What if I told you that the only thing standing between you and everything you want isn’t time, it isn’t circumstances or skills, and it definitely isn’t luck? It’s who you are being.

Going from a millionaire’s maid back in my early 20s to making my own millions, I learned that if you want something different, you have to show up differently. And the fastest way to do that is to act as if you already are the you who has whatever it is you want.

Surprisingly, it’s a lot easier than most of us think because we are, after all, human beings. We are not human doings. Being comes naturally to us. But the idea of choosing who we be, of acting in a different way, not so much.

And that’s what I want to talk about in today’s episode—how to act as if, and why it’s one of the most powerful tools you can have in your Self-Creation toolkit.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

A very warm hello and welcome to this week’s episode of The Self-Creation School podcast.

I am feeling pumped because this topic is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a concept that has allowed me to completely reinvent myself and my world countless times over the course of my lifetime, in ways that shouldn’t have been possible according to the rules that so many of us are conditioned to live by. Or perhaps better put, limit ourselves by.

25 years ago, when I met my now husband, I was an almost bankrupt single mum cleaning the homes of millionaires to make ends meet. My husband, being 23 years older than me, he was a man of the world. He’d already lived my whole lifetime again and had created a very successful life for himself.

We were worlds apart in almost every aspect of our being—age, wealth, lived experience, mindset, our beliefs about just what is possible, our upbringing. You name it, we were chalk and cheese.

And thinking back to those days, it really was a surreal time in my life. Because by day, I was cleaning the homes of millionaires, and by night, their homes literally became my playground. A playground that I struggled to believe I belonged in.

I certainly had that belief reinforced to me by almost everyone I encountered in that world. I did not belong there, and I was labeled some pretty nasty things because my relationship with my husband back then was definitely far from the norm.

During those early days, I was like a sponge. My husband exposed me to ideas, new ways of thinking, new possibilities for my life. And I could see firsthand that these were the same concepts that helped everyone else in the room be in the room. But there was one concept my husband shared with me that really changed everything for me.

Now, let me set the scene briefly. My husband grew up in Croatia. He migrated to Australia as an eight-year-old with his family with nothing more than a small suitcase in hand. To give you an idea of his childhood, his first exposure to a man-made toy, as in something that hadn’t been made out of nothing by himself, was on the ship that he sailed to Australia on. His family did not have a lot.

They arrived in Australia, at a time when Australians were not so accepting of migrants, or non-English speaking migrants in any case. And they were given a pretty hard time for being different. But my husband was determined not to be a victim of his circumstances, and whether he knew it back then or not, he embraced his power to choose his story. To choose whether or not he belonged in his new life in Australia. And to choose what he believed was possible.

And he’s lived his life like that ever since, standing in his power to choose his story. And those were the words that changed my world. You have the power to choose your story. I could choose to continue to be a broke single mum cleaning the homes of millionaires. I could choose to belong in that story. Or I could choose a different story to belong in. Both stories were available to me. Ultimately, it was a choice and the choice was mine.

And it finally dawned on me that no one could decide whether or not I belonged in the rooms of millionaires except for me. But if I wanted to belong, I needed to start acting as if I did.

When I started acting as if my whole world, my entire reality, started to shift. The more I leaned into choosing to belong in the life I could now see was possible, even though I couldn’t see how, the more that life started choosing me. And so I learned the very valuable lesson that having the life you want starts by being the you who is already living that life. It’s acting as if you are already that you.

Now, this is where so many people come unstuck. The question is almost always the same. But how can I act as if I have millions when I have debt collectors at my door? How can I act as if I’m living a life I love when I’m stuck in a job, a relationship, a house, a life that I hate? How can I act as a woman who travels the world when I’ve never left my home country?

They’re valid questions. And let me answer them by sharing what acting as if really means because it’s not about faking it until you make it. It’s not about pretending. And it’s not about lying to yourself or turning a blind eye to your current reality and just slapping on a fake smile of confidence while you secretly feel like a fraud on the inside.

Acting as if is about training yourself to be the version of you who already has what you want, so that your actions, decisions and results start to reflect that.

