Just Pretend

19th Apr 2007

The biggest obstacle in using the Law of Attraction to attract the things we want into our lives are our limiting beliefs. We might want to have financial independence, but we don't really believe we can achieve it. We might want to have a fantastic relationship, but don't really believe we deserve it. We might want to lose 10kg, but don't really believe we'll ever be able to.

In the movie The Secret the teachers speak extensively about the process of feeling like you've already got what you want, and it's that feeling that will draw what you want to you. They suggest writing down what you want as though you already have it and are grateful for it: "I am so happy and grateful now that..." and then feeling it. Another thing to do is to watch what you say with "I am", as you become exactly what you say you are.

That's a great idea, but all too often our limiting beliefs get in the way of allowing us to actually do that. For example, if you had self-esteem issues around your beauty and so wanted to feel beautiful you could say to yourself over and over, "I am beautiful", but likely you won't really feel beautiful because you don't really believe it. You want to believe it, you want to feel it, but every time you say "I am beautiful" your unconscious mind is ready to tell you that you're not. If you are persistent then over time you may gradually shift your belief and feeling, but it will likely be a slow and difficult process.

It's an interesting conundrum, and there are various techniques that can help to remove limiting beliefs and so help you attain those things you really want. A couple of useful ones that you might want to look into, either by yourself or through a therapist, are NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), both of which have done amazing things for releasing negative emotions and limiting beliefs in myself.

Outside of these formal processes I've recently discovered an extremely simple, yet powerful, technique that allows me to circumvent my doubts when I'm visualising and feeling having what I want. It's an extremely obvious technique once you know it, but one I hadn't thought about before, which is why I'm sharing it with you now. I call it, Just Pretend.

Let's try an experiment.

For 1 minute believe that you are an astronaut. Yes, I know you aren't really an astronaut, but believe that you are. Feel like you really are an astronaut. Come on, try really hard and believe it for 1 minute.

How did you go? Did you really believe you were an astronaut? Or did you want to believe, but found you couldn't truly feel like an astronaut because your mind kept saying, "But I know I'm not"?

OK, let's try another experiment.

For 1 minute just pretend that you are an astronaut. You don't need to believe that you are, just pretend, like when you were a child. If you were an astronaut, where would you be? How would you feel? What would you see and hear, touch and smell? Just pretend for 1 minute.

So how did you go that time? Did you find that by just pretending you could actually start to feel like an astronaut? Did you find that paradoxically you actually had a greater belief that you were an astronaut when you weren't trying to believe? Interesting, isn't it!?

I think our greatest limiting belief is our view of reality, and that what we see around us is solid and "just the way it is". When we ask ourselves to believe something that hasn't been true or real up until now our mind just can't accept it, even if we might consciously want to. So instead, let's lift that burden of believing from ourselves and just pretend!

And think about pretend for a minute. What is pretending? It's using our mind to imagine that something is real. What's another name for pretending? Make-believe. Think about that: MAKE BELIEVE. Using our imaginations to make ourselves believe that something is true. Wow, how come I never thought about it like that before when it's right there in the words!?

Our wonderful imaginations are our greatest asset. Many of us have forgotten how to use them through the process of schooling and "becoming a mature adult". If you really do want to live the life of your dreams then it's time to dust your imagination off, get it back into regular use and Just Pretend!

Written by Lisa Frost
Absurdly Improbable
www.absurdlyimprobable.com

chris - 14th May 2007, 5:20 AM

Thanks for reminding me that as a child (pre TV) my friends and I always played "pretend games". We would spend the complete play time having "make-believe" situations, and started every sentence with "pretend". As an adult I have stopped using this "chidish behaviour" and now realise that I've missed out because of it. Let's all remember that children are enthusiastic, passionate, full of hopeful expectations, have boundless energy, eat when they're hungry, sleep when they're tired and see beauty and wonder all around them.
From now on I'll be more child-like, and start really looking at the clouds for faces, seeing how many colours are in the sunsets, walking bare-foot on the grass and at the beach and remembering the joy of "pretending".