I went to a speech by Simon Woodroffe of Yo Sushi fame about three years ago. Fascinating guy, and he told a great number of stories about acting ‘as if’ and the power of ‘I am’ (sorry if I’m paraphrasing/ butchering what was said but they’ve percolated away since then and I think they’re important to relate)
There’s a great one about him getting continued funding for his first restaurant because the Chairman of his main supplier made an assumption about his size because of the ‘support’ from organisations like JAL, Sony, Nippon (could be making these up here – apologies). But big Japanese firms whose logos adorned the original Yo Sushi menus. The beauty of the story being that he’d written to them and said that he’d like them to be sponsors/ supporters, that no money was required., and that if he hadn’t heard from them by x time he’d assume a yes. He didn’t hear back from them but in effect their ‘support’ enabled him to survive. The power of ‘As If’.
He referred at the end of his talk to developing a box of ‘I Ams’. Numerous ways of being and acting that could be adopted when required in different situations and to achieve different objectives.
I didn’t really make the full connection at the time about what underpinned the ‘I Ams’ and ‘As Ifs’, but since then I’ve seen more and more evidence for the huge progress to be made in achieving a goal or effecting an outcome by starting off by acting ‘As If’ or already being that ‘I Am’. The power of acting and thinking in this way provides a huge accelerant in NLP terms; especially for the core function of modelling behaviours.
I then was reminded about quotes at the back of some Beeson Gregory (now Evolution Securities) marketing literature when we were using them as brokers during the set-up of Vinopolis. One was from Aristotle Onassis:
“To be successful, keep looking tanned, live in an elegant building (even if you’re in the cellar), be seen in smart restaurants (even if you only nurse one drink) and if you borrow, borrow big”
The Power of As If
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