If you’re learning about the Law of Attraction, you may have heard that the secret to manifesting your desires is to “think positive” or something along those lines...
(If you’re yet to learn about the Law of Attraction at all, head over to this post for an in-depth explanation)
But the truth is, the Law of Attraction is SO much more than just thinking positive, and one of many other factors that play an important part is what’s known as the “act as if technique”.
Because, as you’ll hear me stress time and time again, thoughts aren’t enough to manifest your desires. Action is what makes things happen.
Repeat after me: action is what makes things happen.
Sure, thinking positive is one way to embody the energy of your desires to manifest them. But without the right kind of action, you're probably going to struggle to manifest your dream reality.
So this post is dedicated to one particular type of action that will change your manifesting game - acting as if.
Let’s talk about the power of acting as if and how you can incorporate this technique into your own Law of Attraction practice for better results.
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“Act as if” meaning
So what exactly does it mean to “act as if”? Let's look at the meaning of this manifestation technique so that you can begin to explore using it in your own practice.
Essentially, acting as if means that to attract something into our lives we have to act as if we already have it.
For example, if you want to manifest money then you have to act in a way that you would if you already had that money in your account. Make sense?
It’s a bit of a paradox I know, but trust me when I say that it is super powerful when you can get it right.
Now, it’s important to note that acting as if isn’t the same as “faking it ‘til you make it”. In fact I’m not a huge fan of that approach since I believe it creates underlying resistance as you are not in alignment with your true self.
We’re not faking anything here and we’re not trying to convince ourselves that we have something that we know deep down that we don’t actually have. That's not actually what acting as if is all about.
Because, I don’t know about you, but if I tried that approach I’d definitely have a little voice in my head saying “well… that’s not true”.
And that little voice will be acting as a manifestation block and creating resistance to you attracting your desire. Not what you want, right?
Instead what we’re doing with the act as if technique is stepping out of our comfort zone and embodying the energy of what we want to attract.
Because remember… the Law of Attraction is 100% based on energy.
And what’s the easiest way to get in energetic alignment with the thing we want to attract? It’s to act as if we already have it.
When done correctly (as you're about to learn) the act as if technique can bridge the energetic gap between where you are and where you want to be. And it doesn't have to be complicated!
The 3 step act as if technique
Now, in truth, you still might not be able to get your head around the paradox of acting as if you have something that you don't actually have.
And even after explaining to you as best I can about the meaning of the act as if technique, I feel like the best way for you to understand it is in practice.
In other words, the act as if technique might not fully click until you start learning the steps to using it in practice. But luckily for you I'm going to teach you exactly how to use this technique for any desire so that you can truly appreciate the power of acting as if.
In 3 stages, you can learn how to “act as if you already have it” so you can get closer to becoming a magnet for your desires. Let’s dive right in!
Step 1: Become aware of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions
The first stage of acting as if is becoming self aware and getting to know your feelings, thoughts and emotions.
Self awareness is THE most important factor in spiritual and personal growth. If we’re not aware of our thoughts and emotions, how are we supposed to transform them and become better versions of ourselves?
My favorite tool for developing self awareness is journaling. Daily journaling is a super introspective activity that allows you to dive into your subconscious and really get to know the inner you.
If you’re not already journaling daily, I’d encourage you to start now - a great place to start is using self discovery journal prompts that are designed to help you reveal your inner workings.
But since we’re trying to manifest here, it’s important that you get to know your feelings, thoughts and emotions about this desire in particular.
With your desire in mind, ask yourself the following questions to gauge your current state of mind and energy around your desire:
- What is holding me back from manifesting X?
- What is my biggest fear in regards to X?
- What does my inner voice tell me about X?
- Am I showing up like a person who has X? If not, what is out of alignment?
- Do I truly believe I’m capable of manifesting X?
Your answers to these questions should help you gain insight into the way you feel about manifesting your desire and what areas you might need to change in order to start acting as if.
Step 2: Align your actions with your desires
The next stage and the core of this practice is to start aligning your actions with your desires, or in other words - act as if.
I find that the easiest way to practice this is to put yourself out of your shoes for a second and ask yourself “how would a person with [insert your desire] act?”.