Think about it like this, if you wanted to have a strong, toned and fit body, you wouldn’t wake up one day and suddenly you have it. And you wouldn’t just wait around hoping that one day you’d feel motivated enough to get into shape. You’d start training. You’d go to the gym, you’d lift weights, you’d stretch and do yoga. Not because you’re fit already, but because that’s what fit people do.

But here’s the key. They do it because it’s simply a natural extension of who they choose to be. People who are fit identify as someone who values health, strength and movement in their life. Their actions reflect that identity, not the other way around.

And that’s what acting as if is really all about. It’s not about faking it. It’s about practicing being your future self before the results show up.

Acting as if I had millions, when my reality was dealing with debt collectors on a daily basis, meant learning how someone who did have money would deal with this kind of situation. It meant learning how to manage the little money I did have differently. It meant being responsible for my outcomes and learning to think like someone who accumulates wealth rather than continuing to be someone who spends every last cent. It meant coming to the negotiating table with my debt collectors, just like a wealthy person would negotiate a deal that involved spending their hard-earned money.

I had to shift from believing I was someone who couldn’t manage her money, to someone who understood that millions are made up of ones. How you treat your ones determines your millions. And I went from being a woman who was in a financial mess, seeing no way out, turning a blind eye to anything to do with money because it was just too hard, to being a financially responsible woman who treated every dollar like it was a million. And eventually, the millions followed.

Acting as if and letting your reality catch up is the fastest way I know to changing your world. Changing who you be. Stepping into a new role, a new version of you. A version of you who, by the way, already exists in your future. She’s not fake. She is you and she is already within you. Acting as if you are her right now is simply about stepping into her shoes and learning how to walk in them until you strut about in them like they are your second skin.

I wasn’t a financially savvy woman, and my reality reflected that. but the ability to learn how to be one existed within me, just like the ability to be your future self exists within you.

Now I can assure you, sitting down to plan my finances as a financially savvy woman when I literally had nothing but zeros to write on the paper felt pretty awkward at first. It would have been easy to give in to stories like, who are you kidding right now? You are not a financially savvy woman. You’re not even financial. But let me ask you, when does being financially savvy start? Does it start when you have millions? Or do you have millions because you start being savvy?

So listen, probably this is going to feel pretty weird at first, especially if you’re telling yourself a story that you’re a fake or a fraud for acting as if you are this future you who has the life she wants. Or that you are an imposter, and you don’t belong in that identity or that reality.

For as long as I told myself a story about me not belonging in the rooms of millionaires, I created that reality for myself. I experienced people telling me I was a fraud or a gold digger. I didn’t belong. But my presence stopped being questioned, at least to my face, the minute I decided to own being the me who absolutely belonged in that room.

Here’s something to think about.

Everything is created twice. First in our mind and second in our reality. You cannot create in your reality what you cannot first conceive in your mind.

If you can conceive a new way of being in your mind, if you can see a new possibility for who you can be and how you can show up in your world, when you start acting as this version of you, you are simply creating in reality something or someone who already exists. She exists because you have conceived her in your mind.

You wouldn’t think twice about bringing an idea that you’ve conceived for a work project to life, right? You wouldn’t think, oh, but because this idea doesn’t yet exist, me breathing life into it is somehow wrong. No. You conceive an idea, and you might have never done anything like it before, but you go about making your idea a reality.

And if it’s something you’ve never done before it’s going to feel outside of your comfort zone, because it is. But that’s the whole point of creating something new. To step outside of what you know. Things can’t be both the same and different, it just doesn’t work like that. And everything that gets created in reality, from those work projects to the food you cook, to you getting up to go and grab that glass of water, it all starts firstly in your mind with a thought or a vision.

Acting as if and stepping into a new way of being is you bringing a new way of thinking and a new vision for yourself to life. Just like any other thought or vision you have right now.

And you, are whether you realize it or not, already doing this. You are already thinking certain ways about yourself and your life and those thoughts are shaping your reality as we speak. You do hold a certain vision for your life and what’s possible in your world. That vision is also shaping your reality as we speak.

If you think, I can’t wear that dress. Guess what? You won’t buy the dress, or if you do, you won’t ever dare to put it on. And so, the reality of you not being able to wear that dress, is all yours.

If you have a limited vision for your life, a closed vision based on what you’ve achieved in the past, what’s been possible in your life so far, you will continue to create that vision.

