CHAPTER 23
Use the “Act as If” Principle
The best way to create a feeling, if you have it not, is to act on every occasion where that feeling is desirable as if you had it already, and you soon will have.
—ARISTOTLE
In 1905, William James of Harvard University, the father of American psychology, made a remarkable observation. He said that the best way to experience an emotion, if you don’t actually feel it, is to pretend as if you already feel it until it becomes a reality.
The repeated actions of enthusiasm soon generate the real feelings of enthusiasm. ...
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