Admittedly, I am currently reading my first self-help book: Richard Wiseman’s Rip it up . The self-help project is designed to be participatory: you actually get to rip up parts of the book as projects that help you understand yourself.

The book argues for the effectiveness of William James’s seminal theory that acting ‘as if’ will predicate those behaviours. In other words, actions and beliefs are interactively self-fulfilling. For example, in order to feel in love again with your long-term partner, the book says you simply need to act “as if” you’re in love and let your body physiology and subconscious do the rest. By taking actions to romance each other, feelings and beliefs of being in love will “automatically” and “naturally” occur.

Of course, what I find most interesting and perhaps problematic with such approach is the embedded premise in the theory, namely, you ought to have enough volition and genuine willingness to take those actions in the first place. And frankly, when it comes to relationship problems, I see a lot of people giving up before trying to take those self-fulling actions to amend their relationships. On the other hand, it is so common to hear people say, “I’ve tried to make the relationship work, but it just doesn’t work!” What is that all about then? Should we question how genuine the efforts were, or should we question how effective the method really is when it comes to relationship problems?