If you, deep down, want to start your own business, but the vision you hold in your mind is of you not being able to leave your corporate career because it offers financial stability, what action do you think you’ll take? You’ll stay in that corporate career and so the vision of what you believe is possible becomes your reality.

The power of your mind is so often underestimated. And the thing is, there are no rules that say you must keep thinking the same thoughts, believing the same things, or holding the same vision for your life forever. What’s always been the way doesn’t have to always be the way.

And what I know for sure is this. If you want to start living your life intentionally, where you do live into your most fully expressed self imaginable, where you do live into your highest potential—which I believe is our honest duty to do in exchange for the gift of being on this earth—you must intentionally choose your thoughts and the vision you hold for yourself and your life.

You must intentionally choose the story of who you be and how you show up in your world, decide that you belong in that story, and then go about acting in that role of the future you until it feels like you’re in your own skin.

The fastest way to shift your reality is to shift who you are first and then let your life catch up. I promise, it will every single time. Remember, we are human beings, not human doings.

A few years ago, before I left Australia, I took a couple of incredible ladies through a program I offered way back then, called Planher On Purpose. And we did that in a three-day retreat style workshop. As part of the work we did in that retreat, there was one particular exercise that took the concept of acting as if to a whole other level.

We’d spent part of the day creating a vision for our perfect day, the ideal every day we wanted to live. Then that night, we went to a Future Self Dinner, where each of us showed up acting as our future self that we had described in our Perfect Day exercise. We dressed as her, we spoke as her, we acted as if we were already living the life we wrote down on paper.

And here’s what happened. The energy shift was instant. The conversation was no longer about one day. It was grounded and real and alive today in that moment. We weren’t pretending. We were bringing our future self into the now. And in that moment, each of us in that dining room experienced something that changed us.

We realized that our future self wasn’t all that far away. She wasn’t waiting for us in some distant reality. She was already inside of us. We knew how to be her. We just needed to be ready to let her out of the shadows and live into her.

The you that you want to be, the you that you need to be, to have the life you want, she is already within you waiting for her chance to shine. What if you gave her the stage? What if you let her voice be heard? What if you decided today is her time, not someday when? What if you got together with her and started showing up in your world as a team? A team where she leads and you borrow her qualities, her way of thinking, her way of being until you become the lead.

And the exciting thing about all of this is that when you experience being the future you in even just a small way, cannot un-experience that.

If you’ve never before done yoga and you go into a yoga class, you can no longer say that you are a woman who has never done yoga. You can’t go back and be that version of you again. You are now a woman who has done yoga.

The same goes for every little and big thing you try on for size when you act as if you are the future you. Once you experience it, it’s now a part who you are right now.

And that’s why acting as if is just so very, very powerful.

After that Future Self Dinner, I became the future self I showed up as just three months later. I became the woman who moved to the other side of the world. And over the next year, I became the coach who impacts women right across the world with the work that I do.

It didn’t just happen for me either. It happened for the other ladies who sat at that table too.

Now, was there some work to do to make these things happen? Yes. Were there limiting stories and beliefs to shift? Yes. Were there mindset shifts that needed to happen? Yes. We did a lot of that actually inside the three-day retreat, which is the powerful thing about committing yourself and going all in on this kind of work.

But listen, when you think about what the future you had to do to become who she is, she likely had to shift some stories, right? She likely had to think new thoughts and believe new beliefs about herself and her world. So this is part of acting as if. It’s showing up and doing the necessary work.

To become financially savvy, I had a whole lot of work to do. I had stories, I had limiting beliefs that had to change. I had skills to learn. And I had to show up every day treating every dollar, thinking about every dollar like the future me would think.

It was the same process to become a woman who travels the world, to become a woman who moved across the world. I had to think differently, act differently, shift my limiting stories about what is possible in my lifetime. I had to learn how to be that kind of woman.

And the process of learning is acting as if. It’s understanding that the future you didn’t just happen overnight, she learned how to be that version of you. You acting as if is putting her learning into motion.

If you know your future self is confident, but right now you are riddled with self-doubt, then you know your future self had to work through her self-doubt. She had to overcome it and build her confidence. So, what did she do to do that? Figure that out and start doing it.