The answer to this question will guide the changes that you can then make to act as if and get in alignment with your desires.
Here are some areas of your life that you might want to look at specifically when it comes to this step:
Acting as if with how you speak
Ask yourself the question “How would a person with [insert your desire] speak?”
Start to become aware of the language you’re using with yourself and in your conversations with others relating to your desire. Is this in line with somebody who already has this desire?
Remember, acting as if isn’t about faking anything. You don't have to become someone you're not in order to do this technique.
So for example, if you’re trying to manifest money this wouldn’t be a case of going around telling everybody you’re rich... because a) that wouldn’t be true and b) it’s unlikely that this is how a person with your desire would act.
That’s why I think bringing things back to the question prompt is so helpful - using money as an example, how would a person with X amount of money speak?
Well… they’d probably not be complaining about money for one, and it’s unlikely that they’d use negative language surrounding money or their bank balance.
So if this is something that you find yourself frequently doing, yet your desire is to manifest money, then this might be something you need to work on.
This is just one example and this will be unique to your desire, but the point is to become aware of the language you’re using, and how you can change this to be more in alignment with what you want to attract.
Acting as if with how you present yourself
Ask yourself the question “How would a person with [insert desire] present themselves?”
Presentation will mean different things to different people, but some common areas that you might look at are the clothes you wear, your makeup, your hairstyle or even something like your posture.
My key advice here is to keep it in line with who you are at the core. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not!
This is something I struggled with a couple of years ago after I got it into my head that a “spiritual person” (whatever that means) shouldn’t wear makeup, should wear baggy clothes and should be “natural”.
I started trying to fit this image when this wasn’t really me; I’m naturally very expressive with my appearance and I prefer a more dark and “moody” look than a hippie one - that’s just who I am! *shrugs*
When I was trying to be something I wasn’t, I felt sooo out of alignment and that is not the way to attract your desires. Trust me.
Instead, you want to always bring it back to you. To bring some clarity to what this means, we’ll say we’re trying to manifest confidence as an example.
What you wouldn’t do:
Decide that all confident people seem to be people with blonde hair and blue eyes, so you dye your hair and start wearing contact lenses.
What you might do:
Come to the conclusion that a confident person would wear what they want to without fear of what others think, so you start wearing that outfit you love that you’ve never been brave enough to wear before.
That's one example of how you might identify a need to alter your image, without compromising on your true self. In fact, this example would be about working with your true self at your fullest expression!
Acting as if with how you treat money
Ask yourself the question “How would a person with [insert desire] treat money?”
This example is only really relevant if you’re trying to manifest money, but this is a common manifestation so it’s definitely worth a mention!
Let’s say you’re trying to manifest $50000 - how do you think a person with this amount of money in their account would treat money?
Would they:
- Avoid looking at their bank account through fear?
- Avoid investing money in themselves or their business?
Well, I’d say that’s unlikely to be completely honest. In fact, they'd probably make good decisions with managing their money, while making aligned purchases without fear or a need to hoard every last penny.
Start becoming aware of any unhealthy habits you may have in relation to money and how this might be holding you back from getting into alignment. And identify the behaviours that you might need to shift to instead.
Check out how to become a money magnet for more details about getting into alignment with your money manifestation.
Acting as if with how you spend your time
Ask yourself the question “How would a person with [insert desire] spend their time?”
Many of us don’t use our time as productively as we could, but what's more than that... how we spend our time could even be sending out the wrong idea on an energetic level.
Bringing our awareness to how we spend our time and making healthy adjustments can be enough to switch up our vibration and get us into alignment with our desires.
Would a successful person spend their time laying on the sofa watching Netflix all day? Probably not, unless it was their dedicated day off (No judgment btw, we’re all guilty of this sometimes).
Remember, manifestation comes from action… so what could you change about how you spend your time so that it’s more action oriented and directed towards manifesting your goals?
Those who are successful in their field don’t spend most of their time sitting around wishing to become successful, they spend most of their time taking action to make it happen.
Identify what a person with your desire would spend most of their time doing, so that you can then put in the work to act as if in order to make it happen.
Acting as if with how you treat others
Ask yourself the question “How would a person with [insert desire] treat others?”
