When masters of the Law of Attraction talk about acting as if – what does this really mean? How do you do it?!?!? Why is it so HARD?!?!
This concept is one of the most annoying things I’ve dealt with in recent years when it comes to the Law of Attraction. Now I do actually believe in this law, but its practice is incredibly confusing and seems rarely to achieve any results – that I can trace.
Or control. 🤪🤪
The thing is, now I’m starting to believe we’ve all been doing it somewhat incorrectly.
If you’ve ever read The Secret or any book or article on the Law of Attraction, you’ll know that we keep getting told from the authors that if you want to manifest a particular desire into your physical reality, the quickest way to get from where you are now to where you want to be is to “act as if”. To act as if the reality you want is the reality you have now.
Which for most people, is unfathomable.
For me, this is one of the most difficult practices even to understand, let alone get right well enough that it will actually work.
ARGH.
A wish manifested
One of the most popular examples of a wish manifesting is the one where the young boy or girl stands in front of the mirror, acting as if he/she is accepting an award for some achievement (a Grammy, an Oscar, etc.), or standing with a hairbrush pretending to be a rock star.
To the universe, there is no “acting”, there is only “being”.
The universe responds to the “acting” as if it were “being”, and brings more of the same – in this case, awards or music performances – especially if there is a lot of strong feeling/emotion behind the intent and practice.
Inspired action? Aligned with Intent? Que?
According to the Law of Attraction, eventually, sooner or later, if the desire is strong enough and it is followed by regular, inspired action aligned with that intent, then the dream reality must find itself showing up in physical reality.
But what is strong desire? What is inspired action? What does it mean to be aligned with intent?
What does any of this mean?!?!?!?
And more importantly, how can I channel it to get what I want??!!?!?
Strong Desire
The way I see it, strong desire is like being hungry: when you haven’t eaten for a while, and you get to that point where you could gnaw your own arm off, that would be classified as a strong desire for food. You want to eat so badly that you would be willing to take some pain in order to get what you want, and you will stop at nothing until that desire is satisfied.
In this case, your desire for food will lead to some kind of inspired action that is in alignment with the attainment 
of the goal of getting some grub (say, digging in your couch for change, then hightailing it to Wendy’s to deplete their Dollar Menu).
For the Law of Attraction to be effective, your desire for what you want needs to be that strong – so strong that you will not give up until you get it.
Circuitously, it is when your desire is strong enough that it invokes a tipping point in your life so that you will take some action that you might not have otherwise been willing to take.
So what is inspired action? Well, it helps first to define what is not inspired action, or rather, what is uninspired action, since most of us engage in uninspired action on a daily basis – for some of us, it has become a way of life.
Uninspired action is essentially when you do something you don’t want to do, because you think it will avoid an unpleasant result.
Every feeling and all the energy around it is negative. When the thought of doing that thing is so arduous, so ugh-feeling that you’d rather poke your eyes out with a stick than do it, but you do it anyway because you think it will get you where you want to go.
But in reality, at best it will only help you to avoid where you don’t want to go.
Uninspired Action
The best example of uninspired action that nearly all of us can relate to is working at a job you hate.
The actions of getting up at some hellish hour in the morning with that gut-wrenching feeling of dread that you have a mind-numbing nine or ten hours of crap to slog through before you can taste freedom again, the bitch of a drive to work, surrounded by lines of cars filled with other coked-up hunched-down zombies 
looking aimlessly and bitterly through their steering wheels as they anticipate the same kind of day, walking to the door with your keychain card strangling your neck allowing entrance to the building that houses your very own grey-walled prison cell that you get to sit in until you are released, only to look forward to doing it all over again… and again… and again…
None of these actions are inspired.
Inspired action is the kind that is energizing and graceful, the kind that you have a strong desire (hey!) to do, and the kind that feels good and has a sense of “rightness” associated with it.
It’s that kind of action that comes naturally, as a result of an idea that makes so much sense for your ultimate goal that you can’t not engage in it, because it feels so exciting to do so, and because you know it will help you get you closer to achieving your dream. Inspired action is exactly what it sounds like: inspired!
Inspired action with aligned intent!
So what is inspired action aligned with intent? Well, you can engage in inspired action all over the place, but if the action doesn’t have anything to do with an intended goal, then it won’t help you get there.
For example, if your goal is to meet your soulmate, then you can spend many hours digging a beautifully inspired garden in your backyard, but it is unlikely your soulmate will be found in the dirt (you may, however, meet him/her at a nursery!). You will undoubtedly create gorgeous flowers, but you may remain single.
Or, you may be inspired to look up articles on the internet about penguins, but unless your inspired action allows for meeting people, it’s unlikely he/she will be found in your articles.
Now if the article you read leads you to track down the author, which leads you to emailing him/her, which follows with a meeting – then you may meet your soulmate! But the action of reading the articles only is not going to be enough to bring your soulmate into your life. Your actions need to be alignment with your ultimate goal – in this case meeting someone –  inspired or not.
The tie-in
So how does all this tie in with the “acting as if” focus of this post?
Well, think about it. If you have a goal that you want to achieve, then the way to do this by using the Law of Attraction is to take inspired action to simulate what your life would be like if you had already achieved the goal.
Fake it until you make it, essentially.
Your desire to achieve the goal must be strong, and it must be one you are unwilling to give up on under any circumstances.
The actions and behaviors you engage in must feel inspired – exciting, fun, alluring, and you must actually want to engage in them. If you don’t want to do something and you do it anyway, all you will do is bring in negative, resistant energy into the experience which will only serve to keep the manifestation of your goal further away.
Lastly, the inspired actions you take in the simulation of your new life must be in alignment with the achievement of this particular goal.
There is nothing wrong with spending time doing other things that make you happy, but if you spend no time doing anything in relation to a goal you want to achieve, it will never manifest. The actions, even in simulation, must be in alignment with the intended result.
And there you have it
Acting as if.
What is your goal? What would your life look like if you had already achieved it?
Is it to run your own business? What would that look like? Make a list of all the things you think you would do if you ran your own business. Draw a picture of your office or workspace. Make a schedule of your fantasy work day!
And then find ways to do the things that you would do if you were running your own business – even if it is only one task each day. Eventually, over time, those tasks will add up, and the next thing you know, you will no longer be flipping off the driver next to you at 0-dark-thirty in the morning during your morning dread to work.
Instead, you’ll be singing your way to the first day running your own business!
Last thing
One thing: if you don’t know how to “be” whatever you want your life to be, then your next step is to find out what it’s like to be whatever you want your life to be.
So if you want to be rich, but you don’t know how to be rich (and this is different than how to GET rich – take note), then learn how to be rich. Get to know other rich people and find out how they spend their days.
If you want to live the life of a painter, but you don’t know what a painter’s day is really like, then get to know people who earn their living painting and find out (you may find out you don’t like it!).
Other than losing weight being thin, another goal of mine is to be rich earn an abundant living writing, teaching online courses, and helping others.
So… how do you think I spend a lot of my time?