Listen, it’s not magically going to show up. You don’t just wake up one day and you’ve gone from being stuck in self-doubt to radiating confidence.

It’s like getting that fit, toned and flexible body. It begins today by showing up to do that workout and repeating it day after day until your transformation is complete. And deciding to show up and do that workout is deciding to act as if you are a woman who is fit and healthy today, and then doing whatever it is she would do.

One of the simplest questions you can ask yourself is, how would the future me do the thing I’m about to do? If you’re heading for the couch for some meaningless scrolling on your socials, how would the future you do that?

Maybe she would set a timer for five or ten minutes to check in on things, and then she’d get up off that couch and go and do something different. Or she’d pick up a book that would help her move towards the life she wants. Or turn off her phone and start relaxing in her evening wind down routine, so that she gets a restful night’s sleep.

How would the future you do the thing you’re about to do? Then act as if you are her and do the thing, whatever it is, how she would do it.

Let me take you back to that simple act of having dinner.

Imagine showing up every night at your own dinner table as the future you. How would you set the table differently? How would you set the mood? Would you have soft lights and candles? Would there be dinner music playing gently in the background? Would you lay out the table with your best China?

What would you cook? How would you present it? How would you dress? What conversations would you have? How would you eat? Would you eat slowly and deliberately, setting your fork and knife down between bites? What would you drink with your meal? What glassware would you drink from? How would you carry your posture?

I come back to this example because most of us have the dinner set, the glassware we reserved for special occasions, hidden away in our cupboards. We have beautiful tablecloths and napkins and candles that we bring out maybe a few times a year.

Imagine if the future you set a beautiful table every night. Imagine if the future you made the simplicity of everyday eating an experience to be treasured. That future you is hiding in your cupboards right now just waiting to be allowed out, waiting for the chance to shine.

When my marriage was at the point of divorce, I changed our intimacy and our connection literally overnight by setting the scene for intimacy and connection at the dinner table where we came together at the end of every day.

I had everything I needed to show up in my marriage in the way I saw my future self showing up. In a way that spoke volumes about how I wanted to spend time with my husband, how I valued our time together and how I valued him. I had that version of me sitting in my cupboards gathering dust while my marriage gathered dust right alongside it.

It was such an easy thing to do, and it was just as easy not to do it. But when I did, our marriage changed overnight. When I took how I wanted our marriage to be out of my mind and went about acting as if it already was, our reality started changing with it.

Now, of course, I didn’t know if my husband would come along for the ride. But what I did know is, I can control who I be, and how I show up. And the future me I saw in a happy, loving marriage, she took great care to create an environment for intimacy and connection.

Little changes in how you show up in your world, who you decide to be in all of those little moments, they can have a huge impact in your life and on the reality you get to experience. And my friend, it all begins with a decision. A decision to choose the story of who you be, decide that you belong in that story, and then go about learning the role.

Every story you can imagine is available to you. Every version of you living out that story exists within you. The future you, the one who has the confidence, the money, the love, the success, the freedom, the fulfillment, she isn’t separate from you. She’s already within you waiting for you to let her take the lead.

And the fastest way to become her is to start acting as if you already are. Not by pretending. Not by faking it. But by bringing how you move through your day, how you make decisions, how you treat yourself and your world in the future, into the now.

Remember everything is created twice, first in your mind, and then in your reality. Your reality is always playing catch up to who it is you say YES! to being in your mind. The question is, are you choosing to keep playing the same role? Or are you stepping into the role of the future you who is already living her next level life?

Here’s my challenge to you today.

Start making small choices from the identity of your future self. If she sits up straighter, do that. If she walks into a room with confidence, practice doing that. If she eats her dinner at a beautifully set table, set that table tonight.

And if you’re ready to step into her fully, if you’re ready to do the work on shifting your limiting beliefs and changing your mindset, if you’re ready to stop waiting and fast-track becoming the you who lives the life you wildly love, I’m here to help you say YES! to doing exactly that.

So if your future self values her time and is willing to invest into having the support of a coach like me help her step into her future self and her next level life sooner rather than later, reach out to me and let’s have a conversation about how we can work together to make that happen.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing it with you. And I’ll be back next Wednesday, same time, same place, to share more of my Self-Creation Secrets for creating a life you wildly love.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

What if I told you that the only thing standing between you and everything you want isn’t time, it isn’t circumstances or skills, and it definitely isn’t luck? It’s who you are being.

