What would Buddha or Jesus do?
What would Jack Welch do before a board meeting? How would Jerry Rice prepare for a football season? What would Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha do in a particularly challenging or stressful situation? How would Donald Trump recover from bankruptcy? (He has.) Life presents us with unpleasant, unintended difficult situations no matter who you are – a difficult job or business challenge, a tough choice, a relationship issue, an accident, or maybe even the loss of a loved one. Ever want to just crawl in a hole and avoid the whole mess? Maybe you are simply overwhelmed with loss or fear. I know I have, but we also know that climbing into that hole won’t help things, right? If we had more courage, what would we do?
Let’s say that you do find yourself saying that you can’t do something or are afraid to do something? Maybe you’ve avoided an issue only to have it fester and become worse. It happens all the time to most people. Here is a tool that I’ve had great success with. When you feel too much resistance or fear, forget yourself and become a great actor or impersonator. Be someone else!
The next step is to pick someone you truly admire real or imagine might have just the talents, courage, etc. to tackle your particular challenge. It could be a real life or even a fictional hero that you know well or someone in history or the current world you’ve never met, but have a positive image of. Say Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa, Joe Montana, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Franklin, Spider Man, Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Super Man or Super Woman, Angelina Jolie, Martin Luther King, Mohammed, whomever.
Now if you can’t do something, find and pick the person who can. Be them and imagine how they might proceed – really get into character. Finally, become the impersonator/actor and take action in the manner you think they would. It’s your stage so perform as you believe they would. For Christians, they might want to be more Christ-like. For actors, they might want to impersonate Brando or Hepburn. A basketball player might want to act like Michael Jordon. Go ahead and be a super-hero.
It matters not who you pick. The important thing is that you do what you’ve been putting off or avoiding. “Doing it” is the key phrase. Don’t worry about being perfect because the world rewards action every time over perfection. And if the action doesn’t work, you can always blame the person you picked and then substitute another. Besides many of these exemplary people handled setbacks quite well.
This tactic of acting or playing “pretend” just might get you over the hump. Have fun with this!
