Acting Well

by Marshall Yaeger

with contributions by:

Ronald R. Masden, M.D.

Roy Scheider
Alexander Shaknovich, M.D.
and
William Rodman Shankle, M.D.

Published by Circles International

under the medical supervision of
Anchor~International Foundation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1
Introduction to the First Edition .................................................................6
The Third Gene..............................................................................................9
(A Hypothetical Timeline) .........................................................................23
Brain Theory and Stanislavski ..................................................................23
Static and Dynamic Theories of the Brain ...............................................33
Exercise .........................................................................................................41
Proposal for The Palace of Health
(Ñ‚Ó Âˆ
Á‰Ó Ó‚¸fl) .......................46
Your Fascist Guru .......................................................................................51
A Preventive Cardiology Program for Russia and the World .............55
Permanent Change......................................................................................59
How to Prevent Heart Disease..................................................................63
The Right Choice .........................................................................................67
A Revolution of the Mind ..........................................................................70
Yoga ..............................................................................................................73
Preventive Medicine ...................................................................................77
Uncommon Sense........................................................................................80
Acting vs. Impersonation ...........................................................................83
Comprosoft ..................................................................................................86
Morning Preparation ..................................................................................89
Your Treasure Chest ...................................................................................92
Perceptions, Actions, and Results.............................................................95
Memory ........................................................................................................98
Hats .............................................................................................................101
It’s My Hormones! ....................................................................................104
A Letter from Screwtape ..........................................................................106
Maharaja Yoga: Triumph of the Will .....................................................109
The Mosaic at the End of the Long Haul ...............................................112
The News on Fitness.................................................................................114
What I Do ...................................................................................................116
Pep-Talk......................................................................................................119
Fit to Play....................................................................................................121
The Placebo Effect and Our Compliance Program ..............................124
How to Stop Smoking ..............................................................................127
The Benefits of Acting Well .....................................................................129
The Forest and the Trees ..........................................................................131
Tobey Maguire ..........................................................................................134
Wanna Buy a Cheap Exercise Bicycle? ..................................................136
The Trip to Narrowsburg.........................................................................138
The Constancy of the Self.........................................................................140
A Personal History....................................................................................143
FAQ: How Do I Get Myself to Exercise? ...............................................145
Monotony ...................................................................................................147
Diets and Nutrition...................................................................................149
Losers ..........................................................................................................152
Report on “Albert”....................................................................................154
Acting Well (The Book Proposal) ...........................................................157
Willpower...................................................................................................159
Take More! .................................................................................................161
Crosshairs...................................................................................................163
FAQ: Diet Menu Boredom.......................................................................164
Memory and Consciousness....................................................................166

2
Envelopes of Knowledge .........................................................................168
Fad Diets.....................................................................................................170
“I’m starting my diet on Monday!”........................................................172
Love.............................................................................................................174
Testosterone ...............................................................................................176
Morning Pages...........................................................................................178
Addressing Childhood Obesity ..............................................................180
The American Heart Association............................................................181
Behavior Modification..............................................................................184
Why I Can’t Change .................................................................................185
German Spanish ........................................................................................187
Imagination ................................................................................................188
FAQ: How much weight can I lose on your system? ..........................190
Contradictory Science...............................................................................191
Metabolizing Calories...............................................................................193
FAQ: Should I snack between meals? ....................................................194
The Numbers Games ................................................................................196
Generating Self-Discipline .......................................................................197
The Eye of God ..........................................................................................199
That and Which .........................................................................................200
Does God Exist? ........................................................................................201
Gorge and Grow Thin! .............................................................................202
Quick Weight Loss....................................................................................204
Costumes for the World Walk.................................................................205
The Second Lunch.....................................................................................206
The Facts Behind the Cost of Being Fat..................................................208
The Sins of the Doctors.............................................................................209
Self-Help Book...........................................................................................210
Menu Planning ..........................................................................................213
FAQ: Nutrients and Menus .....................................................................214
Character ....................................................................................................215
FAQ: Do I have to make a commitment? ..............................................216
Acting Well Coaching Program ..............................................................217
Moderation.................................................................................................219
Compliance Rules .....................................................................................220
FAQ: Approved Food List .......................................................................221
Assume the Position .................................................................................222
FAQ: Should Calories Out Equal Calories In?......................................223
Panic Attacks .............................................................................................224
Variety ........................................................................................................225
Hunger and boredom ...............................................................................226
Frequent Meals ..........................................................................................227
Alcoholics Anonymous ............................................................................228
How Babies Learn .....................................................................................230
Scripts and Logs ........................................................................................230
Making Time for Morning Preparation .................................................231
FAQ: Portion Sizes ....................................................................................232
Sensible Care..............................................................................................233
FAQ: How long will it take to lose ten pounds? ..................................234
The Acting Well Telephone Consulting Program ................................235
Comparing “Calories In” with “Calories ..............................................237
Out”.............................................................................................................237
FAQ: About Changing Lifestyles............................................................238

3
Acting Well Technique.............................................................................239
The Script ...................................................................................................240
Spinners ......................................................................................................241
Closure........................................................................................................241
Correct Posture while doing Acting Well .............................................243
FAQ: The Food Pyramid ..........................................................................243
Bianca’s Summer Hampton Psychic Makeover Class .........................244
FAQ: How Many Calories Should I Eat Every Day? ...........................245
FAQ: What’s the best diet to lose weight?.............................................246
Mucis...........................................................................................................247
Autosuggestion .........................................................................................248
How to Measure Portion Sizes................................................................248
The Camera Obscura ................................................................................249
Listening .....................................................................................................250
Asking Dr. Weill........................................................................................250
The Real Me ...............................................................................................251
FAQ: How Much Fat Should I Include in My Diet? ............................252
FAQ: Who are you? ..................................................................................253
An Unsuccessful Argument ....................................................................254
FAQ: Is Yoga a Good Exercise?...............................................................255
Anxiety .......................................................................................................255
Sound Pollution.........................................................................................256
Theoretical Considerations ......................................................................257
FAQ: Shall I Accept Myself as a Fat Person? ........................................257
An Example of How People Change......................................................258
Acting Well at Work .................................................................................259
FAQ: Should I Walk More? .....................................................................259
Louis XIV....................................................................................................260
FAQ: How Fast Can I Lose Weight? ......................................................261
Orange Juice...............................................................................................261
The Magic Bullet .......................................................................................262
Colossal Blunders......................................................................................263
Why This Book Is Needed .......................................................................263
FAQ: Does your system really work? ....................................................264
FAQ: Food Logs ........................................................................................265
FAQ: Is It My Genes?................................................................................265
The Morning Track ...................................................................................266
FAQ: Are Aerobics Classes Good? .........................................................267
FAQ: Is This System Just Another Diet?................................................267
Touching the Envelope ............................................................................268
Making Life an Art....................................................................................269
A Fountain of Youth .................................................................................269
FAQ: Why Should I Lose Weight?..........................................................270
FAQ: Diets..................................................................................................270
FAQ: How Can I Exercise More? ............................................................271
FAQ: Are You an Atheist? .......................................................................271
What I Should Do......................................................................................272
FAQ: Chromium Picolinate .....................................................................272
Quarantines................................................................................................273
FAQ: Should I Eat Special Foods? ..........................................................273
Kinesthesia .................................................................................................274
Stanley’s Diet .............................................................................................274
The Log .......................................................................................................275

4
The First Closure .......................................................................................275
Sound ..........................................................................................................276
Essays..........................................................................................................276
The Hormonal Effects of Acting Well ....................................................276
Seeing Yourself ..........................................................................................277
Self-Help.....................................................................................................277
Moreover... .................................................................................................277

5
 Introduction to the First Edition
The following collection of articles constitutes a companion vol-
ume to the Acting Well Weight Management Program, which is com-
bined with this publication.
Most of these articles, which were compiled over several years,
and which were written to serve a variety of purposes, are of the self-
help “tips and pointers” genre. Some of the “tips” are presented in a
“FAQs,” or “frequently asked questions” format (although nobody
ever asked me any of the questions before, but there you are).
The central theme that runs through this book may be unfamiliar
to most people. One of its aspects is the idea that perceptions,
thoughts, memories, decisions, and actions are all the same thing; and
that each of these “things” is represented by a material substance
composed of a number of “functional units” of neurons (many of
them shaped like columns) located behind your forehead. Therefore,
if you want to change the daily decisions your character makes, your
problem is as material as wanting to remove the ugly rocks from your
backyard in order to plant a Japanese garden using polished stones
(or lose 25 pounds so that you can improve your sex life). In order to
exchange rocks for stones, there have to be rocks and there have to be
stones. You can’t just wish things away, wish for other things to take
their place, or wish for one substance to magically transform itself
into another. You actually have to “haul ass” to get material things
moved (or to activate and deactivate various neuronal groups).
Thus, just as you can’t polish rocks to make them smooth stones,
you can only reform your character through replacement, not through
wishing or magic.
The good news is that—providing you do the work—the rocks
will absolutely disappear and the stones will absolutely take their
place! The system works like magic, even though it isn’t magic.
Another unfamiliar idea is that there may be 1,000 ways to lose 25
pounds, but there’s only one way to avoid gaining them back. That
way is to learn how to behave like a thin person. If you fail to learn
this trick, then once you’ve reached your “goal weight” (through any
method you like, such as starving yourself), you’re bound to revert to
your former “fat person” habits that made you overweight in the first
place.
Your old “fat” habits are the rocks in your backyard that you
failed to remove while you were starving yourself in order to polish a
few stones. You wind up constantly going on yo-yo diets that under-
mine self-confidence while wasting everybody’s time and energy (ex-
cept for the quacks and hucksters who got paid for giving you terrible
advice and selling you fraudulent products).
A third idea is that behavioral changes (such as dieting or exercis-

6
ing) are acting problems. They’re not imaginary, psychological, moral,
spiritual, glandular, hormonal, carbo-protein, fat-gram, nutritional, or
genetic problems! Therefore, if you want to be thin, you only need to
develop a few acting skills to create your new character. Nature takes
its course from there.
Although the Acting Well weight management program doesn’t
involve restrictive diets, there are some daily meditative and fitness
requirements (as well as a few prohibitions, such as against habitual
snacking and regular “days off”) that beginners may need help ob-
serving. Therefore, this book may be a useful “read” from time to
time, especially during the first 21-day period.
When I considered how to organize the various articles, the least
complicated method seemed to be to follow the practice of the Koran,
which someone told me was organized arbitrarily, according to the
length of the various sections. (This idea turned out to be wrong; but
there you are again.) My scheme therefore puts the longest sections of
this edition first (with the exception of this introduction), and the
shortest last. This arrangement offers the advantage of putting some
of the more complicated sections before simpler sections that build on
more esoteric concepts, which then don’t have to be constantly ex-
plained. Thus, we begin with several theoretical articles about an-
thropology and the science of the brain that offer useful ideas, for ex-
ample, about why the program works for people for whom other
programs have never worked.
For example, it is my theory that Homo sapiens evolved its current
configuration in a climate where non-carnivores tended not to survive
(maybe because it snowed too much?). Large animals could only be
caught periodically, on the average—say once a week—which meant
that our bodies evolved so as to thrive by gorging on meat once a
week (storing fat in special cells), and eating bugs and leaves the rest
of the time. (The Jewish custom of the Sabbath meal may be a survi-
vor of those primitive days.)
In our own time, market competition (abetted, in this country, by
unwise government agency policies) encourages us to gorge every
night of the week, which supplies most of us with too many nutrients
that our bodies aren’t prepared to assimilate. Therein is an anthropo-
logical theory that reveals the most overpowering reason why more
than half of all Americans are overweight. Finding a solution for this
situation is one of the main purposes of Acting Well.
I include no footnote citations because these days any good
search engine will locate the original sources for any reference in this
edition within seconds.
I apologize to anyone who fails to find the opening articles as
transparent as glass. The problem isn’t the reader’s! If I had to start
over again perusing all of the research materials I needed to prepare
these articles, I would probably be as bamboozled as some of you
may find yourselves while ploughing through the science of the brain
for the first time. Fortunately, the eminent neuroscientist, William
Rodman Shankle (in the article called “Perceptions, Actions, and Re-

7
sults”), offered to help me out by writing his own explanation of the
mechanics of the brain as they relate to Acting Well.
Please don’t try too hard to understand the more technical sec-
tions. Let the scientific terms wash over you as you get the gist of the
arguments and conclusions; or skip to later sections and come back if
you like. Or begin the book again after you finish it the first time, and
you’ll find the earlier sections more comprehensible.
Meanwhile, observe the theories in action as you observe yourself
learning, playing, and changing. Observe, especially, the activities of
small children, and how amazingly their learning process matches the
perception = action = results hypothesis presented here. (Observe,
also, how parents who don’t understand this process constantly con-
fuse and misdirect their children through inconsistent discipline.)
Many of the articles repeat themselves (some of them repeatedly)
under the theory that familiarity breeds—not contempt,
but...familiarity. That is, every new time you encounter the same idea,
your brain matches it against a previous version of the idea. In this
way, you’ll begin to build a comprehensible structure in your own
brain of a new way to think about how you perceive, act, and—most
important, how you change.
Once you understand the secrets of the brain that relate to Acting
Well, you may actually begin to perceive within your own thinking
process the hardy manner in which certain simple acting techniques
can help you avoid “forgetting yourself” and—as a result—help you
stay on the program.
This first edition contains mostly my own thoughts and opinions
about a subject that is bound to be controversial, but that I consider
universal and correct. I hope that future editions will share many
more observations and corrections (especially in cases where I have
been mistaken) from articulate readers, program users, scientists,
scholars, and philosophers who have benefited from Acting Well. As
I say in the Acting Well videotape, “The Magic Bullet,” “I’m not
your guru. I’m only someone who started earlier.”

—Marshall Yaeger
New York, 2001

8
 The Third Gene
The theory of the “third gene” views the transition from pre-
hominid to human society not as a bootstrap affair that evolved natu-
rally, but as a risky business that heaved from side to side on its way
up. That is, our prehistoric ancestors were probably not formed from
homogenous groups of men, women, and children, who stood up on
two feet in order to walk into history, but groups like apes or chim-
panzees that were penetrated by highly disagreeable individuals who
played a hand in evolution, separating, like God or Darwin, wheat
from chaff, and ruthlessly making sure, over the long run, and with
entirely wrong motives, that the most intelligent would survive and
the least would not.
These ideas differ from Julian Jaynes’s theories of a bicameral
man. Jaynes suggested that human beings didn’t become conscious
until a few thousand years ago. Before then, he said, they received in-
structions from their right brain (similar to the way an inspired play-
wright hears imaginary characters dictate lines) which they carried
out unconsciously with their left brain (as a playwright might “mind-
lessly” scribble down a character’s sentences in shorthand).
Jaynes’s theory was a “two gene” model that assumed that all
prehistoric people were alike: each had right- and left-brain capabili-
ties that functioned pretty much alike.
However, what about prehistoric kings and priests? Were they
unconscious too? Whose orders did they follow?
And although there may be separate parts of the brain that affect
behavior and cognition, with one part dominating another from time
to time, why must these different parts be spatially defined? How can
every “left-brain” thing take place only on the left side of the brain,
for example, if vision is divided between both left and right sections
of the occipital lobe?
Finally, if there are “modalities” in the brain that sometimes cor-
respond to Jaynes’s (and others’) “left-brain/right-brain thinking”
(which separates, for example, right-side “creativity” from left-side
“logical thought”), these modalities may display other kinds of dis-
tinctions that aren’t produced according to location on one side of the
head or the other, but by brain-wave frequencies, for example, or
other, less familiar criteria. Thus, there may be more than two modali-
ties.
These modalities don’t necessarily complement each other like
two sides of the same coin. In fact, they may address entities as in-
compatible and different from each other as a game of football is from
a game of bridge. It would be difficult to play both games at the same
time in the same place.
A better example of incompatible modalities would be what some

9
psychologists call “rationalizers” (such as logicians) and “visualizers”
(such as visual artists). These two small groups of people, at the ex-
treme ends of a bell-shaped curve that includes the rest of us, think
very differently from each other, using different parts of the brain.
They find it difficult to communicate with one another.
[Full disclosure: Electroencephalograph measurements have es-
tablished that I am a dyed-in-the-wool visualizer!]
Some psychologists believe there is a more profound difference
between rationalizers and visualizers than there is between left- and
right-brain thinking people. An electroencephalograph can easily
measure the rationalizer/visualizer dichotomy (which might be
called “front-brain/rear-brain”). A machine, however, can’t differen-
tiate left- and right-brain people so easily.
The real story of human evolution into consciousness may corre-
spond more to a bell-shaped social model than a bifurcated brain
model as in Jaynes’s theory. In that case, there could have been at
least three modalities before human evolution could begin, not just
two. These three modalities, namely: alpha, beta, and gamma, could
then form a bell-shaped curve in which there was one alpha and one
gamma per group of 32, with a few stand-bys for replacements if nec-
essary. All the rest would be betas.
In pre-human societies, a one-gene system of sexual determina-
tion would produce males and females about equally. A two-gene
system affecting social behavior (which involves random combina-
tions of dominant and recessive genes) would raise one member of a
tribe to become its leader through a combination of luck and skill.
However, all the rest of the tribe would remain about the same from
generation to generation.
The story of Adam and Eve illustrates a “two gene” theory where
two original progenitors combined one recessive (or mutant) gene
with another (the second gene) to produce proto-human beings, who
continued to evolve more or less through the same genetic process.
This theory may suffice for a slow-growing, alpha-male domi-
nated, pre-hominid society; but it doesn’t explain the rapid and spec-
tacular rise of human beings.
A better hypothesis to account for our species would involve a
three-gene system. This innovation (which might be considered a
“great man historical theory”) would counterbalance the alpha-male
already established in the group with another special member of the
tribe (the “great man,” who was capable of creating human history)
that could act as a “ratchet” in the group, retaining the species’ “pro-
gress so far,” mainly through death-surviving (“immortal”) symbols
and objects, through a succession of life cycles, to assure the evolu-
tionary expansion and improvement of the species’ brain power. This
“third gene” theory is fundamentally different from “two gene” theo-
ries, such as Jaynes’ theory, which for all its elegance doesn’t explain
why human beings appeared and grew so smart so fast.
In pre-hominid primate societies, there were (and still are) only
two modes of behavior: alpha and beta. The difference between them

10
is that alpha behavior is confined to the alpha-male (“head honcho”
and chief womanizer) in each tribal unit. Everyone else behaves like a
beta. This condition describes Jaynes’s concept of prehistoric cultures
where everyone (almost) was a beta who followed orders presumably
given by an alpha-male, who wasn’t much more than a beta with en-
vironmentally-shaped powers. (This condition might be termed “al-
pha/beta.”)
The alpha-male’s sense of self-efficacy, by definition, was greater
than that of the other tribal members. He therefore enjoyed the most
power and public favors of females. How conscious he was (or is) of
his “self” is debatable.
The most important difference that distinguished pre-hominid
alpha/beta societies from human alpha/beta societies was the addi-
tion of a new modality, namely the gamma male. This person might
have been comparable to Jaynes’s conjectures about schizophrenic
prophets. He was present in every tribal unit as a “spiritual” leader
(or a god’s representative on Earth) as opposed to the “secular” leader
who was the alpha-male.
This individual had special powers that connected the tribe to
both the past (through recallable experiences, or the “stories” that
formed the group’s “history”) and to the future (through apparent
abilities to affect the cure of an illness, for example, or to guarantee an
afterlife); whereas the alpha-male, who was the tribe’s best defense
against the many dangers present during the Stone Age, had to be
firmly grounded and alert, at least at critical times, in the “eternal
present.”
Under such conditions it was probably quite useful to have a
gamma assistant leader not so concerned with clear and present dan-
gers, who could remember and foresee information that allowed him
(among other things) to correct alpha/beta patterns of behavior.
These patterns might create forms of “evil” (or “immorality”) that
could threaten to lead the betas astray. Thus, the gamma-male could
serve to “purify” the tribe and possibly forestall supernatural pun-
ishment.
The dour image of Jeremiah with his “corrective visions” comes
to mind, although the first gamma-males probably looked more like a
Broadway musical, dressed in feathers and masks (which retained, or
“ratcheted,” their supernatural, and thus immortal, symbolic signifi-
cance), and singing and dancing even before the advent of language.
An alpha-male wouldn’t have been “into” such performances. A
modern football team probably provides a clear example of the “ap-
ples and oranges” difference between alphas and gammas in early so-
cieties. The alpha-male on a modern football team is whoever is run-
ning with the ball at the time, which is a matter of luck and skill. The
gamma-male is the coach: not part of the “action,” but often thought
to have been “born” to the position. The women, the supporting play-
ers, and the non-playing audiences are all betas.
It seems likely that when the human race first emerged, the
gamma-male was rarely, if ever, the same person as the unit’s alpha-

11
male. (Today’s coach, on the other hand, can be a former football star,
a possibility that should probably denote his social position as “al-
pha/gamma,” meaning he serves as a gamma leader, although he,
himself, was alpha/beta.) To avoid unnecessary alpha-gamma con-
flict between the two leaders there had to be ways in which the
gamma-male could co-exist without threatening the alpha-male, since
the alpha-male was probably loathe to share power with another
leader, especially over deciding who slept with which female. For
these reasons, the operational gamma in a primitive group could not
be female. In fact, discrimination against females may have originated
as a way to confederate the alpha-gamma relationship (an idea, for
example, that may illuminate the prohibition against ordaining fe-
male priests).
One way to keep peace in the tribe would be to make sure that (1)
there was only one gamma-male per tribal unit; and (2) the gamma-
male’s concerns were predominantly abstract (or “supernatural”)
compared to the alpha-male’s “natural” interests in food, sex, and
physical prowess relating to hunting and combat. Thus the gamma-
male could have been the tribal healer, for example, staying behind
with the women, perhaps chaperoned by the children (whose teacher
he may have been once there were lessons to learn) while the “real
men” were away, bringing home the bacon.
Such a model, by the way, isn’t so different from how our educa-
tional system works today.
If these conjectures are true, they hint at how human intellect may
have developed. Over the life cycle of a particular generation the al-
pha-male would enforce the day-to-day business of the tribal unit
while the gamma-male would participate as a “ratchet” in the cycle,
“holding” (remembering) abstract, symbolic data in his head to be re-
peated, probably in ritual fashion, by himself and his successors.
One possible evolutionary mechanism may have involved chil-
dren whose cognitive abilities absorbed the accumulated (that is,
“ratcheted”) tribal lore as it grew or changed slightly with each gen-
eration, who would presumably have attracted more mates and there-
fore passed on more genes than those who were less adroit at the
mimicry, rhythmic dancing, singing, and play that served to advance
the intellectual processing abilities of the group. Thus, if the gamma-
male taught ritual songs and dances to children (in whom language,
even today, develops more easily than in adults, providing there are
adult models available) we could discern a possible origin of lan-
guage, which some say developed out of ritual singing.
Another possible scenario (none of them are mutually exclusive)
may have had gamma-males performing eugenic duties in the “mat-
ing game.” In most societies, marriage has been an arranged and re-
ligious (gamma) institution. The image of undefiled virgins marrying
sons of alpha-males (as in fairy tales such as “Cinderella”) may sur-
vive these early marriage customs.
Who was responsible for the purity of the women if not the
gamma-male? He married them to alphas (whom he had probably

12
circumcised at puberty) and so he may have chosen the wives (or
“given them away”) as well, selecting women not on the basis of how
attractive they would be to alphas but how smart (and dutiful) they
were when he taught them tribal rituals. (Measuring how well stu-
dents followed ritual directions may have constituted the first SATs!)
The sons of alphas would tend to be the best and brightest anyway;
and so millennia after millennia of these superior hereditary succes-
sions would tend to improve the offspring of these favored marriages,
among whom would be born the future, smarter gamma-males. In the
meantime, the less clever bastard babies, unsanctified by gamma
ceremonies, may have been aborted or exposed and left to wolves as a
form of population control. Unfortunately, there’s evidence for this
possibility in ancient Greek lore.
If you were to construct a typical Stone Age human tribal unit
(which anthropologists tell us, for maximum efficiency in exploiting
resources, would have been around 30 people), the only statistical
way to guarantee, with a 95% confidence level, that there would be
exactly one operational gamma-male per unit, would be to limit the
unit size to 32, make the average life expectancy 32 years, and make
the birth of gamma-males dependent on a random genetic event in
which exactly three genes were expressed in a particular way. Such
an arrangement would result in one person out of eight being born a
“gamma.” That is, in an ideal tribal unit, at any one time there would
be four gammas, one of them operational, two of them female (there-
fore disqualified for service), and one gamma-male youth waiting in
the wings.
There are several contemporary conditions that resemble this
kind of random genetic event and that may even be related to it. Left-
handedness may be one of them. It seems to occur in about one out of
eight people (although determining an actual statistic is difficult since
so many parents and cultures discourage left-handedness).
There is evidence that most Stone Age tools were made for left-
handed people. Some assume this observation suggests that more
than half of all Stone Age people were left-handed. Did something
happen to reverse the trend? Might not a simpler explanation be that
Stone Age tools were carved mostly by gamma-males who were (or
tended to be) left-handed; and that these tools and weapons were
used mainly by alpha- and beta-males who were mostly right-
handed, and therefore more talented at throwing spears (which the
gamma-males fashioned and tipped) in a socially acceptable way?
Left-handedness, according to some, is caused by an imbalance of
testosterone in the womb at a critical time. Whether this condition
depends on the mother’s genes or behavior, or whether it’s something
that happens as a result of a randomly determined structure in the
growing fetus’s DNA that influences the mother’s hormones, is de-
batable. The evidence, however, seems to favor the latter view. If the
former were true, mothers who produce one left-handed child would
continue to produce more left-handed children than chance would
predict, which is not what happens.