Going from a millionaire’s maid back in my early 20s to making my own millions, I learned that if you want something different, you have to show up differently. And the fastest way to do that is to act as if you already are the you who has whatever it is you want.

Surprisingly, it’s a lot easier than most of us think because we are, after all, human beings. We are not human doings. Being comes naturally to us. But the idea of choosing who we be, of acting in a different way, not so much.

And that’s what I want to talk about in today’s episode—how to act as if, and why it’s one of the most powerful tools you can have in your Self-Creation toolkit.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

A very warm hello and welcome to this week’s episode of The Self-Creation School podcast.

I am feeling pumped because this topic is one of my absolute favorites. It’s a concept that has allowed me to completely reinvent myself and my world countless times over the course of my lifetime, in ways that shouldn’t have been possible according to the rules that so many of us are conditioned to live by. Or perhaps better put, limit ourselves by.

25 years ago, when I met my now husband, I was an almost bankrupt single mum cleaning the homes of millionaires to make ends meet. My husband, being 23 years older than me, he was a man of the world. He’d already lived my whole lifetime again and had created a very successful life for himself.

We were worlds apart in almost every aspect of our being—age, wealth, lived experience, mindset, our beliefs about just what is possible, our upbringing. You name it, we were chalk and cheese.

And thinking back to those days, it really was a surreal time in my life. Because by day, I was cleaning the homes of millionaires, and by night, their homes literally became my playground. A playground that I struggled to believe I belonged in.

I certainly had that belief reinforced to me by almost everyone I encountered in that world. I did not belong there, and I was labeled some pretty nasty things because my relationship with my husband back then was definitely far from the norm.

During those early days, I was like a sponge. My husband exposed me to ideas, new ways of thinking, new possibilities for my life. And I could see firsthand that these were the same concepts that helped everyone else in the room be in the room. But there was one concept my husband shared with me that really changed everything for me.

Now, let me set the scene briefly. My husband grew up in Croatia. He migrated to Australia as an eight-year-old with his family with nothing more than a small suitcase in hand. To give you an idea of his childhood, his first exposure to a man-made toy, as in something that hadn’t been made out of nothing by himself, was on the ship that he sailed to Australia on. His family did not have a lot.

They arrived in Australia, at a time when Australians were not so accepting of migrants, or non-English speaking migrants in any case. And they were given a pretty hard time for being different. But my husband was determined not to be a victim of his circumstances, and whether he knew it back then or not, he embraced his power to choose his story. To choose whether or not he belonged in his new life in Australia. And to choose what he believed was possible.

And he’s lived his life like that ever since, standing in his power to choose his story. And those were the words that changed my world. You have the power to choose your story. I could choose to continue to be a broke single mum cleaning the homes of millionaires. I could choose to belong in that story. Or I could choose a different story to belong in. Both stories were available to me. Ultimately, it was a choice and the choice was mine.

And it finally dawned on me that no one could decide whether or not I belonged in the rooms of millionaires except for me. But if I wanted to belong, I needed to start acting as if I did.

When I started acting as if my whole world, my entire reality, started to shift. The more I leaned into choosing to belong in the life I could now see was possible, even though I couldn’t see how, the more that life started choosing me. And so I learned the very valuable lesson that having the life you want starts by being the you who is already living that life. It’s acting as if you are already that you.

Now, this is where so many people come unstuck. The question is almost always the same. But how can I act as if I have millions when I have debt collectors at my door? How can I act as if I’m living a life I love when I’m stuck in a job, a relationship, a house, a life that I hate? How can I act as a woman who travels the world when I’ve never left my home country?

They’re valid questions. And let me answer them by sharing what acting as if really means because it’s not about faking it until you make it. It’s not about pretending. And it’s not about lying to yourself or turning a blind eye to your current reality and just slapping on a fake smile of confidence while you secretly feel like a fraud on the inside.

Acting as if is about training yourself to be the version of you who already has what you want, so that your actions, decisions and results start to reflect that.