How you treat others has a huge impact on the energy you’re putting out, and it isn’t a factor that should be ignored.
We’re all connected on an energetic level, and if we want to attract good things then we need to put out good things.
We learn as children to “treat others how you wish to be treated” and it’s my opinion that this is how we should live our entire lives.
If we want to attract loving people into our lives, we need to start showing up and treating others with love, respect and compassion.
Please only take the positives from this though… if you know somebody with a lot of money who treats other people horribly, this doesn’t mean you should go and treat other people horribly too.
Trust that karma will come back around to that person and choose kindness, always.
Acting as if with how you show up
Ask yourself the question “How would a person with [insert desire] show up?”
This comes back to what actions we’re taking in our lives to align with our goals. If we want to attract our desires, we need to make sure that we’re showing up in our lives to become a magnet for them.
This means that it isn’t enough to just show up - how are we showing up?
For example, let’s say you wanted to manifest your dream job as a writer. Would you just write a half hearted article and call it a day? I mean… you wrote the article sooo technically you showed up, right?
But did you show up to your fullest potential? Did you show up as a successful writer would have? Probably not.
Instead, you’d put your whole heart into something and do the best possible job that you know you could have done.
You’d show up fully because otherwise, what’s the point in showing up at all? Because that's the mindset you know a successful person with your desires would have.
This doesn't mean that you're going to be on your A game every single day, but it does mean shifting your intention towards doing the best you can and acting as if you've got your desire by showing up fully.
Acting as if with how you make decisions
Ask yourself the question “How would a person with [insert desire] make decisions?”
The problem with making decisions is that our decisions are very often led by fear, but if we allow this to happen then we’re not allowing ourselves to be in alignment with our desires.
It comes down to how much you want your desire... are you committed to making decisions that will bring you into alignment with your desire, no matter how scary they may seem?
This brings me back to a meeting I had with my supervisor in my final year of university. I was talking with him about my desire to work as an assistant psychologist, a position that is highly competitive among graduate psychology students (especially in and around London).
He turned and said to me - “You can do it, but you have to be willing to move across the country if the opportunity arises… if it’s what you really want to do.”
The thought of this terrified me. The truth is, I wasn’t willing to do this, this was a far too scary prospect for me to do alone and as it turns out, I figured out this wasn’t the route I wanted to go down.
But, had this been my true desire this is a decision that I would have to be willing to make to get me there. It's what the person who was successful in this role would have done.
So the point is, how far are you willing to travel to make your desires come true? Not just in the literal sense, but how far are you willing to travel out of your comfort zone?
Are you letting fear guide your decisions, or are you choosing to act as if?
Step 3: Let go to act as if
Now that we've gone through several acting as if examples to identify the changes you need to make and the way that you need to act to attract your desire, it's time to move onto the final step of the acting as if technique which is letting go.
Letting go is a step that I will always add to any step-by-step manifestation process, because it is so important and it can quite literally be the difference between attracting your desire and not attracting it.
Truth is, even if you nail the rest of the act as if technique, attachment is one of the biggest blocks to manifesting and unless you let go of your attachment to your desire, you will unknowingly create resistance to attracting it.
That means no matter how much aligned action you put into manifesting what you want, you're always going to be held back from it. That's unless you learn how to let go, of course.
You need to let go of any feeling of “need” and know that all will be well even if you don’t have your desire. And yes, this is kinda another paradox about manifesting.
And unfortunately I know that this is one of the hardest parts for most of us. Letting go isn’t an easy process when you have a strong desire or when your current situation is undesirable.
But it’s really not as difficult once you know how, trust me! And I plan on writing a whole post about the process of letting go for those of you that struggle with it. Until then, please check out this post because I think you'll find it really helpful.
And now you have the foundation, you can start practicing the act as if technique in your own manifestation routine to see how it shifts your reality.
Let me know of any difficulties you have with putting this into practice or if you’ve seen any changes after implementing this. I can't wait for you to experience the power of acting as if!
Before you go, why not check out these posts...
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About Esther
Esther is the founder of Through the Phases. Her mission is to guide others to grow to their full potential and create their dream life using spiritual and personal growth practices. Read more about her story here!