13
 Thus it seems probable that gamma-males are produced in a way
that is similar to how left-handed people are produced; and thus
there may have been (and may still be) an overrepresentation of left-
handedness among gamma-males.
The same proportions seem to be true of homosexuality (although
with similar difficulties in deriving statistics about this socially dis-
couraged condition). Some believe that homosexuality is also pro-
duced though random events occurring in the mother’s womb. A
“feminizing” condition such as homosexuality marking gamma
status, of course, would make it less likely that a gamma-male would
threaten the self-efficacy of an alpha-male, at least as it applies to
copulation with females. Historic examples of effeminate gamma-
males, such as the “berdache,” may confirm this point.
Whatever happens in a mother’s womb one out of eight times to
produce a gamma person probably produces its variations by altering
the relative size of certain areas of the brain, expanding some and
contracting others to make way for the expanded ones. For example,
in the brain of Albert Einstein (who may have been a vestigial
gamma-male), the inferior parietal region (where mathematical
thought originates) was 15% wider than normal (possibly permitting
neurons that are normally separated to form unusually insightful in-
terconnections) while the Sylvian fissure was much smaller than av-
erage. We can probably guess what the expanded tissue did for the
world; but who knows how much the corresponding loss of tissue af-
fected the man? He was thought to have had some peculiar, though
benign, social deficits.
New theories about the plasticity of the brain, well articulated
only in the past two years, suggest that human beings’ intellectual
growth was probably not so much due to the amount of brain tissue
increasing over time, but to an ever-growing spaciousness within the
skull into which thousands of new neurons could fit every single day.
These new neurons, mainly replacing ones that self-destructed, and
representing memories not only of emotional and physical experi-
ences and sensations but of intellectual “training experiences” by
gamma-males, are probably what accounted for the spectacular intel-
lectual evolution of human beings.
When human beings first emerged they probably didn’t have
enough brain cells to accommodate alpha, beta, and gamma modali-
ties within the same brain’s lifetime. Thus specializations probably
occurred so that alpha/betas “thought” one way (or “heard” direc-
tions in a fashion that Jaynes would describe as coming from the
“right-brain”) and gammas another way. Probably the gamma-males
specialized in “remembering” such things as the right herbs to use for
healing particular ailments as well as ritual dances and singsongs
(eventually incantations) with which to confront supernatural forces.
It would probably have been too taxing to expect a primitive
brain to be capable of what would have been comparable to universal
literacy. One “expert” gamma would have to suffice for each tribe,
and he probably suffered in exchange for his expertise by lacking cer-

14
tain abilities, such as social graces (or a libidinous interest in the op-
posite sex). The contrast between the social alpha “jock” and the aso-
cial gamma “geek” that occurs in almost every high school class may
be a vestigial example of much earlier tribal specializations. Thus, the
tragedy at Columbine High School may have illustrated the explosive
dangers that can arise when the number of alpha-males and gamma-
males exceeds one each per tribe.
If there were only one gamma-male per tribal unit; and if that
person were less likely to produce offspring than his counterpart al-
pha-male, then gamma-males couldn’t have been the ones responsible
for the evolutionary expansion of brain size (or efficiency) in our spe-
cies, except indirectly. A better explanation might be that members of
those tribes that were best served by the intellectual (“ratcheting”) as-
sistance of a gamma-male were the ones that survived best.
For example, you would need only one medical doctor who
knows about penicillin to save an Eskimo tribe afflicted for the first
time by influenza to prevent pneumonia from killing off the whole
tribe. Obviously, if prehistoric Tribes “A” and “B” each produced
“doctors” with life-saving information and techniques that Tribes “C”
and “D” didn’t have, the genes of Tribes A and B (which randomly
produced “doctors” 1/8 of the time) would be passed on more readily
than would those of C and D (which perhaps randomly produced
“doctors” only 1/16 of the time), regardless of whether Drs. A and B
passed on their genes to any offspring.
This example may illustrate why Cro Magnon societies survived
and Neandertal societies did not. It seems likely that Neandertals had
plenty of alphas and betas; and they probably had gamma-males as
well. However, the proportion of gammas that infused Neandertal
societies may have been different from that which infused Cro Mag-
non societies (for example, 1/16 instead of 1/8, influenced, perhaps,
by differently evolved ideally sized communities given the contem-
porary climate and living conditions).
If one compares some of the necklaces produced by these two
people (who were contemporaneous at certain points), one finds Cro
Magnon examples made out of bones or teeth that were suspended
from thongs threaded through holes drilled in the materials. Nean-
dertals, on the other hand, wrapped their thongs around grooves that
were inscribed in the materials. Are we to suppose that all Cro Mag-
non men were equally skilled in making such clever, “tasteful” jew-
elry (or creating cave paintings that exhibited more drawing skills
than are available to most modern human beings)? Or did Cro Mag-
non societies survive because of the greater skills of only a few of
their more “talented” members, and Neandertals perish because the
proportion of “super-skilled” members was too low? If so, then all
contemporary human beings owe their very existence to the acceler-
ated powers of the Cro Magnon gamma-males!
Another theory might be that gamma-males acted as tribal triage
officers in determining which children would live and which would
be eaten in a cannibalistic society afflicted, from time to time, by ex-

15
treme limitations on resources. If the smartest survived and the least
clever had to go; and if only the tribal teacher was the best one quali-
fied to make the choice; in 50,000 generations the size of people’s
brains would certainly increase.
Such a possibility sounds “inhuman.” However, human beings
have always been capable of much worse forms of premeditated, fool-
ish, and evil cruelty than animals. Imagine a sudden worldwide ca-
lamity that limited resources to the extent that some would have to
die so that the remainder could have enough food to live. Would our
species, even today, let everyone die? Or would it begin to consume
the least fit? Some reports about the Siege of Leningrad suggest that
cannibalism may someday appear as preventive medicine in unfore-
seen catastrophes.
Evidence to support this grisly theory may include the contempo-
rary practice of drinking imaginary blood to celebrate the sacrifice of
a supreme alpha’s Son who died for the sins of all betas. This ritual
may have carried a legend of our earliest days through Roman times
into our own.
Other evidence includes the ritual cannibalistic practices of West-
ern Hemisphere emerging societies less than 1,000 years old, and
even the fact that human beings are carnivores and other primates are
not.
The Old Testament hints further at the remnants of ruthless, zeal-
ous, and fearful religious entities in its tales of Adam and Eve (and
the snake), as well as Jacob and Isaac and the covenant of circumci-
sion, which established God as the indisputable alpha/gamma-male
of all the Jewish tribes. Jewish men still sacrifice a piece of their alpha
status as part of a covenant that spares their lives. Moreover, why are
laurel wreathes and crowns that bishops place on the heads of kings
shaped like restored foreskins? Could they be symbols of them? (And
what did the oil with which Zadok the Priest anointed Solomon King
really represent?)
Other evidence may include the innate fear of supernatural retri-
bution that human beings seem to have developed, which may illu-
minate the astonishing statistic that, against all scientific reasoning,
more than 90% of Americans say they believe in God. What most are
really admitting is that they’re afraid not to believe in Him.
Finally, today’s educational triage system (through testing),
which allows society, again against all reason (for there are far supe-
rior ways to create a meritocracy), to determine the quality of future
life for millions of people based totally on gamma values; and the ter-
ror that system causes many people, are probably vestiges from the
days when tribal alpha/gammas became god-like in their powers of
life and death over children. Power, as we know, dies hard.
As human evolution proceeded, and as the brain expanded, ex-
treme specialization amongst alpha/betas and gammas probably be-
came less necessary or even possible. Ordinary betas would have
evolved to become more like alpha/gammas, capable of teaching and
following, speaking language and thinking abstract thoughts, and

16
knowingly organizing ideas and behavior as directed by others or as
originated by themselves.
In Jaynes’s sense, people affected by cultural upheavals that shat-
tered tribal cohesion (as happened in Columbine High School) had to
learn to practice both alpha/beta and gamma skills whenever neces-
sary. For example, the same person might need sufficient brainpower
to be able to experience artistic inspiration and do scientific observa-
tions out of a single skull. According to one writer, when these sepa-
rated skills began to fuse (producing a kind of “Necker’s Cube” illu-
sion at first), shamans turned into religious priests, and universal
consciousness as we know it began.
Gammas would have continued to be born in the same propor-
tion as before, continuing the old designations of alphas and gammas
down to our own day when a gamma Archbishop of Canterbury ele-
vates a beta prince of England to the alpha status of a King. Although,
in our own time, virtually any man or woman can become a fair prac-
titioner of either one of Snow’s “two cultures,” the differences be-
tween artists and scientists are still problematic. The two cultures
(one being mostly “rationalizers” and the other mostly “visualizers”)
still don’t really get along. Moreover, the extreme kind of religious or
professional “vocation” that characterizes a predominantly gamma
personality directs the lives of a small minority of human beings that
may equal the number of alpha overachievers in our society. How of-
ten do those two minorities engage in discourse?
Although modern humans can shift between an alpha/beta mo-
dality and a alpha/gamma modality, it’s important to note that such
shifts aren’t necessarily instantaneous or readily controllable. Human
beings simply don’t have sufficient neuronal resources to think both
ways simultaneously; and special skills are needed to make progres-
sive (“ratcheting”) shifts between them.
Unfortunately, there are almost no organized disciplines to teach
these special skills. Most behavior modification systems, for example,
require a gamma to teach a beta. Many are designed to make sure that
a follower has to pay an establishment (to use its space and special
equipment) or a leader (or “guru” to provide coaching and social mo-
tivation). “Hot yoga” (which requires specially heated rooms) and
aerobic exercise classes are good examples of these entrepreneurial
arrangements—as are academically awarded “degrees” from prestig-
ious, and expensive “institutions of higher learning.”
Most of us behave throughout most of our lives as betas. Al-
though we may not realize it or want to accept the idea, the fact is that
our natural form of behavior is usually to follow directions or exam-
ples given to us by a parental “authority figure” or “internalized role
model.” When it comes time to take charge of our own behavior for
reasons of health, for example, we’re hard pressed to make the
change. Thus, most of us will fail when a cardiologist demands that
we “Stop smoking, lose weight, learn to relax, and start an exercise
program!” Success in personal growth (or “self-improvement”) usu-
ally demands a battery of “gamma specialists” providing encourage-

17
ment and feedback. Even then, “lifestyle makeovers” rarely succeed.
The problem is that “gamma specialists” are only too willing to
become “puppetmasters” who assume the parental authority usually
reserved for those who are responsible for training children. Behavior
modification in adults, however, works best when motivated from
within, not from a parent or external puppetmaster. (Theatrical direc-
tors understand this principle, for it explains why they have such dif-
ficulties getting actors to do what they want without using trickery or
“technique”—which is often a form of willing self-deception.) Acting
Well is a solution (based on Stanislavski acting technique) to the di-
lemma created by well-meaning “gamma specialists” (including the-
atrical directors) trying to help people (or actors) help themselves
(which is an oxymoron). As will be discussed in later articles, one of
the hypotheses put forth in this publication assumes that “free will” is
an illusion; while “Liberty,” on the other hand, is not an illusion.
Gammas do best when they try to help others liberate themselves
from their illusions in order to discover their own truer paths.
The “third gene” theory suggests that the only practical approach
to self-improvement is through a continual shifting between one’s
beta modality (the one inspired by impressions and instructions) and
one’s gamma modality (the one that writes down instructions, for ex-
ample, to which one’s beta modality can refer). Only that kind of op-
eration can convert the unconscious beta mode into a conscious alpha
mode. (Although Jaynes flatters us into thinking modern human be-
ings are conscious all the time, actual consciousness continues to oc-
cur only in flashes in any of us, as it probably did in prehistoric
times.)
Since human beings can’t “think” in both modalities at the same
time, most people trying to practice some kind of mental discipline
(or physical discipline that requires motivation) get stuck in one mode
or the other and ultimately fail. In their alpha/beta mode they may be
inspired to win an imaginary race while they jog, for example, until
they realize they may never taste real victory. At that point they may
lose their inspiration and drop out. Alternatively, in their gamma
mode they may practice meditation until they can’t help but get
bored, find themselves unable to concentrate, and give up.
It is not to a paid instructor’s advantage to reveal the truth (if the
instructor knows it!) that is implicit in our genes: namely the fact that
unsupervised human beings can only take control of their habitual,
usually unconscious behavior while in their beta mode by shifting to
a gamma mode to hold (or “ratchet”) any progress, then shifting back
to beta and so on through as many as a dozen repetitions until con-
sciousness elevates the beta mode to alpha-gamma status. This
method is the only effective way to practice contemplative or stress-
reducing exercises, such as meditation, independently, lifelong. More
importantly, it’s the only artificial way to develop what psychologists
call self-efficacy, without which no one can reach the alpha mode and
feel a conscious mastery over life.
When an alpha/gamma supervises a beta, exactly the same alter-

18
nating system is used (for example in a yoga class), except that the
gamma instruction is given by the instructor, and the alternating beta
performance is performed by the beta. Although there is alternation,
the beta never gains control of it and can therefore never attain the
guru’s alpha-gamma level (and therefore not threaten his professional
status or put him out of work!). Although the spiritual alpha-gamma
experience (for example, of “saintliness”) remains tantalizingly out of
reach, the beta may nevertheless feel relaxed, refreshed, and “good”
about becoming the alpha/gamma’s disciple (or, actually, patient un-
dergoing the alpha/gamma’s “healing”). But such psychological reac-
tions do not lead to self-efficacy (that is, “healed status”); and usually
have little to do with Hindu yoga as it is supposed to be practiced, for
example, in India, where alpha/gammas labor for years to create (or
“elevate”) new “healer” alpha/gammas from their student (or “disci-
ple”) betas.
Diet plans, of which there are probably thousands, don’t work
unless they are under an alpha/gamma supervisor; for “diets” are
healing mechanisms that require another person to provide the alter-
nating alpha-gamma feedback without which no healing method (or
recipe book) can work. Therefore, to control one’s weight without go-
ing to a diet doctor, one must learn and practice personal growth
skills that ratchet alpha-gamma alternations to produce the self-
efficacy that alone can properly coordinate eating and exercise habits.
Only such a system can maintain one’s ideal weight.
This kind of information can help anyone who wants to change
lifestyles or affect personal growth, especially cardiac patients for
whom changed behavior may be a life or death decision. However, on
a more international and immediate level, this information may help
to affect current foreign relations between the superpowers.
Now is a particularly crucial time to pay close attention to what’s
happening in Russia, and to recognize the elements of this theory that
can interpret (and possibly influence!) the important changes that are
occurring.
Russia was an alpha-power that suddenly became a beta-power
(some have called it a Third World nation), at which point its sense of
self-efficacy declined. To make matters worse, many Russians now
complain that what used to be a highly “spiritual” society has become
materialistic by surrendering to the unsavory spell of the West.
If Marx was Russia’s gamma, and Stalin (and his successors) were
its alphas, what this complaint really signifies is the fear that, if
American capitalistic theory becomes Russia’s new gamma, America
will always be a dominating alpha nation and Russia a dependent
beta nation. This analysis is probably correct.
What Russia needs most these days is a restored sense of self-
efficacy. Another way to describe “self-efficacy” is to call it by its
more common name: “Liberty.”
Liberty is more than freedom (which is given, not claimed) and
much more than “self-esteem” (which may or may not be justifiable
self-pride). Liberty is consciousness of freedom, and thus it creates an

19
alpha (as opposed to a beta) modality. However, Liberty is always in-
formed by, and subject to, a gamma sensibility (for example, the rule
of law). “Freedom” and “self-esteem” are in the beta modality and are
not subject to a gamma influence. Thus, “freedom” easily slides into
license, and self-esteem into hubris. Independent alpha Liberty, on
the other hand, can slide back into beta dependency (or slavery) if it
isn’t diligently maintained.
“Law and Order” are two principles that alternate alpha/beta
and gamma sensibility. In the United States, alpha “Order” consists of
the police, the Army, and the Executive Branch of government; and
gamma “Law” consists of the Legislative and Judicial Branches of the
government. These surviving institutions from prehistoric alpha/beta
and gamma “separations of Church and State” that go back to pre-
history seem to augur hope for progress in the New Russia. For ex-
ample, the new president, Vladimir V. Putin, has repeatedly stated
that he intends his country to join the Western market while at the
same time establishing new federal regulations to stabilize Russia’s
domestic market. His program sounds like an attempt at rapproche-
ment between alpha and gamma: Law and Order.
The late Anatoly A. Sobchak, former Mayor of St. Petersburg,
who was Putin’s mentor and law professor, compared Putin’s policy
to a combination of Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the first
case America had a clear example of an alpha-male “carrying a big
stick” to establish America’s alpha hegemony in the Western Hemi-
sphere. In the case of FDR it had a compassionate gamma-male caring
for its poorest citizens by casting magical spells with three letter
names like TVA and WPA that were meant to heal the economy. (Of
course, not until World War II, which pushed FDR into becoming the
Head-alpha of the Free World, did the economy really recover.)
Government policies must balance alpha and gamma influences
against each other to prevent an alpha state, for example, from be-
coming an aggressive, imperial autocracy, or a gamma government
from sliding toward a fanatical theocracy or stagnant welfare state.
Putin’s job is to steer a straight course between these hazardous alter-
natives, and his actions indicate that he is aware of that responsibility.
George Soros’s arguments supporting Karl Popper’s theories
about an “Open Society” are one man’s theories of how to interpret
the tension between a fallible, unregulated (alpha) global capitalist
system, and a gamma regulatory system that can hold in place (or
“ratchet”) its progress so that markets can fluctuate inconsequentially
while productivity increases. Such an alpha/gamma balance would
have prevented Russia’s emerging market from going into free-fall, as
it did in October of 1998.
Many regulatory systems can be proposed. However, if the the-
ory of the “third gene” is correct, whether or not any of them will
work will depend on a progressive relationship between alpha insti-
tutions (such as a market) and gamma institutions (such as a regula-
tory system). As in the early hominid societies that evolved into our
own, only when reciprocal alpha and gamma powers are strong and

20
singular can they correct their imperfections. As Soros puts it, “For
the global capitalist system to survive it needs a society that’s con-
stantly striving to correct its deficiencies: a global open society.”
That vision encompasses the political and economic implications
of the “third gene” theory, which views the world in terms of bell-
shaped curves rather than dichotomies. For example, on the one side
are environmental influences; on the other, DNA. In between are hu-
man lives. Thus, also, on the one side are international markets; on
the other, regulators. In between, depending on whether or not there
is a progressive balance, will be a healthy or an ailing global econ-
omy.
Russia clearly needs (and hopefully has gotten) an alpha Man of
Action. [Full disclosure: between 1992 and 1996, my company was a
consultant to the International Committee of the City of St. Peters-
burg, Russia. Vladimir Putin headed that Committee.] However, a
healthy and progressive, evolving human society also needs respon-
sive gamma thinkers to analyze, support, and criticize capable and
imperfect actions.
Liberty is a two-way street; it’s not a one-way ticket. Thus Russia
won’t develop a strong sense of Liberty by means of instructions or
blueprints from the West (for example, from evangelists or “consult-
ants”), or injections of joint venture capital from Western investors, or
charity from Western governments or individuals. All these forms of
assistance are attached to heavy cables of commitment, often in the
form of profits (including interest payments) expected mainly to ac-
crue to those with helping, often greedy, hands.
What the American Revolution established for the first time in the
history of the world, the events of the past decade in Russia can estab-
lish in Eurasia as well: namely the self-efficacy of newly liberated na-
tions, and especially their citizens, at liberty to emerge from beta
status.
We don’t have to do much to support these efforts. America has
done far more for Russia through example than it has through capital
infusion.
Nevertheless, we can do a great deal more than we’ve done. For
the more we cherish Liberty in our own land, as applied to matters
involving health, education, social welfare, equality, market econo-
mies, culture, the environment, and war and peace, the better the
fruits of our own success will provide examples to correct the imper-
fections of emerging foreign institutions. Thoughtful comparisons can
strengthen commitments to Liberty in other nations in this way.
In the meantime, Liberty implies responsibility. Therefore, all na-
tions must join in reciprocal efforts to support mutually self-
correcting institutions.
These ideas aren’t new. They go back to the moment when the
first alpha-male and the first gamma-male acknowledged their mu-
tual dependency.
In that moment, Liberty and human consciousness were born.
Acting Well became possible.