Think about it like this, if you wanted to have a strong, toned and fit body, you wouldn’t wake up one day and suddenly you have it. And you wouldn’t just wait around hoping that one day you’d feel motivated enough to get into shape. You’d start training. You’d go to the gym, you’d lift weights, you’d stretch and do yoga. Not because you’re fit already, but because that’s what fit people do.

But here’s the key. They do it because it’s simply a natural extension of who they choose to be. People who are fit identify as someone who values health, strength and movement in their life. Their actions reflect that identity, not the other way around.

And that’s what acting as if is really all about. It’s not about faking it. It’s about practicing being your future self before the results show up.

Acting as if I had millions, when my reality was dealing with debt collectors on a daily basis, meant learning how someone who did have money would deal with this kind of situation. It meant learning how to manage the little money I did have differently. It meant being responsible for my outcomes and learning to think like someone who accumulates wealth rather than continuing to be someone who spends every last cent. It meant coming to the negotiating table with my debt collectors, just like a wealthy person would negotiate a deal that involved spending their hard-earned money.

I had to shift from believing I was someone who couldn’t manage her money, to someone who understood that millions are made up of ones. How you treat your ones determines your millions. And I went from being a woman who was in a financial mess, seeing no way out, turning a blind eye to anything to do with money because it was just too hard, to being a financially responsible woman who treated every dollar like it was a million. And eventually, the millions followed.

Acting as if and letting your reality catch up is the fastest way I know to changing your world. Changing who you be. Stepping into a new role, a new version of you. A version of you who, by the way, already exists in your future. She’s not fake. She is you and she is already within you. Acting as if you are her right now is simply about stepping into her shoes and learning how to walk in them until you strut about in them like they are your second skin.

I wasn’t a financially savvy woman, and my reality reflected that. but the ability to learn how to be one existed within me, just like the ability to be your future self exists within you.

Now I can assure you, sitting down to plan my finances as a financially savvy woman when I literally had nothing but zeros to write on the paper felt pretty awkward at first. It would have been easy to give in to stories like, who are you kidding right now? You are not a financially savvy woman. You’re not even financial. But let me ask you, when does being financially savvy start? Does it start when you have millions? Or do you have millions because you start being savvy?

So listen, probably this is going to feel pretty weird at first, especially if you’re telling yourself a story that you’re a fake or a fraud for acting as if you are this future you who has the life she wants. Or that you are an imposter, and you don’t belong in that identity or that reality.

For as long as I told myself a story about me not belonging in the rooms of millionaires, I created that reality for myself. I experienced people telling me I was a fraud or a gold digger. I didn’t belong. But my presence stopped being questioned, at least to my face, the minute I decided to own being the me who absolutely belonged in that room.

Here’s something to think about.

Everything is created twice. First in our mind and second in our reality. You cannot create in your reality what you cannot first conceive in your mind.

If you can conceive a new way of being in your mind, if you can see a new possibility for who you can be and how you can show up in your world, when you start acting as this version of you, you are simply creating in reality something or someone who already exists. She exists because you have conceived her in your mind.

You wouldn’t think twice about bringing an idea that you’ve conceived for a work project to life, right? You wouldn’t think, oh, but because this idea doesn’t yet exist, me breathing life into it is somehow wrong. No. You conceive an idea, and you might have never done anything like it before, but you go about making your idea a reality.

And if it’s something you’ve never done before it’s going to feel outside of your comfort zone, because it is. But that’s the whole point of creating something new. To step outside of what you know. Things can’t be both the same and different, it just doesn’t work like that. And everything that gets created in reality, from those work projects to the food you cook, to you getting up to go and grab that glass of water, it all starts firstly in your mind with a thought or a vision.

Acting as if and stepping into a new way of being is you bringing a new way of thinking and a new vision for yourself to life. Just like any other thought or vision you have right now.

And you, are whether you realize it or not, already doing this. You are already thinking certain ways about yourself and your life and those thoughts are shaping your reality as we speak. You do hold a certain vision for your life and what’s possible in your world. That vision is also shaping your reality as we speak.

If you think, I can’t wear that dress. Guess what? You won’t buy the dress, or if you do, you won’t ever dare to put it on. And so, the reality of you not being able to wear that dress, is all yours.

If you have a limited vision for your life, a closed vision based on what you’ve achieved in the past, what’s been possible in your life so far, you will continue to create that vision.

