Living As If

I recently attended an event to celebrate my achievements in 2015. It was amazing. My friend and one of my mentors organized the event to be a large scale "act as if" party. We all came with props and, for three hours, reveled in the bliss of our dreams now accomplished. We did interviews, signed autographs and conversed with others about what we had accomplished since 2010. It was an amazing night and a memory I will hold dear forever.

Why not spend a little of your time in the future? Believe it or not, the brain cannot tell the difference between something vividly imagined and something real, so why not create the success you want as a real experience NOW?

Here are some tips:

• Spend time with your dreams, experiencing what it would be like to succeed in these areas with all of your senses. What would you see? What would people say to you? What would you be thinking? Imagine it down to how your clothes feel against your skin, what smells would be on the air and what you would taste. Record your description and listen to it every day.

• Make some props to represent your success. If you want to be an author, make a mock book cover and tape it to a book. Get a friend who knows Photoshop (a computer program that does amazing things to photos) to put a picture of you in your dream home or dream vacation spot. Then put the prop somewhere you will see it regularly.

• Meet with some like-minded friends and "pretend" your success is already here. Ask each other questions about how you got there - you will be amazed at the answers you will have. And those answers can then be action steps to take now to get the future you dream of!

Being present is so important, but spending some play time in your future ensures you are always creating your life. Make it fun, be playful and make change an exciting event in your life, not something to dread! The more in control you are of the end result (happiness, really), the more at peace you'll be when changes occur.