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26 Simple Ways to Nurture Your Creative Life

#1: Act As If

If you think and act, you can.

Bonus: Act As If Action Prompts

By Chris Dunmire

I’m thrilled that the alphabet begins with the letter “A” because now we can start this inspiring series off with one of the most important and useful tools I’ve seen used by motivational speakers, therapists, life coaches, creativity coaches, and successful artists of all kinds. Three simple words sum up one of the most powerful belief/behavior combinations in the world that will help make the 25 other ways to nurture your creative life fall right into place for you.

Act as if.

You’ve heard these three words before somewhere, I’m sure, and maybe even thought about giving it a try. What does “act as if” mean? Just what it says! Act as if you already are. It means trying a new role on for size, embracing a new mindset, and acting on your intention “to become” with reinforcing behaviors. You bypass the “what if’s” and go straight to the “what for’s!” And the payoff for this intentional role play comes when you realize your acting is no longer acting and you’ve rightly grown into the new role, becoming what you wanted to become.

This tool works, and I’ll illustrate how with an example from my own life. As a practicing humorist, it has always been my dream to invent jokes and illustrate a one-panel comic strip. Now while many aspiring comic artists might allow big syndicated business, fierce competition, and other talk-me-out-of-it details to scare them away from realizing their dream, I took a different approach.

First of all, I took responsibility for the manifestation of my dream and asked myself why I wanted to draw a comic. In a nutshell, it was more about allowing creative expression than anything else. And when I realized that I was not motivated by fame or fortune, it became clear that it didn’t matter if I had top-notch illustration skills, the right connections in the comic field, or could come up with funny jokes other people would laugh at. I just wanted to experience the creative process involved in drawing a comic strip born from inspiration, filtered through my humor lens, and realized through my imagination.

So how would I become this funny comic artist? By acting as if. I had the seed of desire already planted in me — all I had to do was water it and make it grow. How did I do that? First, I decided it was okay for me to try on this new comic artist role for size and play with it for awhile. Then I began thinking and acting like a comic artist; I came up with an official comic name and format and began drawing them whenever inspiration hit.

The advantage of my acting as if was that I didn’t have to impress anyone or sign any contracts. It was okay if I drew one comic a month or one every three months. And I was fine if my jokes were so corny that even my friends wouldn’t laugh at them. But hey, that’s what professional comic artists deal with all the time. Sometimes art flies and sometimes it flops. What mattered the most to me was my creative fulfillment.

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