Control Your Actions

Assagioli’s fourth law is that thoughts, feelings and images trigger the words and actions consistent with them. This is another way of saying that your inner impressions will motivate you to pursue the outer activities that will move you toward the achievement of your goals.

Assagioli’s fifth law is that your actions will trigger thoughts, emotions and images consistent with them. That has been referred to as the Law of Reversibility. It is one of the most important success principles ever discovered.

Simply, that law says that you are more likely to act yourself into feeling than you are to feel yourself into acting. On many days, you wake up feeling not as positive and optimistic as you would like. However, if you act as if you already have the feeling that you desire, the action itself will trigger the feelings and the thoughts and mental pictures consistent with them.

In her book Wake Up and Live, Dorothea Brande said that the most important success secret she ever discovered was this: “Act as if it were impossible to fail, and it shall be.”

In the book, she goes on to explain that you need to be very clear about the success that you desire, and then simply act as if you already had it. Act as if your success were inevitable. Act as if your achievement were guaranteed. Act as if there were no possibility of failure.

The wonderful thing is this: You can control your actions easier than you can control your feelings. If you choose to exert control over your actions, those actions will have a “back flow” effect and trigger the feelings, thoughts and images that are consistent with those of the person you want to be, of the person who lives the life you want to live.