Rational thought, to be effective in changing belief and behavior, must be accompanied by deep feeling and desire.Picture to yourself what you would like to be and have, and assume for the moment that such things might be possible. Arouse a deep desire for these things. Become enthusiastic about them. Dwell upon them-and keep going over them in your mind. Your present negative beliefs were formed by thought plus feelings. Generate enough emotion, or deep feeling, and your new thoughts and ideas will cancel them out.
If you will analyze this you will see that you are using a process you have often used before-worry! The only difference is you change your goals from negative to positive. When you worry, you first of
all picture some undesirable future outcome, or goal, very vividly in your imagination. You use no effort or will power. But you keep dwelling upon the "end result." You keep thinking about it-dwelling upon it-picturing it to yourself as a "possibility." You play with the idea that it "might happen."
This constant repetition, and thinking in terms of "possibilities," make the end result appear more and more "real" to you. After a time, appropriate emotions are automatically generated-fear, anxiety, discouragement-all this are appropriate to the undesirable end result you are worrying about. Now change the "goal picture"-and you can as easily generate "good emotions." Constantly picturing yourself, and dwelling upon a desirable end result will also make the possibility seem more real-and again appropriate emotions of enthusiasm, cheerfulness, encouragement, and happiness will automatically be generated. "In forming good" emotional habits, and in breaking "bad ones," said Dr. Knight Dunlap, "we have to deal primarily with thoughts and thought habits. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he."
