To BE something takes time and effort. You have to start someplace, and it's not going to pervade every area of your life at once. You're not approaching this realistically by demanding that this operate the way you want rather than the way it actually works.
You are resisting this technique because you insist on "feelings first". But the truth is that feelings are largely a product of your mental habits, they are not something that falls from the sky.
At the very least, there is some value for some people in "act as if". I personally think there is more value in it than most people are willing to give it credit for. In the recent (and generally good) book The How of Happiness, this technique was researched with respect to feelings of happiness. It was found that:
1) When a person is happy, blood flow increases to a particular part of the brain (left frontal lobe if I reacall correctly)
2) When a person smiles or even sees someone else smile, even when they are not actually feeling happy at the moment, blood flow increases to the same area (although not as strongly)
3) When a person applies a program of "acting" happy they tend, over a period of a few days, to feel much happier.
This strongly suggests that we are constructed to respond to certain stimuli quite independent of our circumstances. And that fits with the rather provocative conclusions of the rest of the book, which, highly condensed, are:
50% of your subjective happiness is a genetic set-point to which you tend to return within one year of all negative or positive events. People who win the lottery are on average no happier one year later. People who use the use of their legs are on balance no less happy one year later.
A mere 10% of your subjective happiness is a due to your circumstances.
40% of your subjective happiness is a result of your mental habits and is within your control and influence through a variety of fairly simple techniques.
--Bob G
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