“We cannot become what we want to be by remaining the way we are.”

People often say to me, “Oh, so you’re saying I should fake it till I make it.” No. There is no such thing as “fake it till you make it.” As pithy as this trite little rhyme is, it is not applicable to personal transformation. As soon as you begin acting like the person you wish to become, you are that person. The first step to being different is to act like the person you aspire to become. It is the first step toward self-mastery. To trivialize this most important of actions by calling it “faking it” misses the point. You’re not faking it. You are being it, even if only momentarily, and even if only in a limited way compared to your ideal.

“We cannot become what we want to be by remaining the way we are.” —MAX DE PREE

Life is not static. Life is a constant shift. When you are sick, you’re either getting sicker or getting better. When I was grossly obese as a teen, my actions either took me toward becoming more fit and healthy or moved me toward being out of shape. As soon as I changed my diet, I was the thin, healthy person I wanted to be even if it took many months for my body to reflect the new me. Ask yourself, “Have I ever played the sick role? Am I doing it now?” When you complain about your health, you may receive sympathy and attention, but the price you pay is perpetuating your misery. You have probably heard of someone experiencing psychosomatic illness. When we hear the term “psychosomatic,” we tend to think of a neurotic sick person whose illness has no physiological basis. Psychosomatic comes from psycho, meaning “mind,” and soma, meaning “body.” Therefore, psychosomatic literally means “mind/body.” We are all psychosomatic because we are all a unified expression of our minds and our bodies.

But remember that doctors estimate that 67 percent of illnesses are a result of “thinking sick.” Our minds create our world, and our words indicate what we are thinking. Complaining about an illness will neither shorten its duration nor lessen its severity. In fact, it will often have the opposite effect.

I invite you to consider how often complaining about illness might be an unconscious attempt to get sympathy and attention or to avoid doing something. When you complain about your health, remember that you might be trying to put out a fire with gasoline. You might want to get healthy, but when you complain about your illness you are sending out health-limiting waves of energy throughout your body.

“When I was diagnosed, I knew it was going to be tough and that I could go through it cursing God, science, and everyone else. Or I could focus on the good things in my life. So I decided to give myself one unhappy day each month to complain. I randomly picked the fifteenth. Whenever anything happens that I might want to complain about, I tell myself that I have to wait until the fifteenth.” “Does that work?” I asked. “Pretty well,” he said. “But don’t you get really down on the fifteenth of each month?” I asked. “Not really,” he replied. “By the time the fifteenth gets here, I’ve usually forgotten what it was I was going to complain about.”

Even though we lived more than two hours apart, I visited Hal twice a week until he made his life’s transition. People would tell me what a great friend I was and how thoughtful I was to devote so much time to him. The truth is that I did it for me. Hal taught me that even in the midst of something as challenging as a terminal illness, we can find happiness. Oh, and the doctors were wrong. Hal didn’t die within six months of being diagnosed. He survived more than two happy years, feeling blessed and blessing those around him. Hal beat the medical experts’ prediction by a factor of four. That’s the health-affirming power of living a life of gratitude rather than one of complaint.

By this time in our journey, you’ve begun to get glimpses into what makes you gripe and how often you complain. You are becoming conscious of your incompetence.