Fake It Till You Make It

One of the major obstacles most people are facing when they want to change the person they are or want to start a new habit is when in the initial phase they would like to behave in a certain manner but they are still struggling with their old habits. They are in a situation where they are not sure what to do. This is dangerous because what they are doing does not align with their new goals and values and behaving in the old manner is only reinforcing old habits instead of forming new ones.

Successful people know this, and they always act as if they already made it. They always look like an expert from day one and they act with confidence and persistence. They just seems to win while the majority of people fail. Let me clarify that behaving as if you already made it is not cheating. If you have just quit smoking you can say that you are a smoke-free person, because indeed you are. If you just started a new profession, say a writer, you can say that you are a professional writer. You don’t need to wait until something exceptional will happen, you already are what you are currently doing. Remember that the purpose of this practice is not to be used to appear over other people, but instead to reinforce your self esteem and confidence and to dramatically cut down the amount of time required to properly acquire a new habit.

Be – Do – Have

This strategy can be divided in three verbs: be, do, have. Be means to imagine inside your head what you want or what you want to be. You must clarify how your end goals will look like and feel confident as if you already achieved them. It is vital that you cultivate a burning desire inside of you. If you do this, nobody can stop you.

Do means to take action and physically behave as if you already were the person you want to be. When you are consistent inside and you have cultivated a burning desire to achieve your goal, it’s important to take action and express your new internal state. Nothing will be accomplished until you make the physical effort to do something. To do this ask yourself what you would do if you already had achieved your goal.

Have is the result of be and means and it is naturally achieved when you act both internally and externally as the person you want to be. At this phase, your efforts are paying off and don’t need to do anything because you have achieved your goal.

Be do have is a natural sequence and it is intended to be followed in that order. You can’t do something before you have mastered the be phase and you can’t pretend to have something before you give something in return.

I want to end this article by giving you a practical example of this method. Suppose you want to be a happy person. If you follow the be do have paradigm, you start by feeling an internal state of happiness. You may shift your perception of reality and events from always noticing bad things to a new state where you always notice the good side of things. You always see the glass half full and never half empty. Now that you are a happy person inside, you start to give back your happiness to the universe. You do this by always talking about beautiful things and never complain. People around you are wrapped by your happiness and they want to stay with you because they feel good when you are with them. At this point you are both happy inside and acting like a happy person. You don’t need to wait anything more because you are now an happy person.

Sound easy? It is. Be, do, have.

Posted on August 17 2009

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