If you, deep down, want to start your own business, but the vision you hold in your mind is of you not being able to leave your corporate career because it offers financial stability, what action do you think you’ll take? You’ll stay in that corporate career and so the vision of what you believe is possible becomes your reality.

The power of your mind is so often underestimated. And the thing is, there are no rules that say you must keep thinking the same thoughts, believing the same things, or holding the same vision for your life forever. What’s always been the way doesn’t have to always be the way.

And what I know for sure is this. If you want to start living your life intentionally, where you do live into your most fully expressed self imaginable, where you do live into your highest potential—which I believe is our honest duty to do in exchange for the gift of being on this earth—you must intentionally choose your thoughts and the vision you hold for yourself and your life.

You must intentionally choose the story of who you be and how you show up in your world, decide that you belong in that story, and then go about acting in that role of the future you until it feels like you’re in your own skin.

The fastest way to shift your reality is to shift who you are first and then let your life catch up. I promise, it will every single time. Remember, we are human beings, not human doings.

A few years ago, before I left Australia, I took a couple of incredible ladies through a program I offered way back then, called Planher On Purpose. And we did that in a three-day retreat style workshop. As part of the work we did in that retreat, there was one particular exercise that took the concept of acting as if to a whole other level.

We’d spent part of the day creating a vision for our perfect day, the ideal every day we wanted to live. Then that night, we went to a Future Self Dinner, where each of us showed up acting as our future self that we had described in our Perfect Day exercise. We dressed as her, we spoke as her, we acted as if we were already living the life we wrote down on paper.

And here’s what happened. The energy shift was instant. The conversation was no longer about one day. It was grounded and real and alive today in that moment. We weren’t pretending. We were bringing our future self into the now. And in that moment, each of us in that dining room experienced something that changed us.

We realized that our future self wasn’t all that far away. She wasn’t waiting for us in some distant reality. She was already inside of us. We knew how to be her. We just needed to be ready to let her out of the shadows and live into her.

The you that you want to be, the you that you need to be, to have the life you want, she is already within you waiting for her chance to shine. What if you gave her the stage? What if you let her voice be heard? What if you decided today is her time, not someday when? What if you got together with her and started showing up in your world as a team? A team where she leads and you borrow her qualities, her way of thinking, her way of being until you become the lead.

And the exciting thing about all of this is that when you experience being the future you in even just a small way, cannot un-experience that.

If you’ve never before done yoga and you go into a yoga class, you can no longer say that you are a woman who has never done yoga. You can’t go back and be that version of you again. You are now a woman who has done yoga.

The same goes for every little and big thing you try on for size when you act as if you are the future you. Once you experience it, it’s now a part who you are right now.

And that’s why acting as if is just so very, very powerful.

After that Future Self Dinner, I became the future self I showed up as just three months later. I became the woman who moved to the other side of the world. And over the next year, I became the coach who impacts women right across the world with the work that I do.

It didn’t just happen for me either. It happened for the other ladies who sat at that table too.

Now, was there some work to do to make these things happen? Yes. Were there limiting stories and beliefs to shift? Yes. Were there mindset shifts that needed to happen? Yes. We did a lot of that actually inside the three-day retreat, which is the powerful thing about committing yourself and going all in on this kind of work.

But listen, when you think about what the future you had to do to become who she is, she likely had to shift some stories, right? She likely had to think new thoughts and believe new beliefs about herself and her world. So this is part of acting as if. It’s showing up and doing the necessary work.

To become financially savvy, I had a whole lot of work to do. I had stories, I had limiting beliefs that had to change. I had skills to learn. And I had to show up every day treating every dollar, thinking about every dollar like the future me would think.

It was the same process to become a woman who travels the world, to become a woman who moved across the world. I had to think differently, act differently, shift my limiting stories about what is possible in my lifetime. I had to learn how to be that kind of woman.

And the process of learning is acting as if. It’s understanding that the future you didn’t just happen overnight, she learned how to be that version of you. You acting as if is putting her learning into motion.

If you know your future self is confident, but right now you are riddled with self-doubt, then you know your future self had to work through her self-doubt. She had to overcome it and build her confidence. So, what did she do to do that? Figure that out and start doing it.

