Acting As If

Acting As If

Life is a series of moments. To Live each one is to succeed. - Cortia Kent

The technique has its origins in Hans Vaihinger’s 1911 paper Philosophie des Als Ob (’Philosophy of As If’). He believed we can never really know the underlying reality of the world. As a result we construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: we behave “as if” the world matches our models.

The technique produces a result by presupposing that the result has been or will be realized.

The intent is to make it easier to explore possibilities and ideas internally, which would usually not be available to us due our limiting beliefs about ourselves and others. The specific effect you are aiming for is to allow your limiting beliefs to be temporarily suspended by reducing or avoiding internal resistances. This then allows you to explore alternate possibilities, without having to threaten or challenge your existing conceptual world-view. The limiting belief can be retained for later if it is a useful one.

For example instead of saying “I don’t know how to be confident in situations where there are people I’ve never met before”, you act as if you have done it before. You are actually in the stage of conscious incompetence, but behave as though you are are at the stage of conscious or even unconscious competence.

This technique helps to acquire competence more rapidly, efficiently and effectively than if you just acknowledge your incompetence.

The success of this technique has to do with focusing and mobilizing your personal resources. ‘Acting’ means that you overcome inertia and passivity and become a doer. ‘As if’ implies empowering beliefs that the result is a possibility, if not a reality.

We all have a vision or a mental model of ourselves performing the relevant skill successfully. That model may be informed by images and memories of real-life models – of others we’ve seen being confident among strangers. Even if the learning is by trial and error, or by “trial and succeed” there is always a reference point.

‘As if’ behavior is reinforced internally, by positive affirmations (”Meeting new people is easy for me”) and visualization.

Use the acting ‘as if’ technique to develop the skills and roles you require.
You can use it to be the kind of person you want to be. It can be an effective approach to interpersonal communications. By acting as if someone else has a positive intention, you can ‘encourage’ them to express that intention by ’showing’ them a preferred possibility for their behavior. In this sense, acting ‘as if’ is a form of personal power.

Examples
I can’t tell my partner how I feel
But if you could, what would you want them to know?
Typically you will move away from “I can’t”, towards either discussing the heart of the problem (rather than just a blanket denial of your ability to solve it), or – more commonly – you will start to identify what you would wish to say and begin to consider ways that it could be said. Either move would be as a positive step towards learning to solve your own problem.

I don’t know anyone who could memorize this poem
But if they could, how do you think they might do it?
Well, I suppose they would…..
Again the intent of an “as-if” frame is to move away from the flat denial of your capability and knowledge, and engage in a creative approach. You can then consider ways to achieve how to reach your goal or consider the wider nature of the problem. This is often called a generative approach, as it encourages you to brainstorm and generate new ideas without referencing prior assumptions of inability.

Possible alternative NLP procedures
Alternative fallbacks if you continue to feel unable to identify new ideas:

• The presupposition “What stops you?” [presuposes something specific is stopping you which can be identified and considered],
• Looking for role models “Who else might know?”,
• Testing whether there is a generalized belief of impossibility “Could there be anyone who could do it?”,
• Looking for secondary problems (things that mean it cannot safely be considered) “So what would happen if you did?”,
• Search for counter-example “Has there ever been a time you could…?”,
• Search for potential internal conflict “Is there a part of you that would have a problem doing that?”
• Search for additional positive motivational leverage “What else would you get if you could?”
• Open up the question to broader solutions generated from other perceptual positions such as third parties “If your wife was here, what might she say you weren’t seeing?”
• Reorienting yourself to view the issue more from a future perspective, such as the double question “How would it feel if you could find a way?” followed by “And how might you get that?”
• Directly ask yourself to overlook, for a time, your denial, and consider making a small step instead “And if you could find a way to get there anyway, what might you have to do first?”