Welcome back to Thank God It’s Monday!
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​tl;dr Instead of faking it until you make it, leverage your selective attention to find the opportunities that will help you create your dream life.
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​Fake it ‘til you make it
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​We’ve heard the adage fake it until you make it when we’re learning a new skill or trying to adopt a new personality trait.
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Want to get better at sales? Fake it ‘til you make it.
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Want to climb the corporate ladder? Fake it ‘til you make it.
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Want to be a regular gym goer? Fake it ‘til you make it.
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But inherently, the problem with this strategy is that when we’re faking it, we’re lying to ourselves. When we motivate ourselves with this unbased rah-rah, we fall flat when we don’t get traction.

“I’m the best salesman in this company!” you tell yourself in the mirror while you get ready in the morning. But then, on your way to work, you hit morning rush hour, you forget your lunch, and by the time you get there, you’re already aggravated and falling back into your poor self-talk and old habits. “I’m the best salesman?” Energy extinguished like a measly candle flame.
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​One Car, Two Car, Red Car, Blue Car
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​What kind of car do you drive? Would you consider it a pretty standard, maybe even popular, car? When you first bought it, did you notice it everywhere, like the universe was playing some cosmic magic trick, making them appear out of nowhere?
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This is no coincidence. It’s actually called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. It’s a cognitive bias that makes new words, objects, or ideas appear everywhere right after we first learn it (or buy it). The real number of instances does not change, but our brain pays more attention to it.
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Are there really more white jeeps on the road? No, but I see them everywhere since I bought one.
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We can leverage this same mental magic trick to build our ideal lives.
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​✨Manifesting✨
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​Instead of focusing our attention on cars, we can choose to focus on where we want to go. Perhaps that is a dream job, an ideal partner, or a personal characteristic we want to strengthen. When we set our focus on it at the beginning of the day (through journaling, intentions, gratitude, etc), our brains will look for evidence throughout the day to support it.
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Then, when we see the supporting evidence, it deepens our belief, and we see an increased frequency of instances when it is true. This creates a positive feedback cycle. Instead of noticing the same car everywhere, we see reasons why we really can be the best salesman in the company!

Hacking the System
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​Consider, instead of a brain sitting in our noggins controlling our thoughts and emotions, we were a horseback rider. Our thoughts (logic) would be represented by the rider. We try to direct the horse where we want to go with the reins. However, in this scenario, the horse is the emotion. Even though the rider might want to go in one direction, that horse is going to do what it wants at the end of the day, and that may be staying the course as directed by the rider, or wreaking havoc and galloping away. Our emotions can run the show if we don’t know how to direct them.
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This is what happens in the fake it ‘til you make it scenario. You’re staying the course until something bad happens. Then you get angry, frustrated, or discouraged, and your emotions take over. You fall back to your old ways.
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We can hack our systems to help stay the course.
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Creating an environment and habits that align with our ideal goals can keep nudging us in the right direction. Almost as if we were setting up decoy cars of the same model in the streets so that we can notice them more.
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If our goal is to be the best salesman, we can build an environment to make it more likely for us to succeed. For example, keeping a sales book on hand to read in our downtime or sales podcasts in a queue helps our minds stay thinking about relevant ideas and learning new strategies. We can also create a list of names to contact, so it’s easy to always have a working list to decrease the resistance to doing the task at hand. In addition, we can surround ourselves with other great salespeople so we can brainstorm, learn, and teach the ideas and qualities needed to be the best.
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These regular reminders throughout the day help prevent the horse from galloping off the path. Even if we have a bad morning, we have reinforcements in place to make it a better afternoon. If one sale doesn’t go well, we listen to a podcast and are ready to get back at it. If a conversation was awkward, we get coaching from a mentor and are ready to try again. We need reinforcements as humans to stay the course, no matter where our emotions try to run.
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​Where the Magic Happens
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​Now we can put it all together: the selective attention, the manifesting, the horse, the rider, and the reinforcements!
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It starts by setting ourselves up for success at the start of the day. Use your goals as the guiding light for the morning through journaling, gratitudes, or putting reminders in your bathroom where you brush your teeth.
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It will naturally help your mind recognize the situations that create evidence. “Oh yes, I love this coffee shop, definitely get the oatmilk latte!” Boom. You just sold someone on your coffee order. Great salesman.
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Then create reinforcements, because, well, we’re human. Create systems so that when life is life-ing, you can increase your chances of staying on course. Carry a book with you on the topic, have podcasts in a queue to listen to, and find people who are working towards the same goal so they can help redirect you. Reinforcements don’t guarantee success, but they decrease the chances of “failure.”
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You will start noticing the abundance of reasons and opportunities for being successful. Everywhere you go, you will meet people who are trying to do the same thing or are willing to help you. You’ll find proof that you, in fact, can do the thing, and eventually have all the building blocks and skills needed to build that dream life.
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If you found some value in this, please share it with a friend you think would enjoy it! And let me know if you’d like to be added to get TGIM.
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This week, my podcast recommendation is from Lewis Howes’ The School of Greatness, “How to Design a Life That Runs Without You with Rob Dyrdek.”
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With that, happy August! Make it a great week.
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Until next time,
Shannon