Listen, it’s not magically going to show up. You don’t just wake up one day and you’ve gone from being stuck in self-doubt to radiating confidence.

It’s like getting that fit, toned and flexible body. It begins today by showing up to do that workout and repeating it day after day until your transformation is complete. And deciding to show up and do that workout is deciding to act as if you are a woman who is fit and healthy today, and then doing whatever it is she would do.

One of the simplest questions you can ask yourself is, how would the future me do the thing I’m about to do? If you’re heading for the couch for some meaningless scrolling on your socials, how would the future you do that?

Maybe she would set a timer for five or ten minutes to check in on things, and then she’d get up off that couch and go and do something different. Or she’d pick up a book that would help her move towards the life she wants. Or turn off her phone and start relaxing in her evening wind down routine, so that she gets a restful night’s sleep.

How would the future you do the thing you’re about to do? Then act as if you are her and do the thing, whatever it is, how she would do it.

Let me take you back to that simple act of having dinner.

Imagine showing up every night at your own dinner table as the future you. How would you set the table differently? How would you set the mood? Would you have soft lights and candles? Would there be dinner music playing gently in the background? Would you lay out the table with your best China?

What would you cook? How would you present it? How would you dress? What conversations would you have? How would you eat? Would you eat slowly and deliberately, setting your fork and knife down between bites? What would you drink with your meal? What glassware would you drink from? How would you carry your posture?

I come back to this example because most of us have the dinner set, the glassware we reserved for special occasions, hidden away in our cupboards. We have beautiful tablecloths and napkins and candles that we bring out maybe a few times a year.

Imagine if the future you set a beautiful table every night. Imagine if the future you made the simplicity of everyday eating an experience to be treasured. That future you is hiding in your cupboards right now just waiting to be allowed out, waiting for the chance to shine.

When my marriage was at the point of divorce, I changed our intimacy and our connection literally overnight by setting the scene for intimacy and connection at the dinner table where we came together at the end of every day.

I had everything I needed to show up in my marriage in the way I saw my future self showing up. In a way that spoke volumes about how I wanted to spend time with my husband, how I valued our time together and how I valued him. I had that version of me sitting in my cupboards gathering dust while my marriage gathered dust right alongside it.

It was such an easy thing to do, and it was just as easy not to do it. But when I did, our marriage changed overnight. When I took how I wanted our marriage to be out of my mind and went about acting as if it already was, our reality started changing with it.

Now, of course, I didn’t know if my husband would come along for the ride. But what I did know is, I can control who I be, and how I show up. And the future me I saw in a happy, loving marriage, she took great care to create an environment for intimacy and connection.

Little changes in how you show up in your world, who you decide to be in all of those little moments, they can have a huge impact in your life and on the reality you get to experience. And my friend, it all begins with a decision. A decision to choose the story of who you be, decide that you belong in that story, and then go about learning the role.

Every story you can imagine is available to you. Every version of you living out that story exists within you. The future you, the one who has the confidence, the money, the love, the success, the freedom, the fulfillment, she isn’t separate from you. She’s already within you waiting for you to let her take the lead.

And the fastest way to become her is to start acting as if you already are. Not by pretending. Not by faking it. But by bringing how you move through your day, how you make decisions, how you treat yourself and your world in the future, into the now.

Remember everything is created twice, first in your mind, and then in your reality. Your reality is always playing catch up to who it is you say YES! to being in your mind. The question is, are you choosing to keep playing the same role? Or are you stepping into the role of the future you who is already living her next level life?

Here’s my challenge to you today.

Start making small choices from the identity of your future self. If she sits up straighter, do that. If she walks into a room with confidence, practice doing that. If she eats her dinner at a beautifully set table, set that table tonight.

And if you’re ready to step into her fully, if you’re ready to do the work on shifting your limiting beliefs and changing your mindset, if you’re ready to stop waiting and fast-track becoming the you who lives the life you wildly love, I’m here to help you say YES! to doing exactly that.

So if your future self values her time and is willing to invest into having the support of a coach like me help her step into her future self and her next level life sooner rather than later, reach out to me and let’s have a conversation about how we can work together to make that happen.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing it with you. And I’ll be back next Wednesday, same time, same place, to share more of my Self-Creation Secrets for creating a life you wildly love.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.