21
 —May 2001

22
 (A Hypothetical Timeline)

The Stone Age began (1.9 million years ago) when Homo habilis
formed small groups who used fire. One man per clan (a unique “fire custo-
dian” genetically determined by a random configuration of three specific
genes) may have been appointed to keep the fire burning.
Around 7,500 generations after that, if there was a Homo erectus fire
custodian, it would have been he who figured out how to make fire, at which
time a “hunting class” could emerge that would leave the custodian behind
to safeguard goods (and women and children) from theft and spoilage. Only
he would have the intellectual means to remember where things were stored,
possibly through mnemonic devices (the first stored symbols) which 100,000
generations later would evolve into written and spoken language.
Around 20,000 generations after that, object-design custodians had fash-
ioned aecheulean tools.
Around 30,000 generations after that, custodians of geographical infor-
mation led Homo erectus out of Africa.
Around 45,000 generations after that, ceremonial custodians were
painting the human and animal skins of Homo neandertalensis, arranging
marriages, conducting funerals and initiation rituals, and exposing geneti-
cally challenged babies (or seeing to it they didn’t thrive—a form of genetic
engineering).
Around 11,000 generations after that, Homo sapiens were storing in-
formation in body-painted symbols, and custodians were able to communi-
cate with one another through proto-language (a non-syntactical form of
speech that was taught by a custodian master only to a post-puberty disci-
ple—since no one under age 13 could speak). This practice created (in the
custodians only) the first “consciousness” that was characterized by a “sense
of unique self.” Non-custodian adults and children (who, although by this
time had been named, always sensed themselves as part of the clan) could
sing words, as we might sing “Adeste Fideles” not knowing exactly what the
words mean.
Around 6,000 generations after that (10,000 years ago), as a result of
continuous genetic engineering, non-custodian Homo sapiens (and their
secular rulers) had learned to speak and were therefore conscious and able to
teach their children how to speak. Custodians no longer had unique intellec-
tual powers, although some of the more formidable ones long gone were still
assigned supernatural powers as gods. Civilizations became possible.

Brain Theory and Stanislavski

The conceptual basis of Acting Well is as much a heresy confront-
ing today’s conventional science and health industries as
Stanislavski’s acting “System” was to the conventional theatre of his

23
day—and for the same reasons.
To act truly, with real feelings, “from the heart,” as they say, your
technique must be effective regardless of whether or not other actors
or directors agree with how you play the role. In other words, your
technique either works for you or it doesn’t. If it does, “You can’t ar-
gue with success!”
When circumnavigation of the globe finally proved that the Earth
was round, the telling fact was not the implied spherical shape of the
planet (for no one ever saw an actual photograph of Earth until the
beginning of the Space Age). The proof was the ability to acquire sal-
able merchandise from around the world more cheaply by water than
overland. It was commercial interests that put the flat-earth theory
out of business; not a change in how people visualized the earth—
which was as a cloudless, spherical image no more accurate than a
dream.
Today, there’s an equivalent struggle between scientific forces
promoting a theoretical basis of nature formulated according to
“what’s always been understood,” and the more courageous forces
that withhold judgment until every slight deviation from the expected
has been accounted for, and the premise of every argument has been
proved again and again. This latter form of scientific method has pro-
duced spectacular results, whereas dependence on received truth has
produced nothing new.
The relationship between a heretical scientific method and the
Stanislavski System is not accidental. Both systems prevail because
their respective methods to discover “truth” (and to struggle against
error) circumscribe the same limitation on the process of human
thought. This limitation is the brain’s tendency to abbreviate and
condense perceptions, recognitions, and memories from full sensory
presentations into “symbolic” images, words, and ideas (that is,
“nouns”). This process can dictate a kind of “shorthand” that’s so use-
ful that some people lose the ability to recognize the real thing when
it’s “spelled out.”
Since this condensing method of thinking is as ubiquitous as wa-
ter is prevalent to a fish, many scientists ignore it. Actors in the mod-
ern theatre must deal with it, however, if they expect audiences to be-
lieve them.
Thus, in the Stanislavski System, the “action” (that is, the “verb,”
not the “noun”) prevails. Character descriptions are arbitrary and of
minor importance. Hamlet may be tall or short. His coat may be
white, black, or colored. He was a prince, but he could have been the
brother of the former king instead of his son. His circumstances are
relatively unimportant (although knowing what they are may be ex-
tremely helpful to an actor in cases where they suggest interesting
ways of doing things).
The central actions in Hamlet’s play (which may be, for example,
to avoid choosing whether to surrender to his life circumstances or
kill himself), summed up in the famous words “To be or not to be,”
denote verbs, not nouns. If some actors choose to play more idiosyn-

24
cratic central actions (such as whether or not Hamlet should kill his
stepfather), they wouldn’t be wrong. What works works. “You can’t
argue with success.”
The point is that Shakespeare’s words don’t enumerate the ac-
tions; they imply them. Therefore, they’re sometimes ambiguous.
Nevertheless, in the theatre, the actions are all-important, although
they may seem to be absent from the script. That condition, and the
actor’s need to re-ignite a verb from an ash-like noun, is the opposite
of the process that governs how the brain perceives, recognizes, and
remembers through constant condensation.
Therefore, one of the most fascinating moments in the life of any
actor is the moment it dawns on a new student of the Stanislavski
System exactly what an “action” is. Practically since birth, the student
has been hearing and using the word “action” as if it were the most
common thing in the world. Yet the moment the “reality hits” of what
Stanislavski meant (most often through the conscious choice of an ac-
tion that propels the actor into total “belief”), the actor’s understand-
ing of an “action” as the refinement of a skill (rather than a descrip-
tion of the impression the actor might make on an audience, for ex-
ample) becomes permanent.
Actors have reported this watershed experience many times (as
did Aristotle, of course, in his famous definition of tragedy as the
“imitation of an action...”). The idea is central to Acting Well.
_________________________________

The word “action” itself is a noun that describes a skill that can-
not fully be described by a noun. It is therefore a common practice for
acting teachers schooled in Stanislavski technique to force their stu-
dents to reduce a character’s intention to an infinitive verb.
“What’s the character’s objective?” they’ll ask. “I want you to give
it to me as an infinitive: to please, to grovel, to humiliate—that sort of
thing.”
The teacher may think that the lesson is to teach the actor to move
from the “general” to the “specific” by insisting on using the infinitive
form (for example, trying “to dominate” instead of conjuring a more
general idea—or “pose”—of “domination”). What really happens,
however, is that the actor’s brain is transferring from nouns to verbs,
which is a process not unlike traveling on a motorcycle, for example,
from an address listed in a telephone directory to the actual building
located at the address. This transference from looking up an address
to accelerating a motorcycle makes all the difference in the world to
an actor. It transfers attention from an intellectual description to the
activation of a skill.
_________________________________

Nouns are like addresses of buildings. Verbs (or actions) are like
the buildings themselves. Thus, nouns often carry baggage with them
having nothing to do with the “actualities” to which they point. It’s as
if the address “8990 King’s Highway” were located in a tiny trailer

25
park where none of the inhabitants had ever seen the “King,” much
less been a king. Why do human beings tolerate a universal address
system in which such absurd disparities aren’t even considered
funny? It’s because the address system we generally use reflects (be-
cause it’s based on) the same addressing system that prevails in the
human brain. The system is as ubiquitous as is water to a fish.
If you stare through water in order to see water, you’ll never real-
ize that you can swim! Thus, actors are often the only professionals to
figure out how to choose and exercise the right skills to play the
game.
The idea behind Acting Well proposes the hypothesis that “per-
ceptions” are composed of a number of neuronal groups (or “col-
umns”) in the cerebral cortex that fire simultaneously (in “column
combinations”) providing a system of addresses that the brain uses to
locate (or “associate”) the building blocks (called “referents”) of all
perceptions, recognitions, and memories. These referents (which rep-
resent elements such as colors, horizontal stripes, aural frequencies,
etc.) tend to be located in the parts of the brain where the direct sig-
nals from the sensory organs terminate. “Associative columns” con-
tain the addresses that hook the referents together.
The “doings” of the world that we observe are all verbs—all “ac-
tions.” The “addresses” in our head, on the other hand, are all
“nouns.” Even the verbs we use in language are descriptions; for lan-
guage can’t “act.”
The process goes something like this:
When information goes from the retina, for example, to the oc-
cipital lobe (to which the retina “reports”), it travels on to the “work-
ing memory,” which either ignores the signals or signals back to the
signaling neurons, which, in turn signal back to the working memory
(looping in a diminishing manner modulated by neurotransmitters
like echoes in a reverberant room). This system can keep the image or
sound in the working memory long enough to be identified (or dis-
missed).
The process is not unlike the method whereby letters are sorted
into post office bins according to a five-digit zip code, except that the
process contains much more vertical and lateral redundancy, and
many more possibilities, than a zip code (which, by the way, repeats,
in a different format, redundant information contained in the address
lines above it).
A “match” is made when a signal from any part of the “address”
refers back to an originating referent (like party guests arriving and
pressing the right button in an apartment lobby when the host is wait-
ing upstairs to hear a doorbell in the apartment to which the button is
connected). The referent neurons signal back to the signaling column
combination (like “buzzing” open the downstairs front door); and
this back and forth signaling creates a kind of reverberance (which
the neuroscientist Gerald Edelman calls “looping”), which is “pow-
ered” and “modulated” by neurotransmitters, and which causes a
moment of “consciousness” that would, in this case, be called “recog-

26
nition.” When the reverberant “buzz” is routed through certain areas
of the brain (like many guests filling a party), we become “conscious”
of referent activity, which means that we become “aware of” the ref-
erents. In this context, the neurotransmitters behave like guests. If
they don’t leave quickly enough, they can keep the “buzz” buzzing
longer than desirable, even when no further guests are arriving at the
building to ring up from “downstairs.”
Only a reverberant, looping “buzz” can initiate “consciousness.”
Thus, “consciousness” cannot happen independently within the eye,
for example (which is as “unconscious” as the eye of a corpse), or at
the retina, or within the occipital lobe, or even in the column combi-
nations. It’s a process, not an event—a concatenation of skills, if you
like. Consciousness is thus a verb, not a noun. For this reason, an ac-
tion inspired by the Stanislavski System can spring to life at the mere
sound or thought of a verbal infinitive, while it will tend to remain
stillborn when restricted to the mental image stimulated by a noun or
adjective.
_________________________________

What happens if an entirely new image falls on the retina that an

individual has never seen before?
The same matching process would prevail, except that (in some
cases) the “address” determined in the working memory might lead
to a column combination that hasn’t yet been connected or “as-
signed.” The process would be like discovering a recently constructed
building in which no one ever lived.
The same reverberant “buzz” would occur; but the effect (or
“emotion”) felt in consciousness of a suddenly activated connection
would not be one of “recognition.” It would carry with it the feeling
of a “new perception.”
As column combinations are constantly being assigned, each one
bears an address that’s different from the one before. The referents,
however (analogous to references to the address numbers, the street,
the neighborhood, etc.) are never “virginal”; they always preexist. It
follows, then, that all our memories are prefabricated before our ex-
periences occur.
A memory is “hooked up” to the appropriate address of a specific
column combination, providing there are sufficient columns available
to “house” it. If there aren’t, then we can’t remember the memory.
(Therefore, we often need to repeat certain incoming information sev-
eral times before we can remember it—until, that is, we can assign its
proper address.) In a similar manner, in most American cities, a post
office can usually determine what the address of a new building will
be long before the building goes into construction. Occasionally, of
course—for example, in Tokyo—it cannot.
Some people may be uncomfortable with the implications of this
hypothesis. “How can memories be formed before the experiences oc-
cur to form them?” The idea seems preposterous—in any case, a her-
esy against the prevailing theories of how we think. Yet, to someone

27
used to the concept, the opposite idea—that memories are entirely
new, made our of intellectual entities (as opposed to being made out of
sensual referents)—seems like arguing that we all live on a flat Earth
that is circled daily by the stars.
How can you explain “imagination” without pre-existing refer-
ents? Where would you get the “memories” that compose “imagina-
tion” otherwise? Could they form themselves? If so, how could you
discern what’s real and what’s fantasy?
This hypothesis helps explain such phenomena as hypnosis, ra-
tionalizations, and false memory syndrome. How can someone be so
convinced that something happened that never actually happened,
even though drugs, “brainwashing,” or other means of stressful in-
timidation caused a person to remember an event, in great detail, that
clearly never happened? The answer is that if all memories pre-exist,
then it’s obvious that many influences other than actual experiences
can activate them and make someone believe them “with all their
heart.” Thus, you have an explanation for the “true believers” for
whom faith in supernatural events (like alien abductions, miracles,
divine visitations, outer body, or “near-death” experiences) is resolute
and unshakable. You also have the complete and exonerating defense
of the Passion of Michael Jackson, whose boy accuser insistently de-
nied that anything had happened until his father had a dentist-
colleague inject him with a hypnotic drug, after which time the boy
recanted.
The column combination hypothesis is also compatible with the
effects of the Stanislavski System, which prevailing theories are not. It
explains why the Stanislavski System “always works” as an acting
technique (regardless of whether a particular performance is any
good—which is an entirely different question), as opposed to the
more mannered techniques (for example, of the Comédie-Française)
that only sometimes come to life in an “inspired” manner. It also ex-
plains why Acting Well always works, and why other systems (such
as typical diet programs), dependent on prevailing brain theory, work
long-term only some of the time, usually less than a placebo effect
would predict.
_________________________________

If a squirrel were perched at the side of a curving road, frozen in

place, trying to decide whether to move toward or away from my
speeding bicycle as I approach it; when I see the squirrel, here’s what
probably happens in my particular brain, according to the hypothesis:
My working memory matches sensory input from my retina to
my frontal cortex, looking, first of all (I think) for “things that go too
fast to catch and eat” (which might be the first number of the “zip
code”). Finding that designation, the next two matches might be to (2)
“things from which I don’t have to run, because” (3) “they’re too
small to fear.” The next match might be “Things I’d enjoy fondling,”
and so forth.
Note, first, that my “address” for a “posing squirrel” (which

28
would be quite different from my address for a running squirrel—
which isn’t as “cute”) is entirely idiosyncratic. It’s unlikely that an-
other human brain would categorize a posing squirrel the way I do
(although it’s certainly possible).
Secondly, note that my “address” designations are verbs (which
denote skills) not nouns (which are abbreviations or “symbols” of ex-
periences that involve skills). I don’t (and no one else does either!)
categorize squirrels according to “shape,” “color,” “size,” or any of
the usual suspects on which most neuroscientists depend. I use des-
ignations that tell me things like (1) is there any danger to avoid? (2)
Can I eat it? and (3) Can I make love to it? The answers appear, either
positively or negatively, within milliseconds, and in terms of verbs
that represent positive or negative skills (“I can’t catch it”) not nouns
(“It’s brown”).
In the primitive jungle, there’s no time or reason to notice descrip-
tions of animals! The whole “abbreviation” matching process (and
“consciousness,” which depends on it) is present in mammals (it isn’t
needed in plants) because mammals move around so much that they
can constantly get into trouble. Therefore, they need a system to alert
them first to danger, and then to food, sex, etc. The brain provides
that excellent alarm system.
Therefore, the column combination hypothesis doesn’t permit
“free willpower.” You’ll always do what you’ve always done in a
comparable situation—and you’d better do it fast if you want to sur-
vive! If you have to make a novel choice in unfamiliar territory, you’ll
break down the possible actions into their most familiar parts and act
according to the sum of those parts. The seminal work of Benjamin
Libet, which demonstrates these conjectures (and which is still hotly
debated by some less enlightened proponents of prevailing theories
of the brain), provided a clear rejection of an entire race’s belief that
human beings could have “free will” (and therefore “willpower”) de-
spite the obvious implication that if human beings had to cogitate be-
fore every action, our race would have gone extinct eons ago. In a
sense, Libet delivered the first proof that “flat-earth psychology” is
incorrect. He showed that our actions precede our intentions; and
that, therefore, our assumptions that we “will” ourselves to do things
before we do them is never more than a rationalization. “Libet’s
Paradox” explains exactly why, when an actor “wills” an action
rather than “sets up” the action, the result will be that the actor gets
criticized for “indicating,” or “going for results.”
The Stanislavski System, then, and Acting Well, which is based
on it, closely approximate the manner in which the brain interprets
input from sensory organs. The actor matches the playwright’s words
against primitive needs to know whether a character needs to exercise
the proper skills to escape danger, eat, make love, and so on. These
questions reduce to idiosyncratic, doable or non-doable verb infini-
tives and skills, rather than passively descriptive, “standard” nouns
and adjectives. Actors are less interested, therefore, in abbreviated
concepts like “mind,” “spirit,” “soul,” “real self,” and so forth, which

29
are highly refined symbols that have lost—if they ever possessed—
the actual childhood perceptions on which they were originally
based. They have become mere zip codes (like 10021 or 90210) instead
of the great monuments to glamour and parklands where moguls
ruled and children played that these postal designations were pro-
grammed to represent.
Therefore, such words have as little value to an actor (regardless
of their value to a “believer”) as they have to a scientist.
_________________________________

The hypothesis disregards the importance of neurotransmitters,

which some prevailing neuroscientists consider essential to such phe-
nomena as emotions, for example. Neurotransmitters are probably
only by-products of neural transmissions, which seem to reverberate,
because of the neurotransmitters, in a diminishing manner (like the
sounds of a majestic organ in an acoustically reverberant cathedral).
Thus, it isn’t dopamine that causes addiction, which seems to be the
prevailing idea. Heroin is the culprit that makes us aware of eupho-
ria. Dopamine only smoothes out the euphoric sensations (which isn’t
a small thing; you can certainly play around with neurotransmitters
in powerful ways—some good, some extremely ill advised).
Secondly, the hypothesis cuts through the whole “problem of
consciousness” like a hot knife through butter. Some scientists con-
sider consciousness one of the most difficult problems in science.
However, there’s “consciousness” and there’s “consciousness.” As
things happen to you, your sensory organs send signals to neurons
throughout your brain. You can be “aware” of this “processing” at
any time; but usually the information just flows (or doesn’t flow)
through your working memory a single time, in which case you nei-
ther notice nor remember it. This primitive form of “consciousness” is
probably available to any ambulatory creature. What makes humans
special is the elaborateness of the system to match incoming informa-
tion with pre-existing column combinations that can re-evoke the in-
coming information (as if an event were occurring repeatedly). This
recurring “buzz” is what separates humans from birds, for example.
It’s sometimes called “higher consciousness.” Among other things, it
causes us to “feel” things, such as emotions. These emotions are
“matched” to certain areas of the brain that, when stimulated, cause
us to feel one specific emotion (or “qualia”) rather than another.
“Higher consciousness” is one of these emotions. Among other
things, it’s a feeling of owning a thought (or “self-hood”). Whatever
else we may believe it to be, consciousness is nothing more than an
emotion.
Finally, the “buzz” of consciousness occurs at various frequen-
cies, which are thought to carry information in themselves. Probably
the only important thing about “frequency” is the value of its repeti-
tion. You can’t have “qualia” without “frequency.” Once you have
frequency, however, you can definitely feel and think—regardless of
how fast or slow the buzz buzzes.

30
 _________________________________

Enter most parents, teachers, play directors, nutritionists, physical

therapists, personal trainers, authors, gurus, doctors, experts, consult-
ants, advisors, authorities, clergy, and self-helpers, all of whom claim
to know “the way,” and all of whom are only too eager to share their
secrets, providing you submit to their systems and theories, and (usu-
ally) pay them.
They can’t all be right, of course; for each one tends to contradict
or supplant the previous one. Thus, the abstinent yogi condemns the
self-made millionaire’s book on how to achieve great wealth and
happiness; or the high-protein expert decries the all-carbohydrate
guru; or the 5-minutes-per-month-1,000-pound-weight-lifting-expert
makes the daily aerobics advocate sound like a time-waster. Finally, if
you bought and ate only a single sample of all the cures and nostrums
in the average health food store, your stomach would rupture in less
than a day.
Stanislavski was not that kind of trainer. His goal was to liberate,
not enslave his students to a System. (You’ll find a similar disparity
between the “Method Acting” of Lee Strasberg, and the more useful,
though less brilliant, training theories of Stella Adler, who was the
only American acting teacher to study with Stanislavski.) Acting Well
seeks no less to liberate, although its method can be reduced to a few
simple rules that must be followed. However, the rules of Acting
Well conform to the column combination hypothesis of how the brain
works, not to the prevailing theory that the brain is a tabula rasa to be
programmed by rehearsing positive life experiences or absorbing the
accounts of brilliant teachers.
Thus, in Acting Well, instructions are presented in terms of verbs
and skills, not nouns and perceptions, just as Stanislavski’s actors are
warned not to “go for results” (or “indicate”). What actors do, they’re
supposed to do while “thinking” as little as possible. (Thus fine actors
are rarely aware of how well they’re doing while doing it.) Actors
don’t present themselves as perfect impersonators, but submit to the
character roles they portray. Furthermore, they don’t aim to serve an
author, director, play, audience, god, or even an abstract character.
They try to serve exactly what the character they portray would serve.
That is, they try to serve themselves if their character is self-serving,
or they try to serve God if their character is Joan of Arc. They don’t let
themselves become puppets in the hands of a puppetmaster who
would animate them as if they were dead meat at the end of a net-
work of strings.
Outside direction is unreliable, and compliance to it is low; for the
actor who submits to it must serve two masters: (1) the director, and
(2) the self whom the director would direct. Self-motivation, on the
other hand, when efficiently and honestly generated, is always com-
pliant. It doesn’t have to serve a master, and is therefore the easiest
and only way out—which is an important reason why the
Stanislavski System—and Acting Well—always works.

