Act, right now, exactly like the ideal person you want to be in five years

Someone posted an interesting question on Linkedin and I thought I'd share my answer with you here.

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What would you do for a Career or Job if you KNEW you would not fail? What is stopping you from doing this very job or career?

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This is a very interesting question and I think it points to an important truth: there is no "future" out there.

Life can only be lived in the present moment. So if there's something a person wants to do, he/she should start doing it right now. If it is materially impossible, then start THINKING and FEELING, right now, like the kind of person who would be doing that kind of work.

IBM founder Thomas Watson used a similar psychological liberation device or method. He encouraged people to visualize, in great detail, the ideal person they wanted to become in 3 years, and to start ACTING, THINKING, FEELING, DRESSING UP, WALKING, READING, ETC. precisely like that ideal person in three years.

I've discovered recently that what this accomplishes is that it reduces the gap between a person's DESIRE and her BELIEF (usually, her master belief has to do with who she thinks she is, or her "self-concept").

So by acting, feeling, thinking, reading, walking, dressing, etc. like her ideal self, she indeed comes to NATURALLY believe she has ALREADY realized her desire, and that is precisely the point where everything in life accelerates mysteriously into sublime manifestation.

In other words, what blocks people is rarely the DESIRE, because we all know what we truly want (even though we try to hide it from ourselves and from others for fear that explicitly knowing what we want would "force" us to go after it, thereby risking failure and disappointment).

What blocks people is the lack of a certain imagination which would enable them to BELIEVE they are already what they want themselves to be. Einstein thus rightly says that imagination is more important than intelligence.

Intelligence can only be about what is known, that is, the past.

Imagination is about the future, or the unknown. Imaginative people therefore are, by definition, fearless people who venture into the unknown. Once this state of fearlessness is achieved, nothing is impossible in life.

Peter Nguyen
Serial entrepreneur, partner, editor in chief
CareerKnowledge.net
PowerKnowledge.net