Acting Your Way Into Thinking

Tim Ferris has a great philosophy I want to elaborate on with you. He says “It’s more effective to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting.”

It rests on a foundational framework I talk a lot about called the Identity Behavior Feedback Loop.

One of the most reliable ways to upgrade our belief system is by taking consistent action. It’s the evidence of your action that causes your unconscious mind to update your beliefs.

James Clear says “every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become”. And it’s through this shift in belief that we change our baseline way of thinking.

The opposite approach, thinking our way into acting differently, is a constant struggle. How easy is it to convince ourselves that we’re going to be a healthier, more focused, more discipline person, but then very quickly even our best intentions fall off fast.

That’s because there’s a lot of resistance between new ideas and following through on them. If it were that easy we’d be doing it constantly.

That’s why being self-disciplined is a foundational mindset. Cultivate that belief first and it will support you in taking the actions necessary to upgrade other beliefs.

And here’s a pro tip - The way you do that is by finding one thing that’s easy to do but you can do consistently, and every day when you successfully complete it, you reenforce the belief by saying “That’s like me, I’m self-disciplined”.

That’s exactly what I teach you to do in my subconscious audio program called Discipline On Demand, which is one of the 9 Super Habits in the 21 Day Challenge.

Expanding on what Ferris says one step and likening ‘thinking’ to ‘feeling’, the premise of “mood follows action” is also true. If you want to feel energized, happy, focused, etc - Your first step is to take action as if you were and you’ll start to genuinely feel that way.