Living As If (part 2 of Guided Imagery)

Living As If can help us visualize our lives and goals before they happen, helping us achieve the desired results. 

Transcript

Ok, so first let’s talk about last week’s episode…..yikes, Most of the time I don’t listen after I publish, usually I just listen as I’m editing, and that’s enough for me….I still maintain that no one likes to listen to their own recorded voice, it just sounds weird.  But I did this one, and I felt like my thoughts didn’t come out as clearly as they made sense in my head….  I’m hoping this episode, once piggybacked, will bring this information more into focus

Today I want to talk about thinking and living “as if”.  My entire point with last week’s episode Look to See was the fact that sometimes we have to look intentionally or force our gaze, or the direction we’re looking to see things clearly.  
We talked about guided imagery as a way to create, or guide our thoughts in a manner that serves us better, in terms of relaxation, stress reduction and setting and achieving goals, and now I want to add to that.  

What if we were all able to master the art of living as if.  What might we change, become or do better if we learned, through guided imagery, or the process of creating images, experiences, thoughts and feelings to actually live, feel, create and see our futures the way we’d like them to be? 

I know that’s hard to wrap our heads around right?  Just like guided imagery, this practice takes a lot of mental discipline and lots and lots of practice, but I hope you’ll see when we’re finished, why and how it can serve you beautifully, and take you from a place of reacting to your life experience, taking it all in like you’re watching it from the passenger seat of a car someone else is driving, to being the one with the wheel in your hands, the one who’s making the decisions, the one who’s intentionally choosing where to go, and how to get there. 


“Your brain wants to be right about what you believe is true” That’s what my life coach Jody Moore teaches- she goes on to explain that if you find yourself stuck or unable to reach your goals, you could be a person that is relying too much on the evidence of the past, and that shifting your focus to the future can make all the difference.   

A large part of where we are right now, whether it’s with our weight, our income, our job description, the house, the marriage, the self-confidence, and the faith is based on the past.  It is derived from the stories our brain wants to believe are true.  Those beliefs come from the stories we’re telling ourselves over and over again.  For example: If you believe you can’t lose weight, or you lose your temper quickly, or can’t afford something, or have a lot of anxiety, while this may all be true… reminding yourself of that fact based on past evidence only makes it more likely to happen in the future.

Every time I try to actively lose weight, the same story rises to the surface for me, and it’s something I have to work on.  I hear myself explain:   I can’t diet, my body just rebels. It’s true too.  Every single time I try to restrict something whether it’s candy or calories, I sabotage myself. Every time I deny myself, my brain instantly goes to…..oh crap, here she goes again.  We need to hang on with a death grip to every calorie, because she’s going to starve us, or deny us the things that make us feel so good.  The second I start restricting my diet the more I want the food, and the more weight I gain.

This is the story, and there’s a lot of evidence in my past to prove to my brain that that’s been true in the past, so it must be true now.   

The problem is, we shouldn’t be looking to the past for directions to the future, because we’re not going that way.  But Going to the past for that evidence is so easy, right?

We have a lifetime , this entire body of evidence to draw upon. We have memories, We have feelings and thoughts that support that story, that are super clear, and we have the extra pounds as proof of the last failed attempt. 

On the other hand If we are asked to look to the future and see ourselves in it, we don’t have that same body of evidence. It’s hard for us to see the future because we don’t have any proof, we haven’t been there.  We don’t have all those experiences to draw on.   So our brains are at a loss of how to convince us that newer, better version, the one with a leaner healthier body can possibly be a reality. 

That’s where my past episode looking to see comes into play.  By directing or focusing our gaze intentionally, and guiding our minds to see things as we’d like them to be, through engaging our senses and making them feel real, we can begin to convince our minds that these things are possible. 



I found a blog on Huffpost November 17th  2011 called The Law of Attraction: How to Act 'As If'

"Acting as if" is about believing in things that don't currently exist and that there may not be much evidence for. This is about living a "faith-based" life, not an "evidence-based life." 

When we choose to live with a strong faith in things not seen, not proven, and not guaranteed - we tap into the power of the possible and we supersede the literal and predicable.
Wayne Dyer wrote a great book a number of years ago called You'll See it When You Believe it. So many of us, myself included, live important aspects of our lives with the silent mantra of "I'll believe it when I see it" and in doing so we hold ourselves back, limit what's possible, and negate the power of our mind, imagination, and intention to allow and create things, situations, experiences, and outcomes that are new, unpredictable, and even miraculous”.

Isn’t that the truth!! I know I do that.  
My husband and I own a med-spa that we run alongside his medical practice, and I see this every day.  Here’s the perfect example.  I did a laser procedure on a woman who came in after her final procedure and asked for her money back.  She wasn’t happy stating that she had even more wrinkles and age spots than she did before she did the procedures.  I was patient with her, validated that I could understand how that would be frustrating, but asked if we could take another series of pictures.  Sure enough we took the pictures of her at that moment and compared them to the before photo’s we took on the same wall, with the same background and the same lighting, The pictures were undeniable, even to her.  How could that be?  
Because we see ourselves through the stories our brains believe are true.  She told me those stories.  “I look so old.  My face is nothing but wrinkles, I look exactly like my mother did”.  So that’s exactly what she will see.  Only when she was forced to look, to really see, did it become clear to her.  Needless to say, she didn’t demand a refund, in fact she purchased another laser procedure.  

So here’s the question we have to ask ourselves.  Do I really want to keep re-telling myself those stories and focus on what’s happened in the past so my brain can be right,  or do I want to switch my focus to the future and create or Look to see an entirely different outcome. 

