Can You Hear Me Now

The key to success is action, and the essential in action is perseverance.

Sun Yat-sen

Despite having what some would consider a long and successful career, I never felt that I was particularly special at anything. I was a decent programmer, but I knew a lot of people who were much better than me. I was a good problem solver, but most of that had to do with the ability to see the simple within the complicated. Too many people get lost in the minutia. My popularity as a public speaker was due in large part to the fact that most people weren’t even willing to stand before a crowd of nerds and give it a go.

I don’t want to belittle myself, but so much of my success boiled down to two things.

1. I often found myself in the right place at the right time. For instance, I became a so-called SIP expert because I stumbled into the protocol early on when little was known about it. When I started my SIP Adventures blog (now Tao, Zen, and Tomorrow), I was pretty much the only game in town. That pattern of opportunistic timing was repeated all through my career.
2. I always tried to act “As if.”

Act as if is basically telling myself that I can do something even when I don’t want to or I am entirely unsure as to what is required to do that thing. It’s having enough faith in my abilities to believe that I am capable of doing a task that is well beyond what I’ve ever done before.

Here is a good example.

I started technical blogging 12 years ago when I had little idea as to what it was that I wanted to write about. Rather than doing nothing, though, I acted as if I had the necessary skills and knowledge. I just started writing down my thoughts and posting them online. Granted, my first several articles weren’t all that amazing, but I kept telling myself that I needed to do this and over time the quality got better. Within a year, I went from a couple dozen views a week, to well over a thousand a day.

Acting as if is not telling myself that I am especially gifted at anything. It’s grounded far more in humility than it is in grandiosity. I never act as if I am going to be amazing at something. I simply tell myself that I am capable of doing it. I give myself permission to struggle and reevaluate while always believing that I will eventually get to where I need to be — which isn’t necessarily the place I envisioned when I started out.

Came to Believe

Acting as if is not limited to a professional setting. There are countless opportunities in day-to-day life to use it as a way to keep moving forward. This is especially true for anyone who has ever been part of a recovery group.

The foundation of any 12-step group is finding and believing in a higher power — essentially anything that helps you in your recovery journey. The common wisdom is that you can choose any higher power you want as long as it isn’t you. Trust me, that’s harder than it sounds.

However, choosing a higher power can be especially challenging for the atheist who rejects all forms of an outside power. They (meaning me at one point in my life) get hung up on thinking that higher power means God (which it doesn’t). Rather than getting stuck, act as if can be used as a tool to move to a place of believing without any religious overtones.

This approach can be explained as follows.

If you were to have a higher power, what are the characteristics you want it to have — loving, kind, forgiving, persuasive, chatty, curious, honest, friendly, a good listener, etc.? Also, what are the characteristics you don’t want your higher power to have — angry, judgmental, self-righteous, etc.?

Now, start acting as if that is all attainable and see where it takes you. Eventually, you may want to name your higher power, but that’s not a requirement. Knowing that you are not alone in the world and that someone/something has your back is often enough.

When did you forget exactly who you are
and who you were called to be
a flower, a star
when did you put your dreams into boxes
and those boxes on shelves to grow old and dusty

When did you learn words like settle and accept
backing down and giving up
when did you learn to run backwards and retreat

When did you forget how to shine

Day by Day

I practice act as if nearly every day of my life. The need might arise because of a task I must complete, but more often than not it’s something less tactile.

I act as if I know that we can reverse climate change. I act as if I will find ways to overcome my character shortcomings. I act as if I can not come back with a snarky response when Linda asks what I believe to be an obvious question. I act as if that my efforts to stop the Republican push towards authoritarianism will be successful. I act as if I will be happy spending hours playing Candyland with my grandchildren.

I act as if, and then commit myself to making it so. Rinse and repeat.

I don’t want to say that this has always been a piece of cake. Some asks are pretty big (like stopping climate change and playing Candyland over and over again), but I don’t let that stop me. I measure my life in single steps and try not to get too hung up on where I think I am supposed to be by now. That’s a fool’s game that never takes me to a healthy place.

What do you need to act as if today?

Thank you for reading.

Luminance revealed
soft and glowing
like the rising of the autumn moon
on a warm September night
or a field of newly fallen snow
in its unspoiled, unblemished beauty
flowing in spiritual and tactile forms
yet as solid as an unbreakable promise

Here lives palpable proof of nature’s willful perfection
the artist paints the canvas
while the sculptor chips and chisels away
the world seeks to recreate the glory
of this the presently conceived