“Act as if you are already a tremendous success, and as sure as I stand here today – you will become successful.” – Jordan Belfort, Wolf of Wall Street
Jordan eventually pleaded guilty to charges of security fraud, money laundering, and other allegations.
It’s telling that his strategy eventually backfired.
Here’s why:
You can’t take action hoping it will get you to a better place without knowing the thought driving your current action and the one you’d need to believe to act differently.
Action is only one variable to change.
Most of us try to do something to feel better, but it’s actually the other way around.
Thoughts cause our feelings
Feelings drive our actions
Actions create our results
In order to take sustained action, you need to know the feeling driving it and the thought driving the feeling.
For example, let’s say Sara has a job interview and she wants to exude confidence. Her friend advises her to act like she’s confident. This sounds like a good plan to Sara, so she buys a confident-looking outfit and practices how to speak and look confident in the mirror. The thing is she still secretly believed she didn’t actually have what it took to do the job. Her insecurity will undermine the congruity of her actions and make it much harder to project a confidence she doesn’t really feel.
Let’s say Sara’s a great actress and she gets the job. She considers this a win & thanks her friend for the great advice! Unfortunately, she’s also set herself up to do internal battle with her negative assessment of herself every day of that job. This will require her to “act” all the time. There’s a reason good actors get big bucks; because it’s hard work! The act will be hard to maintain and eventually her actions will start to reflect Sara’s underlying thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately in these scenarios, the outcome often ends up reinforcing or providing evidence for the negative thoughts and feelings that were there all along.
Steps To Make Change That Sticks:
1.) Consider something you want to change.
Uncover the predominant thought you have now about it.
What is the emotion you feel when you think that thought?
2.) Now get clear on the action you want to do differently.
Ask yourself what you’d need to feel to take that action.
With this answer, ask yourself what you’d need to believe to have that feeling.
3.) Armed with the knowledge of what you want to think and feel, get a reading on how much you believe the thought currently (0-100%) and how much you want to believe it using the same scale.
4.) With this data you can start to experiment with taking action as if you already believed the thought and felt the feeling. Bring the thought into your conscious awareness as you take action and this should activate the feeling you want to fuel the action.
5.) Plan a specific action to take in this way once or twice a day. These will give you an opportunity to gather new evidence in support of the new belief. Keep a record of what you said or did when you experimented with acting as if you believed the new thought. Write down how it went and what the result was. With each entry reevaluate the percentage rating of how much you believe the new thought. Also keep checking to see what’s happening to the percentage of belief in the old thought. This information will be important in building evidence for the new thought and and making adjustments as needed.
If you follow these steps, you’ll have everything you need to making change that sticks for the long haul.