The truth is, so many times We get exactly what we expect – Which is pretty powerful and pretty darn scary when you think about it.  

So like I said earlier, do we want to remain in the passenger seat and see where we end up, hoping it will somehow be better than last time, or do we want to kick the driver out and take over the wheel.  Because we can if we start living as if. 

The first step to living as if is to start seeing yourself as the person you want to be and then do the things that person would be.  
For example, if you want to write a book, and be an author, you need to do what authors do… and see yourself writing, then write.  
If you want to finally be successful and lose weight you have to see yourself thinner and healthier, doing the things thinner, healthier people do including passing on the Krispy Kremes your daughter brought to the Super Bowl party. That may or may not have been little internal dialogue of my own. 
If you want to forgive the person who’s hurt you, you have to see yourself interacting with genuine kindness and love.  You have to bring yourself to feel those feelings. 
No, it’s not enough to simply think the thoughts and then follow through with actions, You have to convince that brain that’s focused on past truths that this new story can also be true, and we do that by guided imagery.  Walking through the steps, seeing every detail, smelling the smells, feeling the temperature on your skin, hearing the sounds that will make this real in your mind, remember the example of imagining holding your new granddaughter as a way to relax. 
Kid have this mastered.  
We went to a fun park with 3 of our grandkids last week. On day 1 of our long weekend, we walked past it and I read them the list on the building of all the fun things they offered.  Laser tag, go-carts, arcades. The list went on.  But we had other things planned that first day, so it wasn’t until the second that we started our 5 hour adventure.  As we walked up to the front door, our darling grandson Walker said with so much excitement that his feet were literally dancing, and he couldn’t hold still.   I love this place so much!  My response was, you haven’t even been here, and he said matter of factly, I still love it so much.  Every since yesterday, he’d been seeing in his mind the interpretation of the list I’d read to him the day before.  I can only imagine the lens he saw through from a 5 year old perspective when he thought about go-carts.  He may have seen himself driving and going fast, like lightning McQueen in the Disney-Pixar movie cars.  He probably saw the color of car he’d be driving, heard the sounds he remembered hearing when we passed, and sure enough, his thoughts became things the very next day.  He drove that little go-cart so fast he passed his big sister with a grin on his face that we couldn’t have wiped off if we’d tried.  
Then just today, I was talking to another granddaughter Ruby about our annual Lake Powell family tradition, and she immediately said, I wish I could build a sandcastle.  I asked if she remembered making one last summer and I could see the wheels start rolling in her creative little mind.  Before I knew it, we were building a sandcastle out of clear plastic cups and she was building the one she could see in her mind, which by the way, was way bigger and way taller than the one she built last year.
Why is it so easy for kids to master this art?  I tend to believe it’s because they still use their imaginations a lot, and they’re not afraid to dream.  What if we weren’t afraid to dream about what could be if only we lived as if it weren’t a dream. If we could actually help those dreams become realities. 
Ask yourself some questions, will you?

*If I start living as if I already had every single thing I needed to be happy right here, right now, what would that feel like?  How freeing would that be?  How content could I feel?   P.S.  You know we do have everything you need right now, don’t you?

*I’m going to try this one on, feel free to join me.  If I lived as if I was already 30 lbs lighter, what decisions would I make when I was faced with daily food choices.  What would I feel like in my lighter, healthier body.  How do I look like in my new pair of stretchy jeans that I don’t immediately feel like covering up with a long tunic top?  

Thinking those thoughts in detail and feeling the feelings that accompany those thoughts are the most important first step in living as if you’ve already achieved your goals.  Then naturally things seem to fall into place and just like Walker with the fun park your visualizations can become realities. Some people call this manifestation the law of law of attraction, like attracts like, thoughts create things, we get what we focus on,  and some people call it reaping what you sow.  I’ve said many times on this podcast, the more you focus on something and the more energy you give it, the bigger it becomes.  

But I also believe that our loving Father in Heaven created to experience joy, to live and learn to become the very best we can be, and there are many scriptures that seem to point the very same direction I’m alluding to in this idea of living as if….. for example. 



Mathew 21:22 Jesus taught His disciples: “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive”. 
Whhoooop there it is….You have to believe it before you can receive it.  Don’t disregard God’s role here as being the giver of every good gift, but I also believe He wants us to do as much as we can in creating these positive outcomes, and then Thank Him for our bounteous blessings. 

Mark 9:23 Jesus told the father of the young boy “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth”. 

Mark 11:24 Jesus told Peter 
“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” 

Are you catching that in each of these and many other scriptures, we are told that believing first that we can and will be able to receive them is key. 

The same applies to guided imagery.  We have to believe the futures we are trying to create, and when we include our Father in Heaven in prayer and rely on the grace of our Savior Jesus Christ the righteous desires of our hearts can become completely attainable.   In Moses 7:44 Enoch was shown the horrible  wickedness of the people and the utter destruction of every living thing during the time of Noah.  Vs. 44 reads And as Enoch saw this, he had bitterness of soul and wept over his brethren, and said unto the heavens:  I will refuse to be comforted; but the Lord said unto Enoch; Lift up your heart and be glad and look.  If you remember the word look as an action word from last week.  I find great comfort in this scripture as the Lord guides Enoch’s ability to see clearly the thing that would help him feel glad.   I believe He can help us do the same thing.  Think about that this week, do some homework, and next week we’ll do some hands on applications.  Until then, Take a good hard look at where you are, where you’re going and what you need to do to get there.