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Week 111:
Practicing Living “As If”
At points along the way in our shared journey with these experiments,
I’ve shared with you the process of living “as if” . A recent
conversation with a friend brought this practice to mind again. We were talking
about outcomes we each wanted to see happen in our lives. Our discussion turned
to those aspects of ourselves that have held us back in certain ways over the
years. As we talked, my friend reminded me of the practice of acting as if
the outcomes we want have already happened, where we invite ourselves to actively
imagine how we would feel, then actually behave as if we felt that way, and,
finally, notice how and whom we would be in the world as a person who had that
outcome as an actual part of his or her life. Then, we could become aware of
what changes emerge in us as we move through the day as that person.
I remember having done this practice many years ago, when I began to
facilitate workshops and give talks. Because of a powerful speaking anxiety,
it was a challenge for me to imagine standing in front of a group of people
in a workshop setting, giving a talk, or teaching a class. One of the ways
I overcame my speaking anxiety was to imagine that I had already achieved a
level of complete comfort in front of the room and then tap into how it felt
to be that person. At the time, I experienced the outcome as my “future
self”, as the part of me that had already achieved what I wanted to have
in my life. I would consistently “become” my future self, and allow
myself to experience me as “her” in front of the room. Slowly,
over time, I built into my mind-body being all the sensations and states of
mind that are part of being comfortable speaking to people. Eventually, my
speaking anxiety dissolved into comfort I initially imagined.
And so, I want to invite you to begin to live as if you have already
achieved the outcomes you seek, even if it seems nearly impossible to have
what you want. Believe me, when I began to work with my speaking anxiety, there
was no part of my conscious self that believed I’d ever be comfortable
in front of a room full of people. What I did have was a deep desire to have
that comfort.
As with all experiments, allow curiosity to be your primary companion,
and simply notice what emerges in your internal experience as you act “as
if” the outcomes you seek have actually emerged into your life. One of
the gifts of this exercise is that it offers you an opportunity to discover
what changes emerge in you as you live with that outcome as a reality in your
imagination. Then, you have a sense of the state of mind and physical sensations
that are part of being the person who has achieved the outcome you seek, and
can practice them consciously as you move through your daily activities.
As
with all experiments, be sure to allow mixed feelings, as it’s almost
inevitable to have both comfortable and uncomfortable feelings arise and move
through when you’re stretching into something that hasn’t fully
emerged into your life as yet.
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