31
 There are puppetmasters everywhere. Some of them, like
overzealous parents, combine good and loving intentions with poor
judgment, experience, and methods. Other puppetmasters are purely
evil. They would take everything from you as part of an ultimate plan
to take over the world. All puppetmasters are dangerous, for they
would neutralize your humanity and make you an instrument or
condensation of their theory, usually demanding an exchange of
power or money.
You are the only human being who can motivate your perform-
ance. As long as you concentrate on your actions, improve your skills,
know what you’re doing, understand why you’re doing it, and take
responsibility for what will happen as a result of your actions, you’ll
maintain a solid control of your destiny. If you fail to concentrate; if
you fail to wake up from your constant naturally occurring reveries
and dreams, even for a single day, you’ll either remain enslaved to
bad habits, or become a puppet to someone else’s benign or evil
machinations.
Therefore, if you’re overweight, you must come to understand,
over the next few weeks, months, and years, that the reason you’re
overweight is that you’ve become a victim of the incorrect theories of
flat-earth psychology. False memories have been activated in your
brain at various times and for various reasons, some of them well-
intentioned (as when parents urge their children to “eat everything
on your plate!”), and some of them products of unmitigated and un-
forgivable evil (as is the selling of over-sugared commercial products
through advertising media to which children should never be ex-
posed).
During the course of Acting Well, you must begin to activate new
column combinations that will (eventually) take the place of the
harmful ones now in place. If you believe, for example, that “variety
is important” in creating diet and exercise regimens, you must replace
that concept, for it is harmful. If you believe that “quick weight loss”
(for example, 2 pounds per week) is superior to “slow weight loss”
(for example, 2 pounds per month), you must replace that concept, for
it is harmful. If you believe that “most days of the week” can compose
a feasible schedule for exercise, then you must replace that concept,
for it is harmful. If you believe that counting calories or “fat grams,”
choosing a “goal weight,” or practicing “fitness yoga” and watching
workout videos are good for you, you must reduce your respect for
those activities, for they can be harmful. Acting Well is a system to
replace unhealthy column combinations—which, over time, can be le-
thal—with healthy column combinations that may extend your life
and improve its quality, especially as you get older.
Thus, Acting Well isn’t about diet, exercise, or stress reduction.
It’s about a process, usually called “retraining,” that begins in earnest
after you’ve lost the weight you need to lose, not before or during. It’s
after you’ve proven that Acting Well works for you that you’ll realize
how extensively it works, through many different areas of your life,
whether those areas are physical, emotional, medical, or involve your

32
relationships at work or with people you love.
Remember that a puppet is a dead issue. It wears a motley cos-
tume and purports to be a male or female human being. Nevertheless,
it’s wooden. Its entire reality can be fully describable scientifically, ex-
clusively from nouns and adjectives. Therefore, beware of scientists!
They may beguile; but they also kill; and they can cost a lot of money!
You, on the other hand, are a bundle of verbs, adverbs, and skills;
using real and symbolic tools; and faced with obstacles in your quest
to realize your ultimate goals: which are to stay alive, eat well, love
well, work well, have fun, and, if possible, develop products with
your brain that may benefit the world to come.
Act well!

Static and Dynamic Theories of the Brain

For a long time, neuroscientists speculating about the workings of
the brain assumed that human beings started their adult life with all
the brain cells they would ever have.
Although they knew that other cells throughout the body, from
blood to bones to skin (even to the heart, it now appears) constantly
renewed themselves, scientists continued to accept the prevailing
theory that human brain cells were permanent from birth.
It was partly because of the devastating, irreparable damage done
to the brain by strokes and injuries that scientists assumed that the
brain’s structure was as immutable as Humpty-Dumpty. Once neu-
rons died or got disconnected it seemed as if they could never be re-
placed or reassembled.
What was worse was that some neuroscientists were telling peo-
ple that once the brain is formed, some its cells die off daily (which is
true), leading to an inevitable and irreversible mental deterioration
that comes to everyone with age.
Of course, you began your adult life with billions of brain cells.
Even if you lost 50,000 neurons a day, it would take you six thousand
years to lose every cell. Nevertheless, losing even a small percentage
of your brain matter every day will undoubtedly add up—unless the
cells can be replaced. Some doctors therefore used to explain the men-
tal deterioration that afflicts many (but not all!) elderly people by cit-
ing the constant loss of brain cells as people grow older.
This theory of a static brain was officially confirmed first in 1958
(and eagerly promoted for the next 40 years) by Dr. Pasko Rakic of
Yale University, a neuroscientist investigating whether new brain
cells formed in embryonic monkey brains.
He saw no evidence for “neurogenesis” in monkeys (or, by exten-
sion, in humans) despite the fact that another scientist, Jesse Conel,
had published eight volumes of research based on more than four-
million measurements (made between 1939 and 1967) of the brains of
children who had died between birth and six years of age. Conel’s
data suggested that neurogenesis regularly occurred in these chil-

33
dren’s brains.
When Dr. Conel died, several of his cardboard boxes (which con-
tained the largest database ever collected on the developing human
cerebral cortex) were salvaged by William Rodman Shankle (then of
Boston University and now a neurologist at the University of Califor-
nia at Irvine). Dr. Shankle, by that time, had the advantage of being
able to use computers to measure the exact numbers of cells in
Conel’s data in order to establish that, in human adults, the location
of higher brain functions stem from arrays of approximately one-
million vertical columns of approximately 100,000 neurons each in the
cerebral cortex.
Dr. Shankle and his colleagues further established that the num-
ber of neurons in each square millimeter of tissue rises by a third from
birth to three months as new columns are added. The number of neu-
rons then plummets back to birth level between three and 15 months.
At that point, the number increases rapidly, doubling by the age of 72
months. It probably continues to increase, although more slowly, up
to the age of 18 or 21—which coincides, of course, with the maturing
of a teenager’s personality. Finally, the brain continues to add new
neurons, probably until death.
No one knows exactly how many cells are added daily, but Dr.
Shankle’s opinion is that the number of cells added per day equals the
number that of cells that die each day. In that case, the net effect
would be zero.
Unfortunately, the facts established by Dr. Shankle and his col-
leagues conflicted with the theories of Dr. Rakic—who, perhaps be-
cause he was older, or from a more distinguished academic institu-
tion, was more powerful in the field. Rakic was therefore able to
block, for many years, the publication of any scientific papers that
contradicted his theories.
However, in 1998, another scientist, Dr. Elizabeth Gould, man-
aged to publish her findings that new brain cells formed continuously
in the hippocampus of Macaque monkeys. Rakic immediately at-
tacked her experiments as irrelevant as far as higher brain functions
were concerned. “Even reptiles have a hippocampus,” he argued.
However, he predicted that no neurogenesis would be discovered in
the cerebral cortex of a monkey’s brain.
A year later, Gould proved him wrong again, this time conclu-
sively. She and her colleagues had already proved that new cells form
constantly in the center of the brain that migrate to the hippocampus.
This time she proved that new neurons also migrate to the cerebral
cortex and other areas of the brain that involve thinking and emo-
tions.
How could Rakic be so sure of himself, and so wrong, that he
managed to hold back the science of the brain for decades?
Gould suggested several methodological explanations for his er-
rors: her injected cell dyes (which revealed neurogenesis) penetrated
much further into tissue sections than Rakic’s; she sacrificed her ani-
mals much closer to the time they were injected (Rakic waited from 3

34
months to 6 years before he sacrificed 3/4 of the dozen animals he in-
jected); and Gould didn’t use pregnant animals. All of the animals
Rakic used were pregnant females that may have been producing
hormones that inhibited neurogenesis.
Perhaps it didn’t matter to Rakic whether or not the adult human
brain could regenerate. It shouldn’t matter one way or the other for
any scientist that wants you to be a free individual, capable of making
choices that are in your best self-interest.
However, for anyone or any group that wants you to obey their
orders, take their medicine, vote for their candidate, worship their
gods, agree with their theories, follow their moral order, or buy their
goods and services, it matters enormously.
For scientists like Dr. Rakic, the model of a static brain that never
regenerates is the safest theory to champion; any other theory might
challenge his position as a role model (or parental figure) in his field.
That is, Rakic apparently wants to be what many doctors, scientists,
and some parents struggle or connive to become: namely, a “pup-
petmaster.” His science demonstrates a propensity to regard human
beings as objects to be manipulated—not necessarily by him, but by
anyone who (because of academic degrees, power, “success,” or other
honors) goes into battle in order to best explicate (which is to say,
provide correct information about) human nature.
This tendency may be one of the “complex adaptive systems” in-
born in human beings that (at least according to Dr. Shankle) may in-
volve a few of an adult’s million neuronal columns, some of which
are preprogrammed in such a way as to get parents to treat young
children like puppets so that they will “behave” by the time they
reach adulthood and have children of their own.
If your brain was a static tabula rasa (or empty slate) at the time
you were born; and if your personality (or your “mind”) formed
gradually but permanently out of connections influenced by your
parents, teachers, and peers; then who could object to anyone trying
to influence you to make this or that choice once you’ve become an
adult—by which time all your character choices are formed and un-
changeable, except for those changes that might be brokered by new
information?
You’re a big boy or girl now, and therefore you can presumably
take every piece of advice, from whatever source, with your own
grain of salt.
Under this theory, new information is a valuable resource that
expands your Constitutionally guaranteed repertoire of choices. (Isn’t
that the familiar argument of cigarette and firearms manufacturers?)
Unfortunately, having a free and “independent mind” is only
possible if the brain that the “mind” inhabits is static. Dynamic brain
theory presents a different picture—one in which there’s no such
thing as a “mind”; only the actions perpetrated by an unconscious
brain that may be infrequently observed about 10 milliseconds after
the actions it promulgates occur by a weak and constantly rumbling-
tumbling consciousness.

35
 This theory (called the “Birdsong Hypothesis” in a later article)
proposes that human beings are born without “willpower.” To over-
come this considerable handicap, parents “guide” children in order to
promote “good habits”; and “puppetmasters” provide further infor-
mation and directions for later development once they believe “will-
power” has been firmly established. Konstantin Stanislavski, on the
other hand, worked with actors, who (being human) knew they
lacked the ability throughout their lives to “will” their characters (as
well as themselves) to behave according to a playwright’s instruc-
tions. Providing a better substitute for “puppetmaster direction,”
Stanislavski called the products of his system “techniques.” Acting
Well is based on some of those techniques.
What if your personality and the choices you make aren’t estab-
lished permanently by the time you reach adulthood? What if they
never stop developing until you die? What if the influences that try to
get you to do things don’t just reform connections between symbols
and ideas somehow represented in your head, but activate actual
brain tissue in order to create new bits of a “new you” by means of
such heroic efforts as the attention-grabbing special effects and con-
stant repetition of television advertising?
In that case, the authors of any billboard or magazine advertise-
ment you see would actually “own” a piece of real estate in your
brain!
What if Adolph Hitler’s speeches could have made you (yes you!)
into a good Nazi?—not just by rearranging symbols and ideas you’ve
had since childhood, but by forming entirely new parts of an entirely
new personality that was capable of looking the other way while mil-
lions of human beings were labeled subhuman and slaughtered?
The world would have to go to war to confront such a society!
Indeed, World War II wasn’t fought against Adolph Hitler; it was a
war against the German people, a majority of whom legitimatized the
reasonable-sounding policies of an “Aryan” nation in which every-
one’s ego was to be submerged into the greater good of “the State.”
How was it possible that a majority of entire populations of sev-
eral European countries could countenance barbaric ideas and behav-
ior, much less willingly participate? If the individuals within those
populations came of age before the Nazis took power, why didn’t
their moral, religious, and educational upbringings inoculate them
against National Socialism’s unscrupulous manipulations?
The answer is that, if the brain itself can be altered under the right
circumstances, then the Nazis didn’t have to manipulate whatever ex-
isted in people’s psyches; they could actually create new psyches: per-
son by person, bit by bit, neuron by neuron.
Allied propaganda (for example, in popular American films of
the period) showed the brutal faces of Nazism: the interrogations, the
shootings, and the ruthless exercise of power. However, the Nazis’
propaganda showed the bright faces of young athletes, the pomp and
circumstance of state, and the soldiers’ and sportsmen’s bravery.
Most of the people who saw these images loved them.

36
 Given the Nazis’ totalitarian control of the media and other social
forces, the majority of their populations could not resist their cunning.
In other words, it wasn’t soldiers pointing guns that forced the people
to acquiesce to barbaric behavior. Persuasion literally altered people’s
brains.
You can only explain the horrors of the Nazi era if you accept the
idea that human brains and what they do are created not just once, at
birth, but continuously, throughout life; and that it’s possible for good
or evil influences to create saints or demons on a huge scale given the
clever use of marketing tools such as propaganda, speechmaking, ad-
vertising, and publicity.
This idea is a huge indictment against the common notions that
every human being has an eternal mind or soul that remains unique,
good, and constant throughout its life; that our souls are created and
protected by God; and that they persist after death. The resistance
against overthrowing these common notions is certainly part of the
resistance against a dynamic theory of the brain, the ramifications of
which cut through every aspect of life as we know it.
If a dynamic theory of the brain is correct, then we the People
should be continuously enraged by religious, political, scientific, edu-
cational, and commercial forces that would recreate parts of us to
their benefit—usually financially.
The fact that fierce competition is encouraged in democratic coun-
tries saves America from the most harmful forms of totalitarianism.
Nevertheless, all of us are subject, daily, to malignant and benign
forms of manipulation that, willy-nilly, form our character and “make
up our minds.” These manipulations affect the wisest and most intel-
ligent members of our population, not just the most naive and gulli-
ble. That is, they affect us all, not just statistical populations represent-
ing the most ignorant, “unwashed” portions of “the public.”
When Gould’s paper was published establishing the likelihood of
adult human neurogenesis, some scientists called her findings “para-
digm shifting.” It appears, however, that the paradigm, if it has
shifted at all, has been shifting slowly, probably because of the persis-
tent nature of static brain theory, which originated before the dawn of
history, and which is likely to die hard.
For example, back in the days of Aristotle, philosophers were ex-
plaining consciousness as a kind of witnessing of shadows on the
walls of caves. That idea, which obviously conjures up the need for a
witness to watch the moving shadows, has persisted down to our
day, when some scientists still insist that the brain is something like a
television screen, projecting sensory and other data to a “real self” (or
“mind”) that witnesses it.
The idea that there’s a homunculus (a “little man”) inside our
brain that watches the screen was discredited long ago. Nevertheless,
a static brain theory will tend to support the idea that permanent
brain neurons act like the pixels of a television screen, turning on or
off according to information sent to them from other places.
This model of the brain makes it difficult to explain conscious-

37
ness. If there were such a thing as a homunculus (such as a “mind,” a
“soul,” a “spirit,” an “ego,” a “real self,” or an “immortal” entity) it
would be that entity that is ultimately conscious. However, if there’s
no homunculus, what’s conscious in us? A television screen itself is
obviously not conscious; for the pixels, which are formed at “birth,”
are constantly reused. None of them “care” what comes on or goes
off.
In a dynamic theory of the brain, rather than regarding the brain
as a television screen, the brain would be thought of as being more
like a camera. The eyes (for example) would be lenses that send in-
formation to the neurons. However, the neurons would not be
thought of as a “screen.” They would be regarded as being more like
a roll of film, sections of which are exposed, developed, saved (in
something like a photo album) in order, occasionally, to be reviewed.
It’s possible that some sections of film that aren’t “exposed” may be
discarded in order to be replaced (through neurogenesis) with new
film stock that (because of a Darwinian process) may be more likely to
be useful and therefore survive.
In a static brain theory, the “screen” belongs to the “viewer.”
Whatever is on it flits by from time to time, always different, belong-
ing to no one.
Obviously, your television set belongs to you; but the screen is
dark until you turn it on. Who, then, “owns” those flickering images
on your television screen? You may say you own them as long as you
watch them (or bring them back through a memory process, in the
manner that a VCR recalls a program); but the images are so ephem-
eral that your sense of ownership seems irrelevant.
One advantage of a dynamic brain theory is that no homunculus
is required to view your photo album. Every memory may be refer-
enced (pointed to) from other parts of your brain (other pointers) as
needed.
A television screen is truly a model of a static brain: It shows
whatever comes down the pike—nothing edited, nothing left out. You
may not remember much of what you see; but supposedly, you’ll re-
call what you need to know in the future. The images are universal,
because they’re available to everyone. Nobody owns them: Not you
and not the people who made them.
In a dynamic brain theory, the question of ownership takes on
greater significance. In this case, the images are more like individual
negatives from which multiple “prints” (or memories of the same in-
cident reviewed repeatedly at different stages of your life) can repro-
duce what your “camera” (your eyes) originally saw. There’s no
screen to show a succession of images. There are only “prints”
(memories) available from the original negatives.
Those prints aren’t seen at the moment the negative captures the
images, for it takes about 10 milliseconds of repetitious circuitry to
turn “the negative” into “a positive” print. Only then can your con-
sciousness become aware of what you saw.
The prints are obviously yours, available only to you. However,

38
who owns the negatives that represent the images that became avail-
able to anyone interested?
You might say it’s obvious that you own them as well. After all,
they came to life somewhere in your head, not in anyone else’s. How-
ever, if you’re a photographer taking pictures of a famous person, the
question of ownership gets more complicated, even if you own the
camera.
For example, what if you’re a movie star, and your producers
want pictures of you to display on theatre billboards?
Who owns the negative? You, as the movie star? The producers
who pay the photographer? Or the photographer? The answer in real
life can only be determined case-by-case.
Nowadays, photographic images of Marilyn Monroe can’t be ex-
ploited for advertising purposes without paying some kind of hom-
age (or royalty) to the estate of Marilyn Monroe, which inures to the
benefit of Lee Strasberg’s second wife’s family. How, then, can you
answer the question: “Who owns the nation’s memories of Marilyn
Monroe?” Anna Strasberg?
The issue is more critical when considering who owns the images
in your brain. You, after all, didn’t “cause” them; your eyes and ears
were passive viewers of all those images, and your brain converted
some of them to permanent memories.
If advertisers created some of those images (as part of a television
program, for example), those advertisers are perfectly willing to let
you see them (and retain their memories) without paying anyone be-
cause they know the power of television will result in a portion of the
audience buying the products or services they advertise. It’s a slam-
dunk decision to let you have the images for nothing. But it’s always
clear who invented those images and who ultimately owns them—in
perpetuity, regardless of the number of brains in which those images
might happen, temporarily, to reside.
For example, what about McDonalds’ twin arches? Who owns
those red and yellow icons?
Obviously the image of the arches imprinted in your brain is
yours; but the image itself is not yours! If you extricate the image
from your brain and try to use it commercially, for example,
McDonalds will sue!
Obviously, then, you don’t own the image. It’s been legally
trademarked and commercially assigned to McDonalds; and
McDonalds has—with or without your permission—taken over a
piece of real estate in your brain that points to the memory of the
McDonalds arches—and what they signify.
You can change nothing important about the image as you store it
in your memory. McDonalds doesn’t only insist that you not change
it, but if you try, you’ll find you’re unable to change it. For example,
can you imagine the image in purple and green still signifying
McDonalds? Even for a moment? Hardly!
McDonalds doesn’t rent space in your brain, it gets free use of it
under the theory that if it resides in enough brains it will be well

39
worth it to give away the image to you and all the others who have
seen and memorized it. As far as McDonalds is concerned, your brain
is nothing but a free television screen for them to use for advertising
purposes. In this way, McDonalds operates according to the static
brain theory in which it doesn’t matter on whose brain they try to im-
press their image.
More significantly, if the dynamic brain theory is correct, and if
you succumb to the McDonalds Company’s wiles and buy Big Macs
frequently, you will actually be paying the company real money for
storing their memories in your head! That’s adding insult to injury,
for those images point you where to go and what to look for when
you’re in the mood for a quick, artery-clogging Big Mac cheeseburger.
In a sense, if you constantly succumb to their marketing, you may be
paying the company to shorten your life!
According to the dynamic brain theory, your belief in the integ-
rity of your character is a sad illusion. You have no more control over
your belief system than a cat has; and you may even have less. You
function according to habit and expectations; and both your body and
brain are extremely vulnerable to the power of suggestion, over
which you may have no control at all.
This mental weakness (which causes considerable grief due to
lack of “willpower,” for example, for people on diets) doesn’t only af-
fect people who are ignorant or easily hypnotized. If you’re human,
you’re suggestible. Only a fool would behave all the time like a scien-
tist, testing every theory before acting. There’s no time to do it, and
nobody does—unless they’re scientists doing science.
(Therefore, Acting Well, which is specifically designed to confront
your tendency to allow yourself to be manipulated, mimics, during
its “Morning Preparation,” the scientific process of observing, re-
porting, observing, reporting, etc. Science is still the best system to
observe the world objectively.)
With the added responsibility that comes from acknowledging
your dynamic brain comes an increased opportunity—to change. In
fact, it’s difficult to imagine how you can change to healthier habits if
you believe in a static brain.
If your brain were static, it wouldn’t matter so much what goes in
your brain and what you keep out because, theoretically, your charac-
ter was formed when you were a child. Now you must absolutely
know who you are and what you believe. However, if you accept a
dynamic brain theory, you can no longer assume that you make your
brain’s best security guard, letting in what should go in and keeping
out what you should keep out. In fact, you have no power to know the dif-
ference! To truly protect yourself, therefore, you would have to re-
move yourself entirely from the world and let nothing in except what
you, yourself, create.
Many instructors of meditation actually use this model of shut-
ting out the world and concentrating on the “Self.” Fortunately, their
method (which depends on static brain theory) is never practiced for

40
more than 20 minutes at a time. If you could be fully successful in
blocking out the rest of the world for long periods, you would even-
tually go mad from a condition called “sensory deprivation.” You can
see the results of such deprivation in any nursing home for the
aged—as I saw it in my mother, who, at age 96, was mostly blind and
deaf; and who therefore developed a singular talent for hearing hos-
tile voices (coming from a television set) that no one else could hear.
In a democratic society that allows religious, political, and com-
mercial competition, you have a good chance of making good choices.
America may be a confusing country in which to live, and everyone
makes mistakes. However, we all have greater opportunities for dis-
covering the best things available (and therefore enjoying a richer life)
than we’d have in totalitarian societies ruled by wealthy plutocrats,
ruthless potentates, and/or fanatical clerics.
Living in a democracy, you may use dynamic brain theory to
thwart, from now on, anyone who tries to implant their brand images
(or proprietary nutritional, physical training, or stress reduction ideas
for that matter) into sections of your brain. Thus, dynamic brain the-
ory can be a powerful defense of your liberty, which is perpetually
under attack from forces that have always relied on static brain theory
to absolve them of the dirty tricks and ignorant mischief they con-
tinually wreak on increasingly large sections of the world’s popula-
tion.
Chances are this article isn’t the first one you’ve read on the sub-
ject of how to change your life. It is, however, likely to be the first one
you’ve read that wasn’t written by one of the arrogant Rakics of the
world, who specialize in puppetmastery.
Unfortunately, puppetmastery is a theme that runs rampant
throughout the world. Despite my abhorrence of its grosser affronts, I
hope this theme’s constant reappearance in this book will ultimately
serve more to strengthen the humble persistence of the Goulds and
Shankles of the world (whom you should emulate!) than to attack the
power of the Rakics, which is a contest that doesn’t interest me.
To that end, Dr. Shankle, by generously pointing out the weak-
nesses of my farther-out arguments, has caused me to rethink my
cleverest hypotheses (because I couldn’t prove them) and excise my
most attractive ideas (which turned out to be wrong when exposed to
someone better informed than I shall ever be).
Therefore, this book will often lack clear directions. You’ll have to
make up your own menus, for example, and design your own exer-
cise plans. Any less responsibility on your part will waste your time.
However, in tribute to my humiliating capitulations, Dr. Shankle
complimented me by saying, “I wish more scientists were like you.
Rakic is certainly not one of them.”

