Dr. Crew's NLP Lessons #14

THE "AS IF" SCENARIO

When I was first taught about this concept I was initially put off by it. I am a person who prides himself by being as genuine as I can possibly be in each moment. Acting "as if", to me, meant pretending to be something I was not. I later began to feel very differently after much further learning, meditation, and true comprehension of this concept.

Once we have identified a goal we wish to work toward and achieve we can visualize what this will feel like in all ways. This is often done in NLP by the use of all 5 senses. We then can "practice" this by the use of the "as if" concept.

I'll provide a very personal example. I have over the years, experienced great difficulty speaking publicly. I have had much psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and meditation sessions all geared toward me responding better to my fears. What has assisted me the most, and certainly has made the biggest difference to me, is the "as if" concept. I would practice being very calm, very eloquent, and very informative while speaking publicly. An interesting thing occurred- I found my body and my mind becoming more relaxed and more comfortable as I practiced speaking publicly while actually speaking publicly! I found myself just flowing with my words and becoming a good speaker by placing myself in the actual situation and remembering what I had envisioned and set into motion by practicing and emulating. So, in my example, even though I didn't FEEL relaxed while speaking publicly, I acted "as if" I was TOTALLY comfortable doing so. My body just simply followed my mind, then, in turn, my mind followed my body!

Try it for yourself!