Little Deep Thoughts

Become a performer. Be an actor and a singer. Act like you already feel like you want to feel. Don't wait until the feeling motivates you. It could be a long wait. Most of us believe that an emotion, such as happiness, comes first. Then we do whatever we do, in reaction to that particular emotion. Not so. The emotion arises simultaneously with the doing of the act. So if you want to be enthusiastic, you can get there by acting as if you were already enthusiastic. Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes it skips a beat. But it always works if you stay with it, no matter how ridiculous you feel doing it. Feel ridiculous. If you want to be happy, find the happiest song you know and sing it. It works. Not always in the first few moments, but if you keep at it, it works. Just fake it until you make it. Soon your happy singing will show you how much control you do have over your own emotions. When people do a laughing meditation in which they all gather in a circle and get ready to ...

Sometimes we don't do things because we're not sure we can do them well. We feel that we're not in the mood or at the right energy level to do the task we have to do, so we put it off, or wait for inspiration to arrive. The most commonly known example of this phenomenon is what writers call "writer's block." A mental barrier seems to set in that prevents a writer from writing. Sometimes it gets so severe that writers go to psychotherapists to get help for it. The "block" (or lack of self-motivation) occurs not because the writer can't write, but because the writer thinks he can't write  well . In other words, the writer thinks he doesn't have the proper energy or inspiration to write something, right now, that's good enough to submit. So the pessimistic voice inside the writer says, "You can't think of anything to write, can you?" This happens to many of us, even with something as small as a postcard to send, or an ov...

To basketball coach John Wooden, making each day your masterpiece was not just about selfish personal achievement. In his autobiography, They Call Me Coach , he mentions an element vital to creating each day. "You cannot live a perfect day," he said, "without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you." I agree with that. But there's a way to make sure you can't be repaid-and that's doing something for someone who won't even know who did it. This gets into a theory I've had all my life, that you can create luck in your life. Not from the idea that luck is needed for success, because it isn't. But from the idea that luck can be a welcome addition to your life. You can create luck for yourself by creating it for someone else. If you know about someone who is hurting financially, you arrange for a few hundred dollars to arrive at their home, and they don't even know who you are, then you've made them lucky. By m...