Zig Ziglar is known for preaching, “We all need a daily check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.”
The only person who can pull you up from your bootstraps is the same person stinkin’ up the boots. Mind your thinking every day by focusing on what you want and act as if you have already achieved it.
Focus on what you want to bring about and not on what you fear happening. Take an action toward what you want, then another, and then another. This is where you need to FAKE it until you make it.
Think of FAKE to mean: Feel And Know Enough so you can take the next couple of steps of your journey. If you take enough next steps you will eventually make it. you can’t help but not. Some steps may be daunting and difficult. Take them anyway. Begin with FAKE. Don’t concern yourself with the entire journey and all of its imagined switchbacks and detours. It’s like driving a car on a windy road. You know your route will have turns. Every trip has them. However, you need to be present in the turn you are in while focusing on the next one. Do not try to make all the turns of the journey at once…just one at a time. Don’t be short-sighted and get caught up in the turn you are in. Raise your gaze to the next turn and let it pull you through your current turn.
Acting as if takes faith and hope. Faith in the believing it will come about and the feeling of hopefulness rather than hopelessness. In scripture, Mark 11:24 reads – Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. In the book, The Science of Getting Rich, Wallace Wattles continually articulates doing things in a certain way. The certain way is as if you already have achieved it.
Some may argue faking it until you make it is not justified. It’s not real or right to go about operating in falsehood since it has not happened yet. In fact, it may be downright irresponsible. Just because something has not happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t. However, this is not to say if you are living paycheck to paycheck and wanting to be a millionaire to go out and spend money you don’t have on a Ferrari or Rolls Royce. Many make the mistake of thinking that acting as if permits them to bypass proven principles.
If you are a millionaire in the making. Be realistic in how you imagine a millionaire starts out. They don’t start out with a million and spend money on big ticket items. They save their money and put it to work for them and then invest in assets that appreciate, rather than in things that depreciate. If you are going to act as if, then act as if from where you currently are and not where you think you should be.
How does your future self need your current self to act so that the two of you will eventually meet?
If you have a 40-inch waist, buying 30-inch slacks and expecting them to fit is not acting as if. That’s just dumb flawed logic. Acting as if means the person with a 40-inch waist imagines them self already having a 30-inch waist and thereby making healthy eating decisions, getting plenty of exercise and doing the things a person with a 30-inch waist would have done along the way. By doing so, eventually, the action that comes into alignment will be the purchase of 30-inch slacks that actually fit.
Everything starts out as a thought. We all think in images and pictures. The chair you are sitting in, your smartphone, and the car you drive all started out as thought in someone’s mind. They held onto that vision and summoned the energy and emotion to take the necessary actions to bring it about into the world beyond just their imagination. Were they faking it or just Feeling And Knowing Enough to take the next step, and then the next?
This week FAKE it along the way to making it by acting, from where you are, as if your future self has already achieved it.
Make it up, make it fun, and get it done!