The As If Principle

William James was born in 1842.

He’s considered the father of modern psychology and his two-volume magnum opus (written in 1890), Principles of Psychology, is still considered required reading for students of behavioral science.

He was a contemporary of Freud. While Freud was developing (and very effectively marketing) his psychoanalytic approach encouraging people to go back into the pain of their past, James believed a more effective approach would be to change your behaviors right now.

Wiseman has fun keeping track of who research says won that debate in the century since it started.

Short story: William James is our clear winner. (Hah.)

You’re MUCH better off working on optimizing your unhelpful thoughts and behaviors *right now* than going on an archeological dig into the mysterious origins of your current neuroses.

So, William James tells us: “If you want a quality, act as if you already have it.”

Now, I’ve gotta say that I’ve always had a slight bit of an allergy to the way some self-help authors have run with the basic idea of “acting as if” into a “fake it until you make it” approach, so I found it particularly refreshing to read Wiseman’s take on the hundreds of studies that prove the efficacy of the As If approach without all the silly stuff that triggers an allergic reaction.

As Wiseman tells us:

“Common sense suggests that the chain of causation is: You feel happy — You smile. …

The As If theory suggests that the opposite is also true: You smile — You feel happy.”

And, that’s what the book is about. It’s a systematic review of the scientific literature as it relates to what Wiseman calls “The As If Principle.”

We have chapters on everything from how to be happy, love, mental health (and how to conquer your depression), willpower (and how to beat procrastination), persuasion, and how to create a new you. Let’s explore some of my favorite ideas.

But first: What specific quality would you like to have more of?

How can you act as if you already have it a little more today? :)

Want to be happy?

Smile. Sing. Dance. Laugh. Hold your head up high. Walk with a spring in your step.

In short: ACT like a happy person and, the research shows, you’ll be able to watch your emotions follow.

Wiseman walks us though research on all of that. Scientists have found creative ways to run rigorous studies to prove that doing things like having you say “ee” (like the sound in “cheese”) rather than “ew” (like the sound in, uh, well, “pooh” (hah)) will make you happier. Why? One elicits a subtle smile while the other elicits a subtle grimace.

Seriously? Yah. Just acting as if you’re smiling makes you feel a little happier.

Behaviors → Feelings

Same thing with singing. Listening to music isn’t as powerful as actually singing.

Behaviors → Feelings

Happy people tend to dance. And… If you dance, you tend to be happier. (Dancing was actually one of the things he came back to most. Its effects are super powerful. After reading the book I immediately told Alexandra about it. She’s the dancing queen of the Johnson house so we’ll need her DJing some micro-dance parties. :)

Behaviors → Feelings

Hold your head up high. Walk the way you do when you’re happy. And… You guessed it, you’ll feel happier.

What do YOU do when you feel happy?

Hint: Do it.

Watch the feelings follow the behaviors.

In one of the more astonishing studies that proves the power of the As If principle, Wiseman walks us through the research conducted by Ellen Langer.

Langer wrote a whole book about her fascinating research. Check out our Notes on Counterclockwise for more.

The short story: In 1979, Langer recruited men in their 70s and 80s. She split them into two groups. One of them was to reminisce about life twenty years before in 1959. The other group was to actually RELIVE the past AS IF they were twenty years younger.

The group that was pretending to be twenty years younger listened to music from 1959, watched movies from 1959 and all their conversations had to be in the present tense AS IF they were actually living in 1959.

What happened?

Well, here’s how she puts it: “On many of the measures, the participants got ‘younger.’ The experimental group showed greater improvement on joint flexibility, finger length (their arthritis diminished and they were able to strengthen their fingers more), and manual dexterity. On intelligence tests, 63 percent of the experimental group improved their scores, compared to only 44 percent of the control group. There were also improvements in height, weight, gait and posture. Finally, we asked people unaware of the study’s purpose to compare photos taken of the participants at the end of the week to those submitted at the beginning of the study. These objective observers judged that all of the experimental participants looked noticeably younger at the end of the study.”

Think about that for a moment.

That sounds nuts, eh? Yet it’s true.

Langer focuses on what she calls the “psychology of possibility.” She tells us that “Small changes can make large differences, so we should open ourselves to the impossible and embrace the psychology of possibility.

