Act As If | The Discomfort Zone

How Do You Feel Today?

Posted on 18 February 2008

If I bumped into you in the street today and said “How are you buddy?” How would you respond? If you’re a women you’d probably respond by saying “Who you calling buddy, you half-wit?” But let’s presume I have adjusted the question accordingly to reflect the accurate gender, what would you say?
Let me take a stab at the answer. Would it be “I’m alright” or maybe “Not bad” or even “Don’t ask!” by any chance? C’mon you little rascal you can tell me I’m a life coach, it would, wouldn’t it.
A few years ago a friend and I decided to conduct an experiment. We vowed that when anybody asked us how we were, we were going to respond positively, very positively. “I’m not bad”, “I’m struggling along” or “Jeez, I thought nobody would ask, I’m having an awful day! The cat’s puked on the carpet, I have developed this nasty little rash and look at the weather, it’s bloody awful” were unacceptable answers, and this is the key to it, even if they were true.
We decided we were going to answer that we were stunning, or fantastic, or brilliant, or on top of the world, or about to explode with joy at getting to spend so much time on this wonderful planet with so many lovely people.
What do you think happened?
The response usually evoked one of two reactions. Some people would laugh and agree that they were fabulous too, whilst others would look suspicious and ask “Why are you in such a good mood, what’s going on around here?” The former group often looked relieved too, because now it was ok to admit to feeling good and they didn’t have to pretend to feeling crappy because that’s what was expected.
The really brilliant thing that we started to notice was that it actually started to become our new reality, we did indeed feel wonderful. We started to try and out-do each other by going further and further over the top with our answers and the more we did that, the better we felt. Not only that, but it started to effect people round us positively too as they started to do the same thing.
This story came to mind today when I was reading a thread here about ‘Acting as if”. I love the ‘Act As If” model because I know that it works. It has worked for me and worked for a great many clients. Does it work for everybody? Probably not, at least not if your belief system wont allow it to work, but surely it’s worth suspending judgment and giving it a go. After all, what have you got to lose other than maybe a scowl?