Welcome back to our “Success in 12 Months” blog series, and here we are now in Month 6. The topic for this month is the idea of acting as if.

If you haven’t heard this before, just let me explain exactly what we’re getting into here. If you have heard of it before, let this be a reminder to a very powerful lesson that you can and should be implementing on an ongoing basis.

A lot of people often worry about certain traits that they lack, and you may even obsess over them.

For example, maybe you don’t think of yourself as confident, and then you look outside of yourself at your immediate circle of friends or maybe some coworkers or colleagues and you see somebody who on the outside generally appears to be pretty confident.

You look at them and think, “Man, I really wish I could be confident like that. If only I was more confident, maybe I could have the success that they have.”

If you’ve done that, you need to stop and think about this for a second. Sometimes the best way to strengthen these kinds of traits in ourselves is to simply act as if we already have them.

What does that mean? Look at that confident person and you see they naturally have the confidence and you look inside of yourself and maybe you say, “I don’t have the confidence. How could I possibly act as though I have it?”

The truth is, you simply can. If you feel like it, try this. The next time you’re feeling low confidence, maybe you’re in a social situation that requires everybody to give input, I’m sure you’ve been in a situation in a board room-style setting or classroom-style setting where all the students get a chance to give some input and everybody seems to be giving answers in a confident fashion, but you don’t really feel all that great about it. Maybe you even shy away from giving an answer.

What if in this case, instead you stood up and just pretended like you were confident and spoke as though you had a lot of confidence? Literally just pretending and faking, almost like you’re an actor on a stage.

You’re going to suspend disbelief and for the next minute or two you’re going to act as though you have an abundance of confidence and see what kind of answer comes out.

Here’s the thing. It doesn’t necessarily make you confident in that moment, it doesn’t necessarily cure all of your confidence issues, but it does portray a new era or new image of confidence that you didn’t have before.

A lot of people have reported when trying this that once they started acting that way, that they were able to continue it.

So maybe you try it once in this classroom environment, you stand up and act like you’re confident even though you don’t feel like it, and you realize nobody really caught on.

Well hey, next time they poll the room for a question or answer, try the same thing and see if it happens again, and sure enough it probably will happen again.

You’ll start to realize, “Is it really true that all I need to start acting like I have a certain level of confidence, portraying as though I have this level of confidence and I’ll actually develop that confidence?”

It seems simplistic at a root level, but ultimately this can work for you if you give it a shot.

And this can work beyond just confidence. That’s just an example I’m giving right now, but this can really work in any area of your life.

Your Exercise for the Week

What we want to do this month is give you a list of action steps that you can start taking week after week that will help you implement this idea of acting as if. Pretending or being an actor in your role in life, but it’s more than just pretending.

As you saw in our previous example, this is something that can literally reformat the way your brain and subconscious mind operates.

This first week is all about identifying some weaknesses you have. Truly look within yourself and find negative personality traits and/or weaknesses that you think you have. Some examples could be: lazy, unconfident, fearful, not a good speaker, not punctual etc…

Try to think of 5.

Earlier, we were talking about confidence issues. Maybe you look at other people and think, “Wow, they’re so great at communicating themselves and when I talk to somebody I just can’t get my ideas out there.”

If you think you have certain areas where you’re weak or your personality trait is just not where you want it to be, write it down as one of your top five.

That’s it for this week. We’ll take this exercise deeper next week.

If you are finding that you need some support at this point in your path toward success, consider getting a FREE “Clarity, Strategy, Action” session with me, which you can apply for here.

Until next week…

James