Acting "as if..."

I'm reading this book, "Thinking Body, Dancing Mind," by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch. It approaches mental skills from what they call the TaoSports point of view, which I think of as basically integrating concepts from the Tao into sports and other areas of life like business or school. I'm enjoying this more Eastern Philosophy approach to mental skills.



Right now I'm reading about Beliefs...
Well okay let's backtrack. In the Tao, there is the fundamental belief of the Beginner's Mind. It is open and receptive. Willing to invite many new attitudes in one's approach to life. When you are using the Beginner's Mind, you can see things in a new and refreshing way and become award of many alternative avenues that lead to extraordinary performances or options. (Huang and Lynch, 1992).

So, Beliefs. It's sad to think that as athletes and as people in general, we can come from a place of belief that is anything less than "I can."
The Beginner's Mind gives you freedom to act as if you can accomplish something..anything: Like....becoming a doctor...
Or...the most successful female action star in the world like Angelina Jolie.


Or even...

A superhero!

All these things are possible if you act "as if" they are. Simple huh? I know that I act as if I'm an Incredible each and every day and I'm *almost* there, all due to acting "as if" and having a Beginner's Mind! Okay. So not quite, but I enjoyed the picture show thus far...

So about Beliefs, Acting as if and sports.
In all seriousness I'm trying to act "as if" more when it comes to my running. What does that mean exactly? Well for me, it means working to choose a model of what I want to act "as if" I'm like when I'm running. I know I scoffed above that I was easily achieving this above, but it's actually not that easy. Huang and Lynch have this exercise in which you act "as if" you are someone you want to be like, OR an animal you want to emulate..like a symbol you are working towards, and you visualize yourself with those animal-like qualities when you perform. I just sat here for 20 minutes trying to think of what animal I wanted to visualize during my runs, and I came up with the following, along with the following NON-Beginner's Mind thoughts...

Gazelle (Gazelles are cool, and pretty, but they are prey animals...do I want to be prey? No I want to be the badass leading the pack, duh.)


Cheetahs (Trite. How many runners don't wanna be a cheetah on some level? Be honest, you know you've thought of it.)


a pronghorn (again a prey animal, but North America's fastest land animal isn't bad....)

courtesy of hoothollow.com

Mountain lion (not known for endurance especially, but composure under pressure, definitely. Smart hunter...)

My conclusion: I didn't pick one...wah wah.

The next step after even selecting your symbol to act "as if," is to visualize that symbol during visualizations (which the authors recommend practicing at least a few times a week, practice makes perfect), I'm not sure I'm past getting to a Beginner's Mind.

So here are two questions...

1) Have you ever done anything like this?

2) Is this something you would think about to enhance your belief in yourself?

3) What symbol would you use to "act as if?" It could be a word, ("act as if you are a champion"), an animal, someone you look up to.