Exercise
“Exercise” is properly prescribed for therapeutic purposes, not as

41
an adjunct for wellness. Of course, the word “exercise” is often used
to refer to any kind of vigorous activity, from strolling around the
garden to climbing Mount Everest. Such activities may have some
therapeutic value for some people some of the time. However, would
you seriously consider a baseball pitcher to be “exercising” his arm as
he throws the ball in the deciding pitch of the final inning of the final
game of the World Series?
Of course not! That pitcher is involved in a serious sports compe-
tition, the results of which will resound around the world. The effect
his final pitch may have on his cardiovascular health won’t begin to
counteract the negative effect of the stress he undergoes. It’s silly even
to consider it.
If you break your arm, after the cast is removed, a physical thera-
pist may advise you to lift weights for six weeks, gradually increasing
the number of pounds until by the sixth week you have your strength
back. At that point, you may say you’ve been “exercising” your “bad
arm.” The activity was a temporary therapeutic assignment, not a
permanent lifestyle change. It involved a small number of muscles,
not the whole body. There was a specific objective involved; it wasn’t
done for general health purposes. Such “exercise” probably involved
a measurable improvement. Because it was temporary, you were bet-
ter at it at the end of the period than at the beginning.
Exercise wasn’t invented as a therapy to treat people whose life-
styles are sedentary. (It was probably a military invention.) When
people adopt “exercise” as a way to avoid a sedentary lifestyle, they
may quickly become bored. They may see no end to, or relief from,
the routines they practice every day except old age, infirmity, and
death. They “don’t feel” like doing it all the time. They begin to feel
guilty for lacking the “willpower” to do it one more time. Finally,
they stop. Eventually, they die.
Replacing, augmenting, or changing your activities isn’t the cor-
rect solution to the problem of leading a mostly sedentary life. In
other words, you don’t have to change anything! What you need to do
is to balance your lifestyle.
In other words, you may continue to sit down on the job most of
the time as long as you practice a daily strenuous activity that gets
you out of the chair, out of a building, and out of a sedentary lifestyle
long enough to provide what will amount to a healthy balance be-
tween your stationary physical life and an out-of-doors physical ac-
tivity.
The question is, how much time do you need to achieve a healthy
balance? Since your life doesn’t fit on a scale where you can balance
four hours of physical activity against four hours of sitting in a chair,
what you must determine is how to balance something like four
pounds of feathers against four pounds of gold.
Obviously, you need a relatively small volume of gold on the
scale to balance a huge heap of feathers! In the same way, if you
choose the right form of physical activity, 30 minutes of activity may
balance as many as 1,400 minutes of sitting down.

42
 However, this method of balancing will apply to you only under
certain conditions:
You must practice every day. Not three days a week, not every
other day, not when you feel like it, not when you think about it, not
on weekends only or on weekdays only, not for a six-week trial pe-
riod, but every day—except when you’re forced to make an excep-
tion due to weather, illness, professional demands, or emergencies—
which exceptions will translate to an average minimum frequency
of physical activity of six days out of seven throughout the year.
If you don’t hold to this schedule from now on until you’re no
longer ambulatory (meaning, just before you die!), you won’t be
able to balance your sedentary lifestyle! Forget what anyone else
says about occasional exercise. The law is the law!
Every day—from now on—forever!
Concentrate on a single sport or recreation. Don’t consider
choosing from a variety of possibilities depending on whim or sea-
son, or else one day you’ll stop doing all of them!
It’s difficult to establish a physical activity routine if you seek vari-
ety in what you do. If you generally ride a bicycle but have gotten
used to doing a half hour’s worth of aerobic dancing in your own
living room when the weather’s bad, that’s fine, of course. You will
still have developed a “routine” that you can predict if you know the
circumstances.
The main thing is: Get over the American “disease” of “variety-
ism!”
Avoid working out while sitting in a chair. Some people will
(rightfully) disagree and say that the only practical way they can
work out every day is to “ride” a stationary bicycle. This kind of ex-
ercise (and it truly is exercise!) may be the least satisfying one you
can choose. It tends to become boring, keeps you indoors, doesn’t af-
fect muscles in your upper body (unlike vigorous cycling out of
doors), and is a hard habit to maintain. (Nevertheless, if it works for
you, go for it!)
Practice aerobic sports only. The point of practicing a daily rou-
tine out of doors is to get plenty of fresh air. It’s simply more in-
vigorating than working out inside a gymnasium or health club. Do
it and you’ll discover the many reasons for choosing out-of-doors
activities—except during inclement weather.
Not every sport or physical activity will help you achieve a proper
balance. Four problems with weight lifting (or “upper body work”),
for example, are: (1) it isn’t sufficiently aerobic; (2) since weightlift-
ing is nothing more than a programmed form of bodily injury, it re-
quires you to take days off between sessions to repair the damage
done to your muscle tissues; therefore, it isn’t a sport that lends it-
self to a daily routine; (3) it’s a sport best practiced for cosmetic rea-

43
 sons, not to balance a sedentary lifestyle; and (4) weightlifting is
usually added to aerobic and other forms of exercises when prac-
ticed, which may make your workout sessions too lengthy to be
practiced every day.
Thus, if you like weight lifting, know why you’re doing it and real-
ize that you still need to practice aerobic (“fitness”) exercises on a
daily basis. Weightlifting has nothing to do with fitness.
Practice non-competitive sports primarily. Competitive sports
are poor candidates to balance a sedentary lifestyle because they re-
quire partners as dedicated as you must be to commit to daily prac-
tice. If you can find a reliable partner, great! If you can’t, try cy-
cling, swimming, running, or solo dancing.
It may not seem like enough to exert yourself only once per day
for a half-hour; but if you do so every day, you’ll repeat your daily
exertions thousands of times. However, if you start out exerting
yourself several times each day (under the theory that “more is bet-
ter”), there will come a time when you won’t want to exert yourself
at all! Therefore, suggestions that you should divide a daily 30-
minute exercise schedule into more than one period are wholly in-
appropriate.
Daily bicycle riding for a half-hour over a controlled terrain is the
best choice for anyone living near a large park or similar safe path-
way. If one truly exerts oneself, the bicycle will provide both aerobic
benefits (through the legs) and sufficient weight-bearing anaerobic
benefits (through the arms) as one pulls on the handlebars going up
hills at near maximum possible speed for one’s body and condition.
Exercise your body out of doors, not indoors, whenever possible.
Don’t count. If you have to count repetitions for an exercise, you’ll
count the days until you don’t have to “count reps” any more.
In-line skating is dangerous except for young, accomplished skat-
ers.
In order to achieve a proper balance, you must choose an aerobic
activity that will exercise your body to around 80% of its capacity
(meaning that you should approach—but not go past—the point
where you become “winded.”) It represents hard work! Walking
around the city (which you need to do during a World Walk—which
has nothing to do with exercising!) simply won’t do. You may live
longer if you walk vigorously every day, but you probably won’t live
as long as you will if you push yourself to 80% of your capacity driv-
ing your bike up six hills every single day as fast as you can com-
fortably go.
Be sensible, of course, and realize that 80% of your capacity may
represent only 20% of someone else’s capacity, who’s been doing the
same thing for years. That’s another reason to avoid competition. It’s
never fair since you can almost never match your competition’s age,
experience, talent, etc., exactly, on a continuing basis.

44
 The aerobic activity you choose must exercise most of the muscle
groups in your body. Note that some physical trainers erroneously
rule out cycling as a conditioning sport because it exercises only leg
muscles. They forget that if you cycle properly, climbing one or two
steep hills as fast as you can on your daily ride, you’ll wind up
strengthening your arm and pectoral muscles as much as you would
by lifting heavy weights several times a day—without damaging your
muscle tissues! That fact is what makes cycling the best sport possible
for balancing a sedentary lifestyle.
Learn to breathe properly. There are many practices (especially
some yoga exercises) that stress proper breathing—while sitting on a
floor! It’s hard to imagine what good these exercises do, although
practitioners claim many benefits. But when you’re engaged in a bal-
ancing sport activity, just before you begin to drive yourself really
hard is the time to breathe deeply and force the air out as much as
you can—before you become winded. Don’t wait until you’re winded
to start breathing deeply! In fact, never let yourself become winded!
It’s not a necessary adjunct to physical activity. Keep yourself at the
80% level, which means stopping short of being winded. Learn to an-
ticipate your body’s need for oxygen and take in plenty of air before
your body starts forcing you to breathe too hard.
The 80% level is an estimate, of course. These things can’t be
measured precisely. However, there’s no point in driving yourself to
near exhaustion, or inducing a heart attack. There’s also no point in
taking it easy. You’ll just waste your time.
If you keep doing your physical activity sport properly, after sev-
eral years you’ll learn to anticipate the precise amount of energy you
can expend without endangering your body. Your breathing will tell
you when you’re at the correct stage. If you become winded you’ll
know you’ve gone too far too fast.
_________________________________

Almost every weight-loss diet ever invented includes a clear ad-

monition that whoever goes on the diet should also “exercise.” Since
these admonitions are obviously included more to protect manufac-
turers against lawsuits than to protect customers, most people pay no
attention to them, usually believing that they’re so special they’ll
never die! However, because of the inadequacy and falseness of the
information given out by virtually all diet plans, customers who take
them seriously may logically infer that once the weight is lost, they
don’t have to exercise any longer. This idea is idiotic.
Logic says that if you practice the piano, or exercise long and
hard enough, you should arrive at a point where you don’t have to
practice any more. (Tell that to a concert pianist!) Nevertheless, the
body doesn’t work according to logic. Exercises done for maintenance
purposes must be kept up and repeated life-long.
Performances, competitions, athletics, recreation, swimming (in a
large body of water, not in a small pool where you’re forced to go
back and forth or tether yourself), skating, walking (with a destina-

45
tion and purpose in mind other than mere “getting out”), dancing,
etc., differ from mindlessly repeated exercises because they fulfill a
practitioner’s intention (or action) not an instructor’s directions.
The mechanics of a bicycle multiply the rider’s effort into speed
(through mechanical gears) and make the experience more enjoyable.
Water in a pool does the same for swimmers. Shoes assist the runner
and in-line skates the skater.
Many people find the use of mechanical sporting aids (such as
exercise bicycles) boring. (Thus, listening to music or readings
through earphones enhance the use of these devices.) The reason
they’re boring is that what you do on them isn’t an action. It’s the
equivalent of an actor standing on stage and reading an entire page of
a telephone directory. The words and numbers have no purpose or
significance. No one wants to hear them and no actor wants to recite
them. They aren’t a suitable vehicle for performance.
On the other hand, for those who are Acting Well, stationary bi-
cycles can substitute for traveling bicycles provided special tech-
niques are used to push the body and the brain. Imaginative tech-
niques such as biking to pieces of music that lend themselves to
speeding up for faster passages thus forcing the workout to extend to
the level of push can do as much good for the body as real bikes and
over long periods of time. However, the imagination in these cases
may have to be continually stimulated by new techniques.
If an actor over-rehearses one section of a play—say for an entire
year—and ignores the other sections, then finally comes to perform
the play, the section that was over-rehearsed will stand out in a pecu-
liar way. Similarly, some men spend most of their time exercising
only certain muscles (e.g., “pecs” and “abs”) but not others (such as
back muscles). These men become “front-heavy,” look odd, and walk
in an unnatural manner. Naturally, if you sun yourself on only one
side of your body, the results will be one-sided.
Optimal benefits from fitness exercises are not confined to health
benefits. Psychological benefits may be far more dramatic and obvi-
ous than physical benefits, especially at first. Thus, the benefits from
fitness exercises on character formation and reformation are inesti-
mable.

Proposal for The Palace of Health


(Ñ‚Ó Âˆ
Á‰Ó Ó‚¸fl)

I propose to write a book about keeping healthy that includes a
running journal about a health initiative in Russia and the develop-
ment of an actual research facility and health spa hotel called the
“Palace of Health,” which will be a sort of mini-Monte Carlo Mayo
Clinic dedicated to health maintenance.
Plans are to build the new palace (possibly out of a restored, older
structure) within a 10-mile “necklace” of royal palaces (collectively

46
called “Palaçade”) overlooking the Bay of Finland just outside St. Pe-
tersburg, Russia. The actual Palace of Health may be located immedi-
ately next door to the presidential dacha currently being readied for
the pleasure and recreation of President Boris Yeltsin.
The financing and construction of Palaçade will take several
years. It involves 38 buildings that form part of a billion-dollar devel-
opment project for which my partner, who lives in Russia, and I, from
New York, are marketing consultants. (We named the project “Pala-
çade.”) The current owner is the City of St. Petersburg, which is back-
ing the project together with several Russian banks, and which has
promised special tax and visa entry considerations for foreigners
traveling to St. Petersburg for the sole purpose of visiting (and gam-
bling) at Palaçade.
The project promises to provide a fascinating subject for a series
of books. In fact, many of my adventures in Russia over the past five
years can add depth, suspense, and humor to the story. So far these
adventures include being advisors to the former Mayor of St. Peters-
burg, Anatoly A. Sobchak (under the immediate direction of his Dep-
uty Mayor, Vladimir V. Putin, head of International Projects for the
City); being executive producer of two film festivals; working as a fa-
cilitator and liaison between the City government and such compa-
nies as ICN and Merck Pharmaceuticals, Arthur Andersen & Co., and
Holiday Inn; helping to pull in and facilitate a $75 million Wrigley
chewing gum factory near St. Petersburg; and surviving three Mafiya
killings of associates (including the most famous contemporary
American killed in Russia, Paul Tatum—whose firm, Americom, was
a former client of my company, Circles International).
Meanwhile, in the summer or fall of 1998, a retreat in the United
States is planned for several “inductees” (including an M.D., a mas-
seur, a health psychologist, an acting teacher, a physical therapist, et
al.) into a pilot project whose purpose is to design a health mainte-
nance program called “Sensible Care.” These individuals will share
information and techniques with each other.
A syllabus, to be translated into Russian, will be assembled from
the proceedings of the retreat for later distribution at the Palace of
Health, as well as other family practice and cardiology clinics and
health centers throughout Russia. The book I propose to write will in-
clude that syllabus in efforts to clarify the muddy waters that result
when health and science in any country are mixed together.
The Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundations has been
aware of this health initiative since a visit to the Institute (at our invi-
tation) by Mayor Sobchak in April 1997. The deputy regional director
for Russia of the Open Society Institute has identified the initiative as
a “perfect paradigm” for programs to be financed by the $500 million
that George Soros recently pledged to redress medical problems in
Russia. Among those problems is the failure of preventive medicine
in that part of the world.
The average age of death for men in the former Soviet Union is 58
years. Annual alcohol consumption, at more than four gallons, is the

47
highest in the world. This situation is a catastrophe that affects the life
and death of literally millions of people and their families. The forces
wreaking this Slavic havoc are the usual suspects, of course: smoking,
alcoholism, dietary chaos, stress, lack of exercise, and lack of preven-
tive medical care.
Practically everyone recognizes the problem; but only a few rare
people recognize the root cause and have the intelligence, courage,
tenacity, and skills to do something about it.
Dr. Dmitry Baklanov, the first cardiologist in Russia to perform
angioplasty and to implant arterial stents, is one of those people that
represents the true potential of Russia. Although he was only born in
1970, he has already published (with his mentor, Dr. Ronald R. Mas-
den, a world-renowned cardiologist from Louisville) the only book
available in Russian about the newest techniques in cardiology. He is
the only cardiologist in St. Petersburg sufficiently experienced to per-
form angioplasty safely and to teach it to others. There are only about
three other doctors in all of Russia (all of them in Moscow) who have
performed as many procedures as Dr. Baklanov, who has done more
than 1,000.
Dr. Baklanov contends that behavior modification can save more
lives than all the invasive and non-invasive therapies currently avail-
able for cardiac patients. Thus Sensible Care, as adapted to the former
Soviet Union, will initially be offered to heart patients; but it is a pro-
gram that can be a lifesaver and life-enhancer for everybody.
Key to the cardiac program is the theory that “diet, exercise, and
relaxation,” which are commonly and appropriately prescribed for
people recovering from a heart attack, may be inappropriate for indi-
viduals who happen to be at high risk of infarction (as well as for
generally healthy people) but have not yet experienced cardiac symp-
toms, heart attacks, or strokes. The problem is that healthy individu-
als lack the fear, the desire, and the willpower to stick to diets, exer-
cise daily for half an hour, and practice some form of contemplative
relaxation for 40 minutes to an hour every day. Therefore, a different
approach to the problem is required. Sensible Care may provide the
answer.
Another innovative aspect of the book will attempt to popularize
some of the theories of consciousness developed by Gerald Edelman.
(I consider Dr. Edelman to be the only person whose work on this
subject is worth popularizing.)
One of the results of Edelman’s work is that it belies the scientific
use of “supernatural” concepts associated with consciousness, such as
“mind,” “soul,” “spirit,” “self,” “will,” and so on.
The book will develop a theory based on Edelman’s of why these
supernatural terms seem meaningful (because evolution genetically
fashioned our brains to be able to communicate these concepts
amongst ourselves and understand them perfectly. However, our un-
derstanding does not transfer cross-species or into objective science
because the terms don’t specify anything in nature. Not being of
value to science, they have no place in a theory of how to improve

48
public health).
Edelman’s Darwinian theories of brain mapping affect modern
epistemology as profoundly as Darwin’s theories influenced Nine-
teenth Century theories of creationism. The inference that can change
the public’s theory of health most is that sensible methods (i.e., meth-
ods derived through the senses) to provide health maintenance
through behavioral techniques (such as the Stanislavski System of act-
ing) work better than moral injunctions to increase willpower, etc.
(with the corollary attachment of blame to victims of diseases like
cancer).
Unfortunately these revolutionary changes in thinking (about
thinking) have not yet been generally accepted or disseminated in the
public health sector. Therefore there is, and probably will continue to
be for some time, a conservative resistance to change not unlike the
current resistance against evolutionism by creationists; except that the
new resistance takes place in the health club, kitchen, and supermar-
ket instead of in churches and schoolrooms. One of the main pur-
poses of the book, therefore, will be to explain and disseminate, in a
more popular way than I can in these few pages, the exciting new
knowledge about how new thinking processes can foster good health
and happiness.
Many distinguished writers are currently “playing around with
consciousness.” In my opinion (and I presume Edelman’s) most of
these writers are simply wrong and need to be challenged. (Unfortu-
nately Edelman has failed to enter a critical arena with his dissenting
colleagues.) Steven Pinker’s recent book (which seems to be a best
seller) is a prime example of wrong-headedness in its critique of
Edelman’s work. Its title How the Mind Works is meaningless to any-
one who realizes that there is no such thing as “mind”; or that we can
all get along just fine, thank you very much, while discussing brain
activity, without having to stray far from the word “brain.” Despite
an otherwise interesting book about neuroscience, Pinker seems to
have a curious need, for a scientist, to validate the supernatural.
The reason for developing (or reporting about) a theory of con-
sciousness in this book is that people need to understand better how
their brains work in order to stop being slaves to their appetites so
that they may become masters of their character. Books like Care of the
Soul that seem Ah! So meaningful! are actually not helpful when it
comes to working out a practical plan to maintain or improve mental
and physical health.
Readers of The Palace of Health who want to change their lives ac-
cording to Sensible Care precepts will be encouraged to enroll in sup-
port groups and to use interactive computer programs that will un-
doubtedly encourage them to subscribe to future publications relating
to Sensible Care. These interactive programs will encourage the use of
personal computers to disseminate practitioners’ experiences and
theories to others. “Sharing” or “enlightening others” is an essential
technique to help make Sensible Care work. Alcoholics Anonymous
has practiced this principle for decades.

49
 The syllabus will form the first part of Palace of Health (I hope in
the manner that Swann’s Way formed the first part of Proust’s great
work). It will be written more or less in the breezy, random style of
this introduction. Since Bianca Jagger will be involved in the retreat,
the title of the first book to be published may include her name.
She has promised to join the pilot project team to create the sylla-
bus, compose a forward to the book, be photographed for the dust-
jacket, and make herself available for interviews about the subject of
Sensible Care—a topic about which she is passionate.
Bianca Jagger is an articulate speaker and writer and I believe a
great humanitarian. For a long time, she has been one of the most fa-
mous women in the world—especially in Europe. For many years,
she has consistently used her celebrity to testify on behalf of victims
who have suffered from such human and natural disasters as poverty,
earthquake, war, ethnic cleansing, and sexual abuse. She championed
relief efforts on behalf of Central American homeless people in 1981,
and raised money and consciousness to help earthquake victims in
Nicaragua, and Honduran refugees attacked by Salvadorans. In 1993,
she helped fly a young boy out of Bosnia to save his eyesight. The fol-
lowing year she documented Serbian atrocities against the Bosnians.
Two years later she described to me her successful efforts to save the
life of a condemned, abused woman. She's made many speeches and
appeared before a congressional sub-committee. Her advocacy in
joining the Human Rights Watch continues to protect people’s free-
dom throughout the Americas.
The public will believe and respect her ideas about health.
The book will be of interest to managed care providers, doctors,
patients, and subscribers to managed care health insurance programs.
(In fact, the more the book’s precepts are followed, the more profit-
able insurance companies may become!) Sensible Care is often free.
Critical care (and sometimes “virtual care,” which includes “alterna-
tive medicine”) that insurance companies are expected to support can
be crushingly expensive.
Insurance companies have been required, in the past, to provide
some kind of preventive medicine to their subscribers. Because the
concept of preventive medicine is flawed by the current conflicts be-
tween critical and Sensible Care, the provisions that insurance com-
panies have made to fulfill requirements by the US Department of
Health, Education & Welfare, for example (in order to get initial fund-
ing for managed care programs from the government), have been pa-
thetic at best and misleading or incorrect at worst.
For example, the current flurry of doctor-approved brochures—
just large enough to fit inside a #10 envelope with the monthly bill—
offer a few health tips and little else. (“How to Stop Smoking.” Oh,
sure!) Nobody reads these throw-aways, and nobody follows them.
The most these blurbs can accomplish is to make some people with
bad coughs feel guilty for a spell before they refill their lungs with
smoke.
With proper marketing, HMOs can be encouraged to distribute

50
The Palace of Health to consumers, and perhaps even use the book to
form support groups that will recruit new policy-holders and Sensible
Care practitioners.
A recently forged relationship between the American Health
Foundation (the organization that first proved the relationship of
smoking and cancer) and the Sensible Care health initiative in Russia
will greatly expand the marketing opportunities associated with this
project.
There are many ancillary Sensible Care products connected to
publication of the book that celebrities will be able to sell on television
(along with the book!). These products do not include the diet “break-
throughs,” dietary supplements, exercise machinery, or the kind of
psychic guru advice currently being offered.
What might be sold, however, are packages of healthy menu
food, which may be purchased on a regular basis by telephone more
cheaply and conveniently than from a supermarket. Other products
that are helpful in some cases (such as certain kinds of tea) may also
be offered.