The psychology of possibility first requires that we begin with the assumption that we do not know what we can do or become. Rather than starting from the status quo, it argues for a starting point of what we would like to be. From that beginning, we can ask how we might reach that goal and make progress toward it. It’s a subtle change in thinking, although not difficult to make once we realize how stuck we are in culture, language, and modes of thought that limit our potential.”

Let’s open ourselves up to what’s possible. And act as if we had that power now. :)

That’s from a chapter on Willpower in a section on how we have become “punished by rewards.”

Short story from a high level: Rewards are often great at eliciting near-term boosts in behavior. And… They’re often disastrous in producing the long-term engagement we want to see.

Why? Well, in essence, they take away our intrinsic motivation and replace it with a poor substitute: the extrinsic motivation of the reward.

In the context of the As If principle, Wiseman tells us that it’s almost as if we’re having a conversation in our heads. “Well, I thought I liked to read or draw or write but then you paid me for it so I must not really like it enough to do it on my own.”

In the research study above, even just thinking about rewards negatively impacted creativity.

That reminds me of our last Note on Harry Potter where we talked about Carol Dweck’s research. She tells us: “It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.”

Then we have quintessential best-selling creative writer, Stephen King. Was he focused on the money?

Well, let’s see what he has to say in his classic, On Writing: “One more matter needs to be discussed, a matter that bears directly on that life-changer and one that I’ve touched on already, but indirectly. Now I’d like to face it head-on. It’s a question that people ask in different ways—sometimes it comes out polite and sometimes it comes out rough, but it always amounts to the same: Do you do it for the money, honey?

The answer is no. Don’t now and never did. Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it. I have done some work as favors for friends—logrolling is the slang term for it—but at the very worst, you’d have to call that a crude kind of barter. I have written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side—I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for the joy, you can do it forever.”

Why do YOU do what YOU do?

Focus on the joy. Let the rewards be a by-product.

(But only if you want to enjoy the process and actually get the rewards. :)

This is from the last chapter called “Creating a New You.”

How’d you like to design a new identity for yourself? It doesn’t matter who you are, we ALL know that we’re capable of even more.

So, whether it’s slightly optimizing to polish some rough edges on the current iteration of you or having fun nearly completely reinventing yourself, let’s have fun exploring the science of designing that new identity, shall we? :)

Wiseman walks us through the ideas of “fixed-role therapy” as developed by a 20th century psychologist named George Kelly.

The short story: Your personality is NOT fixed. It’s malleable. Best way to shape it? Yep. You guessed it. Act as if you ARE the person you aspire to be.

Which, of course, begs the question: Who do you aspire to be? Who are you at your most epic best? Even more simply: Who are you at a slightly more optimized version of you?

BE THAT VERSION OF YOU. Now.

We’ve approached this from a few different angles so far. We have Eric Grietan’s wisdom from Resilience. He tells us that we need to START with our Identity and let that drive our Behaviors and let those behaviors drive our Feelings.

Identity → Behaviors → Feelings.

Unfortunately, most people get that equation precisely backwards. Constantly checking in on how they “feel” and letting *that* run the show. Not optimal.

In With Winning in Mind, Gold-medal winner turned peak performance coach Lanny Bassham tells us that our Self-Image is REALLY (!) important. Reminding us that we won’t be able to consistently outperform a poor self-image.

Solution? Dial up your Self-Image. How? Get clear on who you are at your best. Remind yourself of that daily/all the time and, most importantly, ACT LIKE THAT VERSION OF YOU. Now.

Then we have Amy Cuddy. In Presence, she echoes a lot of the wisdom in this book and shares a story about the Olympic coach who used her ideas with his swimmers. On the day of the race, he’d have them act as if they won that day’s race from the moment they woke up on race day. It worked.

But, for some odd reason, he only used it on his more anxious swimmers and only on race day. What would happen if they acted like that best version of themselves all the time?

So, back to you. Who are you at your best?

Wiseman tells us to spend two weeks role-playing your new identity. He tells us to “Focus on changing your behavior rather than trying to change the way you think.”

He says, “It might be helpful to think of your old personality as being on vacation for two weeks, so you have an opportunity to act like a different person. It is important, however, that you play out your new role twenty-four hours a day, even when you’re alone. The As If principle will cause you to feel like a new person, and the new you will soon become part of your actual identity.”