—December, 1997
_________________________________
The above proposal was intended for submission to publishers. It in-
cluded several other sections, which are reproduced elsewhere in this
edition. Bianca Jagger’s views on preventive medicine, particularly
her feminist perspective, were more conservative than the views ex-
pressed here. After reading this material, she withdrew from the
project.

Your Fascist Guru

The most important information I can share with you is to explain
why diets don’t work, why people join health clubs and stop going,
and why Americans who get enthusiastic over meditation practices
(or other self-hypnotic programs) eventually stop doing them.
All of the self-help techniques that don’t work are based on re-
strictive punishment techniques that usually elevate a doctor,
preacher, teacher, personal trainer, or guru to god-like status in order
to manipulate you into paying for their products or services. That’s
pretty good for them because it sells their books, lectures, or dietary
supplements. However, it usually turns out to be useless for you.
All of these self-improvement techniques are politically based.
The politics involved (prepare for a shock) are fascist in nature.
They’re all based on the kind of politics that exist in a state faced with
a crisis.
We Americans (for whom I’m writing) are supposed to believe in
democracy and in the independence and rights of the individual. Fas-
cism takes the opposite view by insisting that the needs of the state

51
override the needs of the individual. In a time of national crisis, such
as a war, every state will become somewhat fascist out of self-
protection. For that reason, fascist states are known to provoke wars
in order to maintain their rulers’ special powers.
Most diet book writers will address you as if you’re facing a cri-
sis: You’re too fat! Or you might develop a heart condition and need
to reduce cholesterol! Whatever is wrong, you need to do something
about it now!
Crisis!
Therefore, these writers recommend strong methods. You must
stop doing this and you must start doing that! No fats, carbohydrates,
or protein! Or only fats, carbohydrates, or protein! (Americans have
been amazingly patient with all the confusion and scandalous incon-
sistencies that continually crop up in the field of nutrition!) You can
do it in 10 days! Or 30 days!—or your money back! If the crisis
passes—that is, if you lose the weight you want to lose—you’ll need
to go on a “maintenance” diet (sold by the same enterprising author-
ity) in order to avoid another crisis.
This crisis thinking works only as long as you’re convinced
there’s a crisis. However, it’s amazing how human beings get used to
things, or how one crisis is supplanted by a different problem. The
reason diets don’t work is that they all depend on crisis-thinking, and
crises always pass—sooner or later, usually sooner. That’s when the
diet goes to hell.
Therefore, I won’t use the word “diet” in any of my recommenda-
tions. I didn’t go on a “diet” to lose my weight, and you shouldn’t ei-
ther. They don’t work.
Exercise programs suffer from the same problems and for the
same reason. Think how such words and phrases as “discipline,” “by
the numbers,” or “on the ground, and give me 100 push-ups!” clearly
signify punishment and unpleasantness. 100 push-ups can’t be any
more rewarding than 100 lashes with a whip!
In a country threatened with annihilation, soldiers (and citizens)
must follow orders or be punished. Rules are established for which no
thought or creativity is appropriate.
Think how soldiers are treated during wartime: how they’re
forced to regulate their life so they can be fed, bedded, kept physically
strong, and moved wherever needed, en masse, quickly and effi-
ciently. There’s no time for democracy in the Army! It’s a hierarchical
organization subject to unified commands. Battles would be lost if it
weren’t so.
Then realize that exercise programs in America are usually based
on Army practices, whether conducted at health clubs or supervised
by personal trainers. School exercise programs for children, espe-
cially, are modeled on Army techniques. For example, they’re gener-
ally performed en masse. Movements are performed “by the num-
bers.” People wear uniforms, some of them elaborate, some expen-
sive, some just silly. There’s a lot of counting involved, whether for a
repetitive movement or to hold a particular position while counting

52
to some value. It’s the counting that gives away the noxious qualities
that make these exercises ultimately fail as lifetime practices.
Exercises “by the number” are surely valuable for crisis situa-
tions. For example, if your broken leg has been in a cast for several
months, you’ll need to do some physical therapy that involves repeti-
tious movements to regain your strength quickly and efficiently.
However, once the strength is regained, “crisis exercise” is inappro-
priate (and excessively boring) if, for example, you’re looking for
something to do with your body every day for the rest of your life.
Therefore, I don’t generally use the word “exercise” to describe
what I believe should maintain “fitness.” One doesn’t play games “by
the numbers.” You might count nine innings of a baseball game, but
you don’t repeat and count 100 movements in any rational or fun
form of physical recreation.
Soldiers are regimented. That word (based on the Latin word for
rule) means soldiers are subject to the rules and regimen of their lead-
ers’ political regime.
Regimental politics can influence the mind in devious and subtle
ways. For example, the organization of an Army goes back to prehis-
tory when some groups (at least the ones that survived) were orga-
nized physically and psychologically under the policy rules (and usu-
ally religions) controlled by the most powerful leaders. You can see
vestiges of this system in the meditative practices of the East in which
individuals are encouraged to concentrate on their breathing in order
to submerge their consciousness in a “world soul,” or some such con-
cept; aspire to a “nirvana” that precludes revolution or syndicalism
(certainly a valuable technique in 15th Century India!); and ulti-
mately, renounce desire. Think how advantageous these psychologi-
cal techniques would have been to an all-powerful maharaja whose
subjects might otherwise covet and take away his women and per-
sonal wealth!
As you can see with eastern meditation practices, the psychologi-
cal work you must do to change your life extends into moral, relig-
ious, and spiritual spheres. You may do better staying away from
these spheres if they cause you needless guilt—especially while
you’re growing up. (I confess to believing that imposing certain kinds
of sexual-moral guilt on children is one of the cruelest forms of child
abuse, and should be punished accordingly!)
I don’t mean that people should have no regard for morality; just
that no one else has the right to impose their morality on you or me.
When anyone claims to be able to recognize supernatural “sin,” you
can be sure you’re dealing with a moral fascist whose politics want to
take you in the direction Hitler took Germany—down the garden
path of National Socialism, exterminating “immoral” scapegoats as
they march.
Anyone with a recipe for or against sin is advocating a fascist
moral diet that goes along with the other harmful forms of fascist ab-
solutism. Such diets don’t work in America—nor should they. We live
in a pluralistic society, which means that there are many groups and

53
individuals who should maintain their unique social and spiritual
points of view while striving heartily to love one another and value
each other’s differences. That path is the only way to preserve the
peace.
I debated whether to use the word “fascist” in connection with
contemporary brain, body, and nutritional techniques. After all, it’s a
loaded word. (“Authoritarian” might have done as well.) Then one
day I found myself writing about how angry I was that the truths I
understand about these things, which I discovered only after much
struggle, had been ignored for so many years by the rest of the world.
“I’m going to slaughter the mother-fuckers for paying no atten-
tion to me!” is exactly what I wrote in my journal, with visions of a
best-selling book establishing me as a rich and famous authority. I
would foist my philosophy on a nation, make all its citizens devote an
hour a day to the kind of psychic reconditioning I had been doing;
then spend another 30 minutes straining their bodies to recondition
their physique; then slowly watch their eating habits lead them into
universal good health.
My motives went way beyond authoritarianism. I was angry at a
world only I was talented enough to capture and rule through the
force and appeal of my ideas.
When I studied political philosophy in college, I was fascinated to
read the works of Frederich Nietszche and the fascist philosophers
who promulgated the policies of Hitler and Mussolini. I read these
writers in the late 1950’s, familiar with the consequences of their
thinking, but not aware, until I read them, that fascism had a clever
and captivating intellectual basis behind it. I felt the strong appeal
that fascism can have—especially to college undergraduates. Thus,
when I read what I wrote about changing the world through a phi-
losophical system of my own, I recognized my fascist intentions. I
was lusting for the same rude power that tempted others before me—
dictators who ran countries, established professions, uncovered scien-
tific truths, painted pictures, and lead armies. I would rule the world
and affect history. I would dictate. I was a fascist!
Democracy is a place where ideas are supposed to compete, not
annihilate each other. Therefore, my resolve to “squash” the foolish
ideas of other writers, in order to demean their intentions, was inap-
propriate to a democratic nation’s destiny. For these reasons, I de-
cided to retain the word “fascist” to describe the punishing self-help
techniques that currently prevail. I call these flawed ideas “fascist”
not to criticize the writers who promote them as much as to remind
myself how easy it is for advice-givers to be lured into becoming a
führer. Thus, my use of this particular “F” word is as much a warning
to me as it is to you. Beware anyone who tells you that only they
know the truth! They want to be your “puppetmaster”!
I believe that you must disparage all the fascist techniques for
punishing your body’s appetites before you can create a reward sys-
tem for yourself that will work. (You especially need to relieve your-
self of any guilt!) My problem is that I could easily publish a book

54
that tells you how to punish yourself by restricting your diet, exercis-
ing by the numbers, or quashing your intellect through “transcenden-
tal” mediation. However, how can I tell you how to reward yourself
through a permissive menu, free-form recreation, and stimulating
consciousness, if you can only learn to do these things yourself?
How you accomplish these tasks will depend on unique things in
your life about which I know nothing: such as what particular foods
you may find at your local supermarket, what your religious back-
ground is, or what recreational opportunities exist in your neighbor-
hood park. The truth is, you need to write your own book. Then,
when you realize it won’t matter to anyone but you, you’ll need to
have the wisdom and good taste to tear it up.
As you see, I’ve not yet grown that wise or sensible.

—October 1997

A Preventive Cardiology Program

for Russia and the World
By Ronald R. Masden, M.D.
and Marshall Yaeger

Under the patronage of the Anatoly A. Sobchak Preventive Car-

diology Fund (a memorial program to the late first elected mayor of
St. Petersburg, Russia), Anchor-International Foundation has de-
signed a preventive cardiology program (the “Program”) that has two
distinct missions:
The primary mission is to develop a risk factor intervention pro-
gram for Russia. The secondary mission is to develop a better compli-
ance program than currently exists for applications throughout the
developing and developed world.
Ronald Masden, M.D., the Medical Director of the Foundation,
worked as an epidemiologist in Washington, DC for two years setting
up and maintaining cardiovascular risk factor intervention programs.
Dr. Masden will supervise the Program. He will be assisted by par-
ticipating physicians, epidemiologists, and scientists in the U.S. and
Russia.
To raise public and financial support in Russia for the Project,
Mayor Sobchak’s widow, Ludmila N. Sobchak, former member of the
Russian Duma Health Committee and Co-Chairman of the Sobchak
Fund, will join the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in bringing at-
tention to the project and in raising money in the Russian Federation
to support the Foundation’s operations overseas.
Dr. Masden’s Program is likely to be the most effective and effi-
cient way to affect Heart Disease in Russia. The program is based on
information, which has been collected and scientifically supported
over the past 50 years, that forms the basis for the United States’ vast

55
prevention programs. Many of these programs are sponsored by the
American Heart Association, as well as other organizations, for risk
factor reduction. These prevention programs have been proven effec-
tive many times over in reducing morbidity and mortality rates of
heart disease throughout the world.
Thus the project assumes that existing risk reduction methods are
the most efficient and effective way to reduce the risk of heart disease
in Russia and hopefully to impact on that country’s (and similar
“Third World” countries’) morbidity and mortality rates.
The Program will be supported through government, individual,
corporate, and foundation funding. It will include a compliance pro-
gram (“Acting Well”) developed and supervised by Marshall Yaeger,
who is the general manager of the Foundation. The Acting Well part
of the project consists of two formats: “Intermediate Acting Well”
and “Complete Acting Well.”
The Program will take place during 2000-2002 throughout as
much of Russia as resources will allow.
_________________________________

Less than 5% of the Russian population can afford basic medical

services. The remainder must rely on a medical system that lags 50
years behind in modern technology and therapeutics. The vast major-
ity of this population is very poor. Many of them are unable to obtain
adequate nutritional food required for existence and have no access to
food stores that contain proper nutritional elements.
Moreover, they have little or no knowledge of heart disease and
are unaware of the factors that can reduce their risk for heart-related
problems. Therefore, in order to be effective, the Program has been
designed to be easily accessible to the general public through local
service centers that will be able to screen 50 to 100 people per day per
center. All individuals found to have risk factors will then be served
by appropriate interventional departments (such as nutrition, hyper-
tension, exercise, etc.).
Such high volumes of patients will not permit close attention to
each patient. Therefore various educational methods will be explored
and tested. The most successful ones will be developed to educate
and encourage compliance through various media currently available
in Russia.
As part of its secondary mission (which is to develop a better
compliance program throughout the world than currently exists),
Acting Well will be developed and tested in the United States in or-
der to extend the established benefits of long-term prevention and
thus eventually further reduce the rate of Russia’s major problem of
coronary atherosclerosis, the number one killer in the Russian Federa-
tion.
While the prevention aspects of the Program have already been
well defined and proven effective over the past 30 years, motivational
programs are currently poorly defined. None have demonstrated
long-term effectiveness. Therefore, a compliance program that helps

56
to solve the problem of poor motivation, universally present in virtu-
ally every human being, will make a real contribution to world
health.
Since both the Program and Acting Well can be exported to any
country; and since Acting Well can be applied to any form of human
endeavor requiring motivation and compliance, the Foundation’s
clinical trials may prove that Acting Well is a highly marketable en-
tity that can produce sufficient revenues to support the missions of
the Foundation. This potential profitability factor may therefore aug-
ment (and possibly even make unnecessary) further charitable fund-
raising efforts needed to support the Foundation’s programs in future
years.
_________________________________

The secondary mission (in the United States) will begin and run
concurrently with the primary mission (in the Russian Federation).
However, the full Acting Well project will not emerge from its ex-
perimental status until supporting articles have been published in
authoritative cardiology journals.
Randomized clinical trials will be conducted using Russian pa-
tients screened in Russia and found to have one or more abnormali-
ties (for example, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, or
tobacco dependency) will be invited to participate in the Russian tri-
als. Audio/visual programs will be developed to be used to teach and
instruct patient groups. The study will probably be limited to a popu-
lation that tests positively for a combination of two factors (for exam-
ple, hyperlipidemia and obesity). A combination of these forms can
be found in an extremely large group in the Russian Federation.
Ideally, clinical trial patients will be randomized into three
groups: (1) Patients offered no special treatment or individual super-
vision except for initial visits. (2) Patients offered Intermediate Acting
Well (an educational program conveyed through pamphlets, etc. de-
signed for patients who cannot afford ordinary medical treatment).
(3) Patients offered Complete Acting Well (an educational program
conveyed through personal attention and service, designed for a mi-
nority—for example, 5%—of patients for whom costly medical pre-
ventive or rehabilitative treatments present no impediment).
Patients in each group will be followed over a prescribed period
to determine relative compliance ratios (that is, the degree of compli-
ance measured primarily by the number of patients who are still par-
ticipating in the three programs when the study is concluded).
The study will take 12 to 18 months. It will be conducted mainly
in St. Petersburg, Russia. About 300 people will participate. The pri-
mary objective will be to demonstrate a statistically significant differ-
ence between the number of patients with a high compliance ratio in
Groups 2 and/or 3 compared to Group 1. A secondary objective will
be to determine if there is a significant difference in the amount of
lipid and weight reduction (and possibly non-medicated blood pres-
sure levels) in Groups 2 and/or 3 as compared to Group 1, in which

57
case leading cardiology journals are likely to publish results that will
affirm the value of the Program (combined with Acting Well) to pub-
lic health in Russia, and by implication to all other countries.
In order to identify the location and initial Russian population to
which randomized clinical trials of the Program will apply, we will
establish a number of service centers distributed according to the total
number of individuals initially served. These centers will be conven-
iently located in order to serve the population most effectively. Rus-
sian Orthodox churches (because of the power to overcome local ob-
stacles vested in the people who run them) have been suggested as
the best locations for the purpose.
A promotional campaign will be designed on both a regional and
local basis. A regional campaign will require television, radio, and
print advertising. Local campaigns can be initiated by brochures that
are mailed or distributed door to door, and by telephone.
Types of individuals to be included in the program will be identi-
fied (for example, adults 21 or over that do not have chronically de-
bilitating diseases). Individuals with known chronic debilitating dis-
ease will be referred to pre-selected representatives of local practicing
physicians and hospitals.
Follow-up of individuals with identified risk factors will be main-
tained for at least one year or as long as funding permits.
Each of the Centers will consist of the following departments or
sub-programs:
Screening: All individuals will be initially screened prior to entry
into any of the interventional programs. Screening will consist of an
administered questionnaire (to determine demographics, lifestyle, nu-
trition, smoking, exercise, etc.), a brief medical survey, plus a short
psychological evaluation. Weight, blood pressure, lipid, and blood
sugar determinations will be made. EKG and possibly exercise
treadmill tests will be performed. An educational audio-visual pro-
gram describing the Program, the importance of risk factor reduction,
and the need for patient participation will be delivered. Participants
will return in 2 weeks for follow-up and instruction as to their relative
risk for cardiovascular disease. Those individuals with identified risk
factors will be asked to return to the appropriate departments for in-
clusion in interventional program(s). All participants will be entered
into Acting Well. Any individuals who are identified as having heart
disease, severe diabetes, malignant hypertension, the effects of a
stroke, chronic lung disease, terminal cancer, or any other severe or
life-threatening diseases, will be referred to a medical panel consist-
ing of representatives of local physicians and hospitals.
Nutrition: This department will be headed by a nutritionist (ei-
ther a Registered Nurse or a medical doctor) and at least two assis-
tants. The RN/MD will assess the patients and prescribe appropriate
medications. Patients with morbid obesity, severe (that is, insulin de-
pendent) diabetes, and familial hypercholesterolemia will be ex-
cluded or referred to the Physician Panel. A laboratory technician will
obtain blood for a lipid profile and fasting blood sugar level. Entrance

58
criteria will include: total cholesterol >199 and/or low-density lipo-
protein [LDL] >160 and/or triglycerides >200; fasting blood sugar
>120; body weight: >15% above predicted norm.
Exercise: An exercise physiologist will head this program. A con-
sulting cardiologist will direct the medical assessment of the patients.
Exercise assistants will support the program. An exercise prescription
will be developed and prescribed according to age and sex. Entrance
Criteria: Patients 21-39 should be capable of performing prescribed
exercise activities. Patients >39 who have undergone a negative
treadmill exercise test. Patients with positive exercise tests will be re-
ferred to Physician Panel.
Hypertension: A physician/nurse team will direct this program.
Two technicians will be hired to measure blood pressure. The labora-
tory will be utilized to obtain blood for renal function evaluations.
The physician, depending on the level of patient’s blood pressure and
subsequent follow-up control, will give appropriate prescriptions for
antihypertensives. Patients manifesting secondary causes of hyper-
tension (for example, coarctation, renal artery stenosis, Cushing’s dis-
ease, etc.) will be excluded. Patients with moderate to severe renal
disease will be excluded. Entrance Criteria: Systolic blood pressure
140 – 210. Diastolic blood pressure 90 – 120.
Smoking Cessation Program (To be developed.)
Acting Well, a motivational compliance program: “Control for a
Lifetime,” referred to the Motivational Department. (To be devel-
oped.)

—April 2000

Permanent Change
• Cardiologists typically tell patients just recovering
from heart attack, “You must change your lifestyle!”
• People on diets want to change their weight and
body image.
• People set goals in competitive sports to help them
change their performance.

These examples illustrate a central problem in human behavior.

It’s that the likelihood of ultimate success in any of these cases is close
to zero.
It isn’t that you can’t or won’t start out changing your behavior.
As one portly man put it, “Losing weight is easy! I’ve done it many
times!”
The problem is that once you’ve reached your goal the urge to
change back to where you were before is almost overwhelming.

59
 For example, a woman who weighs 150 pounds wants to reduce
her weight to 135 pounds. She plans to go on a “strict diet, starting
Monday.”
On Monday, she begins a two-week ordeal depriving herself of
all the snacks, desserts, and extra portions to which she’s long felt en-
titled. She does so knowing that after two weeks of near starvation
she’ll be free to savor, again, the treats she temporarily denied herself.
Over the next two weeks, she manages to lose 15 pounds. When
she’s achieved her goal she does, indeed, return to her old delights—
sometimes with a vengeance. Within a few more weeks, she gains
back all the weight she lost.
Sometimes more!
This unhappy saga describes the often-derided yo-yo diet. On the
one hand, you can successfully change. However, as soon as the
change takes effect you begin to look forward to the change back.
Which change do you think is more compelling: changing to be-
havior that deprives you of goodies, or changing back to behavior
that rewards you with goodies?
When the question is put this way, the underlying problem of yo-
yo dieting appears in bold relief. There’s no question that the system
of depriving yourself creates an overwhelming desire to change back
to your original problem behavior.
You may think that some people would eventually give up on
such self-destructive behavior. However, the fact is, a yo-yo diet
brings more immediate rewards than more sensible practices that
may take months or years to establish an ideal weight.
In other words, yo-yo diets are more fun, and the rewards for
immediate weight loss are substantial. For one thing, almost everyone
you know will compliment you on your new figure!
However, the rewards for changing back to the old regime are
substantial also. Now you can savor all the “forbidden fruit” you
promised to reward yourself after your dieting ordeal, and which you
can eat with impunity from guilt for the first few weeks. After all, you
did lose all that weight!
You might say that yo-yo dieters are addicted to their up and
down practice, although physical addiction is probably not the issue.
Simple pleasure is.
The main problem is that “change,” when it involves yo-yo diets
and similarly doomed enterprises, is what actors call “going for re-
sults.” They simply don’t work.
Here’s why:
Let’s say you’re an actor who wants to portray Hamlet on the
Broadway stage.
What kind of “results” might you wish for?
• First, you’ll certainly want the audience to appreciate
your work and reward you with applause.

60
 • Second, you’ll want to earn at least a four-figure per
week salary.
• Third, you’ll want to garner rave reviews from the
press.
• Finally, you’ll want your performance to go down in
Broadway annals as a singular moment in the history
of the theatre!

None of these “results” will help you portray Hamlet! The more
you think about success or failure in the theatre, the more likely you
are to alienate, rather than delight, the audience. You have to think
about the character of Hamlet while onstage, not your career as an ac-
tor.
However, even if you concentrate totally on your character, you
still can fail by “going for results.” For example, you may think that
Hamlet should be a dour figure who walks around like a depressed
adolescent. (After all, his mother is sleeping with his father’s mur-
derer!) Thus, you might regularly look down or away from your fel-
low actors. You might sigh before each line. You might move lethar-
gically. And so on.
None of this behavior will help you. It’s superficial and wrong,
and for a simple reason: If Hamlet acted that way in life (as well he
might have done), and you asked him “What’re you doing, Hamlet?”
he would never reply, “Can’t you see, I’m looking down, sighing, and
moving lethargically?”
On the contrary, he would say something like, “I’m trying to find
Ophelia because I have terrible news for her!”
If you’re acting Hamlet and you substitute your own sense of
what Hamlet’s “bad news” would be for you (and for your substi-
tuted Ophelia), and really cause yourself to believe it, it will cause
you automatically to walk around depressed and dour onstage—which
will be a subconscious result that comes about from responding to your
emotional substitutions.
In other words, your consciousness would have no awareness of
how depressed you look to others. Nor should it. Hamlet’s didn’t!
Nevertheless, although you’re not aware of what you look like, the
audience will believe you.
Similarly, if you wish to be thinner, don’t “go for results.” Don’t
tell yourself, “I want to lose 15 pounds in two weeks.” That’s like
wanting to get good reviews for portraying Hamlet. It has nothing to
do with how to achieve your ultimate goal.
Be careful of all goals! For example, you probably don’t know ex-
actly what your ideal weight should be (or your ideal score in golf, for
that matter); and probably no one else does, either.
Avoid believing anyone who pretends to know. “Ideal” meas-
urements depend on many factors, such as body type, time of life, ge-
netics, and other unknowable factors. There are no absolute models.

61
 On the other hand, if you practice good health habits lifelong,
your body will bring itself to its ideal weight automatically. Your
weight won’t change much after that.
Your objective should be a “winner’s” objective, which is to prac-
tice the actions of “Acting Well” (involving Morning Preparation, fit-
ness, etc.). Your objectives should not include abstract measurements
such as losing a certain number of pounds.
Commercialization has a lot to do with encouraging “going for
results.” Yo-yo diets are a good example of how economic interests
have discovered that by promising people instantaneous results, eve-
rybody seems to win. People lose weight; but then they gain it back
long after the marketer has pocketed the money.
You’re a big boy or girl now, and so you should learn how the
swindle (which almost all of us have fallen for it one time or another)
works.
The commercial forces that are currently encouraging teeth whit-
ening (among them, some unethical dentists) are additional examples
of how going for a speedy result produces dubious outcomes.
Brushing your teeth is a good example of a healthy activity that
isn’t goal oriented. You probably don’t brush your teeth in order to
make them whiter, because most people know that brushing doesn’t
make teeth whiter. But if you succumb to recent marketing campaigns
for certain brands of toothpaste that claim to make teeth whiter, then
you’re “going for results.” The ultimate result, of course, is that you’ll
waste your money. Your teeth won’t get whiter (unless you apply
bleaching pastes that are stronger than you can get in the typical
“whitener” toothpastes). There would be no “quick fix” to it, because
you would have to keep bleaching your teeth daily by yourself or pe-
riodically by a dentist. In the end, there may be no discernable or sig-
nificant difference. However, after paying a lot of money, you may
convince yourself that you have whiter teeth because of self-hypnotic
suggestion.
Many people walk around these days with unnaturally treated
teeth. The more perfect their smile, especially when they’re older, the
more they look like they’re wearing false teeth! The effect is the same
as a man wearing a bad toupee. He only fools children.
Part of how you can tell the difference between valid objectives
(like telling Ophelia there’s trouble in Denmark) and going for results
(like trying to rouse applause) is to recognize the difference between
temporary (“quick” or “miraculous”), result-oriented behavior, and
the permanent nature of healthier habits.
There’s one program in the fitness field, for example, that prom-
ises huge increases in strength by lifting weights only ten minutes a
week.
It seems safe and easy. How much damage can you do ten min-
utes? It sounds like every struggling body-builder’s dream.
Although the physiology behind these programs may be sound,
their temporary nature comes clear when you consider that after sev-
eral years on such a program (which is virtually unthinkable) you’d

62
finally reach a plateau beyond which it would be impossible for a
human being to get stronger. At that point, you might be able to lift
1,000 pounds (for ten seconds). However, to what end? So that you
can stop submitting your body to extreme forms of exercise?
It’s not a bad thing to be strong, but it won’t alter or improve
your life as much as daily fitness workouts that make permanent
change possible.
How can you tell the difference between “permanent change”
and temporary quick fixes that are doomed to fail?
For one thing, permanent change occurs only once in a lifetime.
It’s not quick and it doesn’t depend on, or promise, specific results.
Since you can’t get frustrated if you have no expectations, perma-
nent change can never disappoint you. Therefore, you can never slide
back once you’ve made the change.
Finally, the only way you can measure permanent change is by
comparing the present to the past. You can’t look into the future (as
quick-fix marketers would have you do) and predict change, for no
one can see into the future. Therefore, all quick-fix changes are mar-
keters’ illusions.
Permanent change, on the other hand, is indisputable. If you ever
learn (through a program like Acting Well) how to comply to health-
ier brain and body schedules and decisions, you’ll find it impossible
to “go back” to the sedentary, overweight, and semi-conscious human
being you were before the change.
When something that powerful affects permanent change in you,
from that point on, only severe disability or death can stop you.

How to Prevent Heart Disease

A cursory analysis of preventive cardiology on the Internet web-
sites of America will lead to more than 1,700 listings, about 100 of
which are useful. Most of them are associated with health clinics or
hospitals.
These website marketing efforts employ many estimable adjec-
tives in describing their institutional programs, such as: that they are
aggressive (in attempting to “control all risk factors”); comprehensive
(including, in tobacco intervention, “counseling, follow-up, and drugs
when necessary”); computerized (as in diet analysis); emphasized and/or
focused (for example on cholesterol and blood pressure or on eliminat-
ing risk); individualized (for nutrition assessment); integrated, multi-
disciplinary, and/or personalized (for example in an institution’s particu-
lar “approach” to prevention); intensive (regarding education); and
thorough (when making laboratory assessments).
Specific programs in these aggressive, comprehensive, computerized,
emphasized, focused, individualized, integrated, multi-disciplinary, person-
alized, intensive, and thorough programs include: assessments (of nutri-
tional and risk profiles); counseling (for example, on appropriate exer-

63
cise, lifestyle changes, nutrition, obesity, physical fitness and therapy,
stress, and tobacco); drugs (for example, for tobacco cessation and ex-
perimental programs); guidance, maintenance, and follow-up (for exer-
cise, smoking cessation, and weight loss); information and education
(for patients and families on how to make lifestyle changes and how
to monitor heart health); intervention (for tobacco); management (of
blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and stress); medical prescriptions (for
example, for blood pressure medication, healthier diet, exercise and
maintenance, or tobacco addiction); questionnaires (on family history,
past history, or for a risk assessment profile); recommendations (for ex-
ample, on exercise, or “to point clients in the right direction for a
healthier, longer life”); referrals (for example, for smoking cessation);
reviews (of dietary and exercise patterns); support services and groups
(only one support group is listed; it meets once a month); and techni-
cal measurements, such as tests and laboratory assessments (body fat
analysis, blood chemistry, echocardiograms, exercise tests and rec-
ommendations, and stress tests are mentioned).
Let’s take each program listed above group by group.
Assessments of nutritional and risk profiles consist of giving pro-
fessional advice on the results of the kind of technical tests clinics give
their patients. These tests are billed either to patients or insurance
companies, and the professionals who offer them are paid to adminis-
ter and interpret them. In and of themselves, tests obviously do noth-
ing to lower the risk of heart disease. They merely help professionals
give more appropriate and specific counseling than might otherwise
be possible.
Assessments tend to serve the needs of professionals more than
they do patients. For example, they are generally an important part of
the marketing efforts of the institutions that offer them; and the client
records they generate are often invaluable in helping defend profes-
sionals against lawsuits by litigious patients.
Services that fall under the title of assessments include guidance,
maintenance, follow-up, questionnaires, reviews, and technical measure-
ments (which include tests and laboratory assessments mainly for
high blood pressure and high cholesterol).
Counseling consists of paying for professional advice on an ap-
propriate course of action to reduce risk: for example, advice to join a
health club or to exercise daily, advice to change one’s lifestyle, ad-
vice to lose weight and keep physically fit, and advice to reduce stress
and stop smoking. In other words, in a majority of cases the client
pays a professional to tell the client things the client already knows
and can’t (or won’t) do anything about. Counseling alone doesn’t
help motivate daily intense exercise, go on permanent diets that
work, reduce reactions to stress, stop smoking, or comply to a physi-
cian’s directions concerning medications.
Other services that fall under the title of counseling include recom-
mendations, information, and education. “Information” usually consists
not of oral conversations but of printed pamphlets and other materi-
als containing such “helpful tips” as what kind of lifestyle changes to

64
make and how to monitor vital signs.
Pamphlets can’t provide motivation. “Education” is a terribly ex-
pensive service if all it provides is pamphlets.
Drugs (or “medical prescriptions”) are convenient and effective
measures to provide health care to sick individuals; but they should
not be the prescriptions of choice for healthy individuals. They may
reduce blood pressure or cholesterol levels, for example, when taken
regularly; or temporarily reduce craving for tobacco. However, aside
from drug-related side effects, these medical specifics are remedies
that do nothing to eliminate such bad practices as leading a sedentary
lifestyle or eating mainly rich and fatty foods that lack essential nutri-
ents. These “lifestyle” bad habits, especially when combined with
others, increase cardiovascular risk more than high blood pressure as
one gets older.
Intervention generally refers to anti-tobacco drugs, and sometimes
to experimental drugs that may do more harm than good, and are not
guaranteed to reduce risk.
Management consists of paying someone to measure blood pres-
sure, cholesterol levels, and stress hormones, usually in order to
monitor drug dosages on a continuing basis. Without a motivational
program, these measures do little or nothing to lower risk.
Referrals for smoking cessation are ways for experts to charge
money in order to send patients to other experts who will charge
more money for programs that may or may not stop people from
smoking, but that will do nothing to eliminate other sources of risk.
Support services and groups that meet only once a month probably
occur too infrequently to do much good. If these groups have poor
leadership, members will wind up with a situation in which “the
blind lead the blind.” On the other hand, if the leadership is good,
there’s little purpose in combining people in groups—other than that
the therapy is less expensive, which attracts more patients; and the
leaders make more money.
Most of these programs (especially drug prescriptions) are more
suitable for someone who has had, or is about to have, a heart attack.
Few of them are programs that healthy people can use to prevent
reaching a stage where drastic measures become necessary. However,
in the field of cardiology, repairing damage has a much higher suc-
cess rate than preventing it.
All of the programs listed above sound medically valid, intelli-
gent, and responsible. However, if you analyze each of them, you
won’t find even one that, in and of itself, will cause someone with car-
diovascular disease to change their lifestyle in order to live a longer
and better life.
Likewise, if you take all the programs collectively, even though
no single one is ultimately effective, you might suppose that such a
volume of efforts would add up to a “healthier life style” for Ameri-
cans. However, as any school child knows, you can multiply any
number at all by zero and you will still come up with zero! Thus, al-
though it seems counter-intuitive, combining many programs to-

65
gether that ought to prevent heart disease won’t prevent heart disease.
In this exhaustive listing of services, one common point comes
clear: You get what you pay for. If you pay for assessment, counseling,
drugs, intervention, management, referrals, or support services you
will get those services; but you won’t get risk reduction because you
haven’t paid for risk reduction. No one offers it, and therefore you
can’t get it. What you get from these providers is the implication that
if you do what they tell you to do you will reduce your risk. However,
what if you don’t do what they tell you to do? What if you can’t do
what they tell you to do? What if you don’t have the “willpower” to
do what they tell you to do?
It’s easy to provide good advice, especially in the field of cardiol-
ogy where so much is known about cardiovascular disease. However,
too little is known about cardiovascular health, mainly because no-
body can charge money for health. It’s an end “result” in itself, not a
means to an end.
Other, more insidious problems make existing preventive cardi-
ology programs ineffective. As one cardiologist put it, “We only win
when the patient loses. We lose when the patent wins.”
In order to train a patient to modify behavior, you have to put the
patient in charge of the modification. (No one else can do it.) This ef-
fort takes the power away from a puppetmaster and ultimately makes
a puppetmaster irrelevant. A doctor, on the other hand, who expects a
patient to change a lifestyle, wants to stay in charge of the same pa-
tient. Few doctors would dream of putting their patients in charge of
their own health!
There may also be a subtle “do what I say, not what I do” prob-
lem with “Type-A” health professionals who smoke and overeat.
Finally, accepting an effective behavior modification program
marks as profound a change in a patient’s life as “finding religion.” In
many ways, a successful behavior modification experience resembles
a religious conversion, except that the “new religion” must be based
on science, not faith. Health professionals can’t preach this kind of re-
ligion unless they believe in it. Everyone believes in the value of the
desired results; but as few professionals believe in, or will accept the
possibility of, finding a commonly accepted method to achieve those
results as will accept the idea that there may be only one religion that
“really works.”
If a simple and inexpensive (or free) program were made avail-
able that could alter someone’s lifestyle irrevocably and permanently,
would doctors, clinics, or hospitals offer it?
Probably not, for such a program would not involve assessment,
counseling, drugs, intervention, management, referrals, or support
services. Therefore, no one could charge money for it. If no one could
charge for it, why would anyone offer it?
Therefore there’s a chronic need, not only in this country but
throughout the world, to offer a replicable preventive program “of
excellence” that can actually cause significantly large populations to
modify their behavior in such ways as to preclude cardiovascular and

66
other forms of cellular and tissue damage that occur because of un-
healthy lifestyles or bad habits. Such a program may not be able to be
developed except by a non-profit organization that raises sufficient
money to make the program effective, and that can afford to offer its
free or low-cost services to the public without having to reward its
investors.

—March 2000

The Right Choice

Is This You?

I’ve just passed an “important birthday,” and it’s killing me!

What happened to my youth?
What am I going to do now that I’ve been gaining about a pound a year,
and I’d have to do some serious dieting to get back to a sensible weight?
I keep putting it off, and it seems I gain a few more ounces every month.
And, I’m uncomfortable! I’ve had to have my clothes let out, and I’ve
thrown away some wonderful things I just can’t get into any more.
I go into the kitchen and see some tasty food I don’t need.
I know I shouldn’t pick it up. But, I do! Every single time!
Why do I do that? What perverse little devil in my head makes me be-
lieve, at the time I make my decision to “go off” my imaginary diet, that I
“deserve” it “just this once”?
I don’t understand!
My doctor’s been measuring my blood pressure, which, like my weight,
keeps going up.
He told me to cut down on salt, and I tried that for about two days, and I
hated it! (Have you ever tried to find food without salt in it? Trust me: you
might rather be dead!)
I think the real problem is at work, where I’ve got a sadistic boss who
puts unbearable pressure on me sometimes. I can never seem to get it right. I
haven’t gotten fired yet, but I know the stress affects my pressure, and I
don’t know what to do about it. My doctor says that maybe I should try to
“meditate.” But he also says, “of course it’s easier to “medicate.”
So now, my doctor’s got me on serious blood pressure medicine. I sus-
pect he thinks it’s going to give me a few more years before I have a heart at-
tack. Thank God, the side effects aren’t too horrible—although I notice them.
Ditto with my serum cholesterol! My percentages between the “good”
and the “bad” stuff (I have no idea what that means!) are the opposite of
what they should be. So, I’m not supposed to eat eggs.
We’ll see.
I might develop a sugar problem because I’ve had hypoglycemia since I
was in my early twenties. But, having to give up desserts and the like—well,
would life be worth it?
What’s life about anyway? (I wish I knew!) Isn’t it a matter of enjoying
some pleasures now and then? And then you die?

67
 I don’t look forward to that, of course! But like that woman in “Gone
With the Wind,” I’ll think about it tomorrow.
Or next year, or something—which is definitely when I’m going to stop
smoking!
I make a New Years resolution to quit just about every year and break it
immediately—which means I can’t live with anyone who doesn’t smoke. (Of
course, living with someone who smokes, which I have to do, makes it virtu-
ally impossible to quit!)
Which brings up the subject of my love life.
I’m on my fourth “relationship” now, and the same damn thing keeps
happening!
Why?
I know you’re supposed to be “faithful” to your mate, but when someone
who’s really attractive, who I think might have the hots for me, gets inter-
ested, there’s that little devil in me starts me going. And, the rest is pretty
bad to talk about!
I’ve never been in a relationship with someone who was into the same
offbeat sexual things I like (or vice versa—and I do mean vice!) Just never
got lucky that way.
So, when you start playing around with others, the incompatibility at
home gets worse. You really lose interest in the one you’re supposed to love!
And if you can’t get excited by the person you’re living with, what then?
What are you supposed to do? Hang on to the relationship and lie? Pre-
tend? Can’t do it! Not able! I’ve too much integrity in me to be dishonest!
Gotta move on! (Eventually.)
Let’s not talk about my drinking because I’ll only get depressed (which
is another problem that’s developed). Of course, medical science tells us that
drinking’s good for you! (And, if you get depressed, take Prozac.) So, why
shouldn’t I drink? It isn’t only the devil who’s making me do it—it’s a
“medically approved” devil!
I’m certainly not an alcoholic! I can skip a day without a drink and not
really miss it. (If I’m sick, for example.) But when I get home at night, I’ve
gotta have that Chardonnay!
I like the feeling! What’s wrong with that?
Of course, it doesn’t help me in the weight department. Quite the oppo-
site, I’m sure. (Because once I’ve had that drink, all diet discipline goes out
the window!) I don’t feel so good the next morning, but I get over it by noon.
Why do I get every cold that comes around, and always forget to ask for
flu shots?
Truth is, I hate doctors!
Dentists are even worse! Those guys make a lot of money scaring people.
All this “prophylaxis” and preventive medicine—I think it’s hogwash! If
fate’s got you marked, you’re screwed. And, that’s the whole ball of wax!
(Isn’t it?)
One of these days I’ve got to get in shape. I know I’m losing it, slow but
sure. It’s harder to climb stairs, I get out of breath, and I get tired a lot. I’m
just not aging well like some of my more virtuous friends. (I have to admit I
don’t have many of those! Maybe two!)
I should join a health club. (I know I’ll never get myself to run or jog on

68
the streets. Not going to happen!)
There’s a club two blocks from me. But, I haven’t had the time to check it
out.
I figure I’d probably have to hire a personal trainer because I don’t even
know which machines I should be using. (Don’t want to hurt myself, do I?)
And I understand a personal trainer costs like $45 to $75 an hour.
That’s a lotta moolah for a drill sergeant!
I’d rather do it myself, like get it from a book or something. But, I sup-
pose I never will.
I used to write when I was in college, and I think I wrote some pretty
good short stories!
I seem to have a knack for language, or at least dialogue; and, although I
can’t write fancy poetry or stuff like that, I think I can make a reader want to
know what’s gonna happen at the end!
I really ought to do something intelligent like that. So, why do I spend
three hours a night watching TV? (Four, when I watch the News!) What
would I miss if I spent some of that time reading books or writing, for exam-
ple?
Someone told me they thought my problem was my “character.”
Like—I don’t have any!
Or, like, I don’t have any control over who I am.
I used to believe in God when I was a teenager. (I could probably use
Him right now, when I need to strengthen my “character.”) But as the years
went by, it all seemed so foolish, like a great big con game! And I’m definitely
not into any kind of woo-woo “spirituality”!
So, who has character, I’d like to know? Who knows who they are? Do
you? Are you telling me the truth?
I guess I have two friends I went to school with who’re into self-
discipline and sports, who work hard professionally, have interesting (and
different) hobbies, are trim and attractive, still look terrific in fashions they
wore years ago, and seem to be growing old with style.
Not that any of us are really old, but those two managed to stay really
young looking—at least so far!
The most interesting thing is their relationship. They were, like, high
school sweethearts, and still are.
So how’d they do it?
I guess my “character” is such I’ll never be able to do what they did. It’s
just me, I suppose. Not in me. Or, it’s the devil in me. How do you get rid of
that devil?
I think my two friends are into something I don’t know anything about.
I wish I knew their secret!

If this sounds like you....

Recently announced scientific information about the workings of

the brain that will revolutionize neuroscience and the self-help indus-
try can help you!
If your doctor tells you you’re edging toward a heart attack; if
you’ve ever acted or wanted to act or are willing to learn how; and if

69
you’ve ever written a story or a poem or a letter, The Right Choice
can help you develop new disciplines based on these revolutionary
findings. This book will provide you with “Mental Insurance Against
Heart Attacks.”
These new practices, which are based on science, not spirituality,
include “Maharajayoga,” a stress-reducing morning discipline that al-
ternates contemplation with writing; “Acting Well,” which is a collec-
tion of daylong practices; and daily dietary and exercise routines that
will become an integral part of your life.
If you believe you have a “weak character,” The Right Choice will
help you develop a strong one that resists “the devil who made you
do it.”
You’ll lose weight, lower your blood pressure and “bad” choles-
terol, end addictions to smoking, alcohol, drugs, and sex, and cure
(and prevent further damage from) a variety of illnesses that strike
people as they enter middle age.
If you’ve tried a hundred diets and checked out mental practices
like yoga or meditation; and if nothing’s done the trick, The Right
Choice will explain why and correct the wrong things you were
taught, so that you’ll be able to make “the right choices” from now
on.

A Revolution of the Mind

There has recently occurred a “paradigm shift” in how the pow-
ers of the human brain are perceived. Dr. Eric R. Kandel, a leading
scientist at Columbia University, compared the cause of this concep-
tual shift (reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci-
ences and 19 months later in the journal Science) to the kinds of dis-
coveries described by historian Thomas Kuhn that happen once in a
lifetime, when one major scientific theory supersedes another.
Until the results of experiments led by Dr. Elizabeth Gould of
Princeton University, which caused this paradigm shift, were an-
nounced in The New York Times in March, 1998 and October, 1999, vir-
tually all scientists accepted the idea that the mature human brain
constantly loses neuron cells; and that, like voluntary muscle cells,
brain cells can never be replaced.
Dr. Gould demolished this assumption by proving that billions of
new cells are formed throughout adulthood in the center of the brain;
and that these cells migrate constantly to its peripheries where all our
thoughts, dreams, and decisions are made.
Dr. Fred Gage, a neurobiologist at the Salk Institute in San Diego,
said the implications of Dr. Gould’s findings were “fabulously inter-
esting.” And Dr. Fernando Nottebohm, head of the laboratory of
animal behavior at The Rockefeller University, who two decades be-
fore had reported how the brains of birds swelled with new cells dur-
ing the mating season and shrank after the birds had bred, used the
word “amazing” to describe Dr. Gould’s remarkable vindication of

70
his controversial work.
The scientific history behind these announcements, the charac-
terizations of the people who made and debated the discoveries, and
the social and scientific politics that impeded them, will provide some
fascinating stories for The Right Choice. However, these details will
only be the background for a much more astonishing tale.
Dr. William T. Greenough, a neuroscientist at the University of Il-
linois, said that Dr. Gould’s discoveries created a “whole new ball
game” for addressing brain diseases, as soon as scientists can figure
out how to harness the brain’s own restorative powers. But The Right
Choice will show that even more profound inferences can be drawn
right now from Dr. Gould’s discovery that human behavior is con-
trolled by a central organ in the body that may grow with exercise
and atrophy when not properly used.
So far, no one has properly drawn out the implications of these
findings as they must affect the entire gamut of human psychology.
The Right Choice will show specific ways of how the brain can make it-
self more creative as well as help the body cope better with the aging
process.
For example, the neurobiology of Dr. Bruce S. McEwen of The
Rockefeller University (Dr. Gould’s partner in her first seminal ex-
periments) helped show that, under certain conditions, neurogenesis
(the formation, migration, and integration of new brain cells) is inter-
rupted by the effects of stress. These experimental findings suggest
that, just as it is possible to stop neurogenesis, it may be possible to
start, resume, or direct it in ways that may be beneficial to human be-
havior, motivation, creativity, self-discipline, and so forth.
The Right Choice will lead the way to help people maximize neu-
rogenesis; and it will suggest that without such a discipline at least
one-half of the human population is doomed to suffer from all sorts of
mental and physical problems associated with brain atrophy. These
deficiencies are the ones that depend on self-discipline (or “will-
power”). They include addictions to cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and
sex; as well as weight problems, cardiovascular diseases, high blood
pressure, high cholesterol, hypoglycemia and adult onset diabetes, ar-
thritis, depression, sexual dysfunctions, and immunity problems.
The main ways currently being sold to the public to treat these at-
rophy-related diseases include stress reduction methods, weight con-
trol diets, and various forms of physical exercise. The main thesis of
The Right Choice is that separate efforts to treat weight and stress prob-
lems or to “get in shape” are doomed to fail unless neurogenesis spe-
cifically ties them together.
Before Dr. Gould’s work was announced, the author of The Right
Choice had developed a series of brain/body exercises that came to be
based on innovative (and still controversial) neurobological discover-
ies by other scientists. His most influential sources included the semi-
nal works on consciousness by the Nobel Prize winning Dr. Gerald
Edelman, and the controversial discoveries of Dr. Benjamin Libet con-
cerning “free will.”

71
 The author’s exercises, which he began developing 40 years ago,
continue to evolve; and for several years he has taught them to other
people who find them effective.
In the 40 years the author has practiced his exercises, they have
never failed him! Furthermore, although it’s only anecdotal evidence,
he believes he has cured himself of five of the diseases listed above
that he associates with brain atrophy, and prevented several more.
Probably no one can claim this rate of success for any currently
available brain/body exercises, whether they include religious
prayer, transcendental meditation, other forms of yoga, or similar
mind/body control exercises.
The Right Choice will explain why these more traditional forms of
mental exercises are no longer appropriate (most were invented dur-
ing autocratic regimes and could not have been promulgated unless
they guaranteed that devoted practitioners would always “render
unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”).
In a democracy (where “the right choice” is collectively made),
the People rule rather than divinely appointed monarchs. Therefore,
supernaturally based disciplines will not benefit the skeptical. Fur-
thermore, “master-servant” disciplines (created by doctors, authors,
gurus, personal trainers, nutritionists, aerobics instructors, et al.) are
also useless in developing the self-discipline that one can only pro-
mote through controlled neurogenesis.
The Right Choice will show how, in the end, no one can do it for
you! You must learn to trust your intuition. However, you can’t de-
velop your intuition unless you practice some form of exercise that
controls neurogenesis.
Right now, no one else preaches this message. The Right Choice
will show people “how to do it.” Thus it will show them how to live
healthier longer, stay thinner, and cure or avoid the addictions and
diseases that plague middle age. Above all, the book will show how
“free will,” “willpower,” and “self-discipline” really work (or really
don’t work); and what people can do about it. Thus, The Right Choice
will be the first self-improvement book that can really help someone,
finally, totally, and permanently!
Many people who reach middle age put their hearts at risk by
failing to control their weight (as well as their drinking, which affects
their eating habits). They don’t exercise hard or regularly enough to
be able to lose weight and keep it off. Moreover, they don’t know
how to deal with stress. Therefore, when people have heart attacks,
their cardiologists typically urge them to “change their lifestyle.”
This general bit of advice usually translates into separate pro-
grams to lose weight, medicate, meditate, practice stress-reducing ex-
ercises, and buy and use a treadmill or a stationary bicycle.
Such extensive changes in life habits are not only difficult, incon-
venient, time-consuming, and expensive; for many people, they are
impossible. These people have become so used to making wrong
choices for so long, that those wrong choices have become deeply en-
graved in their brains. Thus, change has become literally “unthink-

72
able.”
They typically express their difficulties by saying, “I don’t have
the willpower to change!”
Diet books, meditation and yoga instruction books, and exercise
plans that don’t address the central issue of “willpower” ultimately
fail their readers.
The Right Choice shows how revolutionary scientific discoveries
concerning neurogenesis (the constant replacing of new brain cells),
can help people to retrain their brains in order to make healthier
choices. It proves, thereby, that people can change—but only if they
know how. Moreover, it shows how many self-help programs actu-
ally diminish willpower by attempting to replace it with a depend-
ency on concepts proposed by experts who promote self-serving self-
help programs.
The book offers an inclusive agenda that helps people lose weight
and never gain it back; that helps them control stress (particularly
when it cannot or should not be eliminated); and that motivates hard
exercise—under the theory that mild exercise, although better than
nothing when measuring its effect on longevity, is useless for weight
control.
Thus people who have weight problems; people who want to
know how to take control of their life every morning (the best way to
avoid the worst effects of stress); and people who want to look for-
ward more to their half hour of daily hard exercise than to a “day off”
should read this book.
Patients of cardiologists, particularly, should practice its sugges-
tions, for those people are most in need of an all-inclusive program to
improve health.
The programs the book offers are free. You don’t have to buy spe-
cial or expensive foods or a single dietary supplement; you don’t have
to join a health club or buy special equipment; you don’t have to con-
tribute money to an ashram to train in Westernized (and often incor-
rectly understood) Hindu religious practices; and you don’t have to
deny yourself food, starve yourself, or go hungry again.
Following the suggestions of The Right Choice, you create your
own menus based on the foods you love most; you create your own
exercise plan based on nothing more than common sense; and you
create your own contemplative exercise, with hints from the book that
are based on the principles of controlled neurogenesis.
For many people who have constantly tried and failed to help
themselves, reading and paying attention to The Right Choice will be
the best decision they ever made.

—December 1999

Yoga
Yoga, which goes back 5,000 years, simply means “yoke.”

73
 Since some of the origins of the English language originated in
the Indo-European area, you can be sure that it’s no coincidence that
the words “yoga” and “yoke” are similar.
In classical yoga (called here “samnyasam yoga,” meaning “yoga
of renunciation”), the spinal column presents a channel up which en-
ergy can be made to travel from the base of the spine to the crown of
the head (and, supposedly, even beyond the limits of the body). This
energy is called “kundalini” (“kunda” means “to spiral”), and it is
sometimes thought of as a coiled serpent ready to spring to action.
In classical yoga practice, as kundalini energy rises up the spinal
cord, it is thought to express itself through other channel networks
called “chakras.” These channels are associated with various nerve
centers, the primary example being the nerve ganglia related to the
solar plexus. Some of the practices of samnyasam yoga attempt to
open up the channels associated with kundalini energy, as these
channels are considered to be “knotted” until released through physi-
cal and psychic yoga practices. The opening of these channels is
thought to foster physical well being or healing as well as spiritual en-
lightenment and freedom from the “self-centered and alienated ego.”
There are at least two different and controversial approaches to
“awakening kundalini.” The more vigorous approach, which is vari-
ously called Kundalini Mahayoga (meaning kundalini “great yoga”),
Siddha Mahayoga (meaning “perfected person” Mahayoga), or Sahaja
Yoga (meaning “spontaneous” yoga), requires a guru to initiate a
devotee by means of “giving shaktipat” (meaning guiding the devo-
tee’s “descent” of the “shakti,” or the kundalini energy).
The less vigorous approach, which is considered to be “radically
different” from the first, simply uses yoga techniques (such as chant-
ing or “selfless service”) to produce various unspecific benefits (that
is, people tend to “feel better” after practicing them—sometimes to
such a degree that for some people yoga practices can become addic-
tive). These techniques include Hatha Yoga, Kriya Yoga, Laya Yoga,
and Mantra Yoga. (The last of these examples includes “Transcenden-
tal Meditation”). For some individuals adept at practicing Kundalini
Yoga, the less vigorous study of yoga techniques is considered “a
clumsy mockery of the subtle activity of kundalini.”
In any event, the more vigorous practice of “giving shaktipat” is
considered a serious business and a science. One celebrated swami
(Shivom Tirth) warns that an improperly practiced shaktipat initia-
tion can be “dangerous” both to the disciple and to the guru. Some
unstable individuals have suffered severe mental breakdowns after
receiving shaktipat.
For these reasons, kundalini instruction usually insists on a hier-
archical system of knowledge to be passed from generation to genera-
tion. Sometimes only one person in a generation receives initiation
during a particular teaching line. These days, however, anyone who
has the money to pay a “guru” can find one somewhere who will give
instruction. The ubiquitous availability of this highly esoteric and
even dangerous knowledge, especially in the West, is the cause, at

74
least according to one writer, why some people who have received
shaktipat from celebrated gurus “have apparently only manifested
greater neuroses and unhappiness in their lives as a result.”
The process of awakening kundalini is not a mysterious talent
available only to those initiated by an expert teacher. Actually, the
stimulation of the chakras (at least in an undifferentiated way) can be
practiced by anyone who has “the knack.” However, like rolling the
tongue or wiggling the ears some people can never figure out how to
do it, probably for reasons having to do with their parents’ genes.
In any case, if you have ever “relaxed and extended” the nervous
channels around the area of the solar plexus by means of a strange
muscular effort around the chest and belly that leads to a not un-
pleasant—but remarkably powerful and even frightening—sensation
of energy radiating into the body, then you know exactly what this
phenomenon is and how to practice it—even if it never occurred to
you that such a talent is what some experts spend years to practice
and teach.
The question of whether practicing this talent has healthy spiri-
tual and/or corporeal benefits is best left to the instructors who de-
vote their life to awakening kundalini in themselves and their stu-
dents.
So is the question best left to experts of whether the sensations of
awakened kundalini can be differentiated into many chakras, or
whether the imagination of yoga practitioners goes into overtime un-
der the influence of a guru.
It was not unusual for various ancient religious systems to iden-
tify parts or sections of the body as being sources of special physical
or spiritual powers or “energy.” The Jews, for example, identified a
bony portion of the spine as a part of the body that could never be de-
stroyed and that would survive to become the basis of everyone’s re-
incarnated body in Paradise. The Chinese identified portions of the
body (such as areas of the foot) that were supposedly able to influ-
ence bodily organs associated with them. In addition, of course, the
Hindus identified the spinal cord as a channel for divine energy.
Whereas both acupuncture and yoga are based on the idea of be-
ing able to influence energy centers for healthful purposes, the practi-
tioner of Acting Well does not seek to “energize” special powers by
concentrating on areas of the body. Rather, the practitioner’s effort
seeks to absorb powers from the environment and reflect them back
into the environment, productively, in order to influence the world
for the better.
By focusing on the environment in order to divert attention away
from the self, Acting Well is the opposite of samnyasam yoga, which
withdraws all attention and spiritual manipulation away from the
environment in order to focus always on the self. As the Bhagavad
Gita puts it, “The practitioner of [samnyasam yoga] should always fo-
cus on his Supreme Self, living alone in a hidden place, always con-
trolling his mind, and free from desire and possessiveness.”
Whereas the “point” of samnyasam yoga is to perfect talents

75
within the body to renounce the “ego” (“samnyasam” means “renun-
ciation”) in order better to realize a spiritual force within the psyche,
Acting Well seeks to achieve the opposite effect. It abandons the seat
of the psyche (that is, the “internal reception area” where all the
products of the senses are gathered, vetted, and abandoned or passed
on to consciousness) in order to attend to immediate sensations.
These sensations are made up of whatever happens to impinge itself
on the senses at the time, whether through memory or through the ac-
tual sounds and experiences of the city, the countryside, the atmos-
phere, the skin, sensations from the body cavity, etc. In a sense, the
practitioner of Acting Well leaves the self and enters the world;
whereas the student of samnyasam yoga leaves the world to concen-
trate on the self.
Understanding the different origins of samnyasam yoga and Act-
ing Well helps explain why they are so different.
Samnyasam yoga was an approved system by the autocratic
power structure of the Indo-European culture where a single maha-
raja (supported by the priesthood) owned virtually all the gold and
all the women. Within such stratified regimes, samnyasam yoga was
a perfect doctrine with which to keep the common folk in line.
It is a fact that the only notable revolution in India (the one that
expelled the British in 1947) prided itself in being non-violent. This
bloodless takeover was marred, of course, by the subsequent conflict
between Muslims and Hindus and Ghandi’s assassination, which
would probably not have occurred if Muslims had originated out of
the same non-violent tradition that Hindus did.
In a sense, all Americans are maharajas! What sense, then, does it
make to advise them to renounce all interest in worldly possessions
and pleasures when they live in a community that obliges men and
women to acquire more goods and services for their families than an-
cient kings could ever dream of, or be called irresponsible?
Renunciation costs a poor man nothing and may lead him toward
spiritual enlightenment. However, in a privileged land, renunciation
as the road to salvation can lead to frustration, hypocrisy, and a citi-
zenry who, with all their treasures, still manifest “neuroses and un-
happiness.”
Lacking the right daily psychic and physical practices, many
Americans, with all their exotic foods and chic clothes, tend to regress
into sedentary lifestyles. These weakened individuals lack the will-
power needed to establish the diet, exercise, and stress-reducing hab-
its that are known to be essential for physical and psychic health and
happiness past middle age. That’s why Acting Well is an ideal sys-
tem, and perhaps the only one, for privileged people to turn their
wealth, power, and opportunity into love, health, and happiness.
To summarize:
“Renunciation yoga” (the form almost universally practiced in the
West) came about mainly for political reasons. Although it is a power-
ful system that has led many disenfranchised people to moral and
psychic salvation, it is inappropriate for privileged Westerners who

76
use it primarily to “feel better” and secondarily for unproven healing
purposes. Although Western samnyasam yoga practitioners often feel
better after folding themselves into their positions or falling into
trances, if they contribute anything to the community, if they create
wonderful things, or if they can call up sufficient willpower to im-
prove their brains, bodies, and lives by transforming their lifestyles, it
isn’t because they practice samnyasam yoga. For these privileged
people, Acting Well is a better choice.

Preventive Medicine
The healthiest way to take care of ourselves is to take responsibil-
ity for doing the best we can for our body and brain.
Doctors take that responsibility away from us when we get sick.
For a brief time they treat us as our parents would: they watch over
us, tell us what to do, scold us for not doing it, and sometimes even
send us to bed or to an institution!
Usually, when we’re ailing, medical attention is comforting and
necessary. However, sometimes it’s inappropriate to be treated like a
child, especially when we’re well and hoping to avoid becoming sick.
Thus, preventive medicine that patronizes patients does the opposite
of what it should. Instead of liberating and helping us mature, it tries
to restrict us and keep us dependent, like infants.
For example:
The best thing to do for a child who needs to lose weight is to put
the child on a diet, supervise the menu, regulate the eating time, for-
bid in-between snacks, and so on. A parent must enforce these rules
through punishment if necessary. However, the best thing for me,
whether I weigh too much, too little, or just enough, is to create a
permanent daily menu for myself out of all possible foods I really
like. I must be responsible for the menu’s nutritional balance and ex-
cellence, and resist the inevitable efforts with which my family or
friends will try to persuade me to ignore my menu while eating out,
eating with family, or being entertained. Over time, the scale will tell
me how close I am to my ideal weight. If my weekly menu varies no
more than 5%, I can trust the scale measurements to tell me if I should
add or subtract a course or two from my menu in order, eventually, to
achieve an “ongoing perfection.”
This regimen is too liberating and mature for a small child. It re-
quires such a high respect for scientific method that it may provoke
contempt for all the cookbook writers and diet doctors who want me
to pay them for their fashionable ideas, drugs, and useless advice.
One can draw similar illustrations for physical and psychological
regimens:
“Exercise,” by definition, is a form of simple, repetitive activity.
As such, exercises are suitable to teach and supervise children (al-
though some children play so much they don’t need supervised exer-
cise).

77
 I can keep my body in good condition through regular exercise,
but only if I do it regularly! Since most exercises are boring, I’m likely
to abandon a new regimen after a while. Thus, it would be better for
me to find an activity analogous to what children do for which I take
daily responsibility to maintain a reasonable level of skill. Speed
swimming, cycling, and fast dancing, are suitable candidates provid-
ing they are convenient and can be practiced as if they were perform-
ances (the way children play “pretend” games that other people can
watch).
The difference between exercise and performance is often illus-
trated by results. Men who work on “abs and pecs” in health clubs
tend to ignore their back muscles. They develop strange postures.
Men who work as laborers, on the other hand, regularly lift heavy
things, develop their torsos more evenly, and walk more gracefully.
A wonderful car without a road to drive on will never perform
properly. Thus, spinning the wheels of a simple exercise bicycle can
never provide the motivation that biking around Central Park offers
every New Yorker. (Adding “bells and whistles” to exercise bicycles,
however, can usually increase motivation to a useful level.)
One technique that automatically gets people to perform is com-
petition. However, competition is too difficult to arrange on a daily or
semi-daily basis to be a useful conditioner—although the possibility
of athletic competition (an annual marathon, for example) does help
motivate regular practice for many people. Nevertheless, a “perform-
ing-for-oneself-in-public” strategy is better than a competition be-
cause it’s available every day, as long as the body can function. It can
also adjust to declining strength without disheartening the practitio-
ner.
Psychological exercises that stress repetitive activities are an ex-
ample of patronizing conditioning. Self-hypnosis techniques (such as
Couéism), repeating mantras using Hindu rosary beads (called “mak-
ing japam”), and many forms of meditation are psychological exer-
cises that may “work spiritually.” However, if I do such exercises for
preventive medical reasons they will condition my brain to blank out
thought (actually to make me more responsive to a teacher, trainer, or
guru Many such Eastern practices were developed by collaborators of
absolute monarchs, and thus were part of a political strategy). Such
exercises assume that an unclean mind needs purification, or that a
child has nothing worthy to think about and needs to have “spiritual”
thoughts implanted. Thus, doctors who recommend repetitive medi-
tation (or relaxation) exercises to reduce stress may reinforce their pa-
tients’ immaturity rather than their strength.
Many doctors feel it is their solemn duty to be parent-surrogates.
They assume they are being paid to do play that role. Indeed, when a
patient is sick, it is absolutely appropriate for a doctor to take charge
of the patient as any parent would a child, and offer all the affection
and “tender loving care” the patient needs for as long as necessary.
However, for issues of preventive medicine, such solicitation is
not appropriate. If you treat a muscle sprain with rest, it doesn’t fol-

78
low that you should pamper strong muscles as well. Good health, be-
ing priceless, is not an economic issue; and doctors should not feel the
need to infanticize healthy patients.
This medical economic issue (which, over time, may change due
to the psychological effects of managed care systems on health) is par-
tially responsible for the poor state of preventive medicine, which is
expressed in proliferating diet, exercise, and psychological self-help
books, tapes, and equipment. These products sometimes descend be-
yond patronizing to the level of superstitious grandparents embroi-
dering ancient folklore. Unhappily, such inventions sell in the mil-
lions!
Patronizing harms preventive medicine. However, doctors who
liberate their patients through information and respect for scientific
method make them more mature and better able to share knowledge
with others about conditioning for health. This system of transference
of knowledge is how doctors become doctors: they teach each other.
Patients don’t necessarily require specifics about how to cure sick-
ness; but they do need general information about how to stay well.
The best way to obtain, absorb, solidify, test, use, prove, and ap-
prove any knowledge is to discover it yourself and share it with oth-
ers. In the field of preventive medicine, the Alcoholics Anonymous
organization has used this form of positive, sharing therapy for dec-
ades, and—for many people—it works!
Sharing can be done in support groups (such as Weight Watchers
or AA), which can be small or large. It can also be done, nowadays,
on the Internet (as AA has discovered): instantaneous, anonymous,
and daily. Human contact, however, is best.
Many support groups bolster courage and “empowerment” over
patronizing doctors. It’s unfortunate that most people wait until
they’re physically or mentally ill (and therefore often terrified) before
they join a support group.
Much medical knowledge is a matter of wisdom: of trying things
out, “watchful waiting,” seeing what works, measuring things, keep-
ing accurate records because you can’t trust your memory, trying new
ideas when old ones fail, and above all, letting nature—the true
healer—take its course.
This groping in the dark is characteristic of the best medical
minds. It reveals humility in the face of enervating ignorance that
challenges every generation.
The most valuable thing a doctor can do for a healthy patient is to
become a partner in good health: to become a student, as much as a
doctor, teacher, or surrogate parent.
The most valuable lesson a doctor can share with any patient, sick
or well, is the patient’s need for vigilance: the need to keep and value
records, to observe what works and doesn’t, to experiment, to keep
actively interested, to be sensible (which means, among other things,
to be sensitive), and to care. That means, to care for one’s body, one’s
brain, and each other.
When we’re young, we depend on youth and luck to renew our

79
energy and forgive the indiscretions and bad habits that compromise
our health. The more we age, the more these dependencies begin to
fail.
Sensible care (which is the best preventive medicine) is any sys-
tem that conditions a person’s body and brain to become free of de-
pendencies. It spends a reasonable part of every day seeking to create
a “new life”: a system of renewal that includes nutritional, physical,
and psychological conditioning, as well as how one interacts with the
world through clothing, posture, grooming, and so on.
The older we get, the more renewal we need.
There are no rules or restrictions, and no time out. Life is not a
game. However, if we live it sensibly, caringly, and well, we can per-
form and enjoy life more as a pleasurable diversion than fear it as a
period of unavoidable decline.
—April 1997

Uncommon Sense
Science is currently producing a great deal of theoretical knowl-
edge that defies common sense.
The physics of “black holes,” for example, defies belief, not just
common sense. “Big bangers” argue that before time began, the Uni-
verse was a point that blew up into the Universe. Moreover, Julian
Barbour’s book, The End of Time, argues that time itself never existed.
Many ideas that everyone accepts these days once seemed unrea-
sonable at first. Centuries ago, for example, it was “obvious” that the
world was flat, and that the Earth circled the Sun. Nowadays, we can
at least imagine the truth, even though it runs contrary to our visual
and kinesthetic senses.
Other newly minted theories of physics are virtually impossible
to visualize. The non-existence of time is one of them.
The idea isn’t entirely preposterous. When you think about it, ask
yourself, “Where is the past? Where is the future?” Neither the past
nor the future is currently available for observation, measurement, or
scrutiny. Therefore, it’s obvious that both past and future do not exist
(at this moment). All there ever is, at any moment you observe it, is a
now.
Since “time” is a measurement of “duration,” it requires both past
and future to be measured. First, however, you can’t measure time di-
rectly; and second, in order to have time you must be able to measure
duration; and you can’t measure duration without referring to time.
There’s even a question about the concept of “now.” For “now”
implies “existence.” Whatever is, is now. However, is there such a
thing as “existence”?
Again, you can’t measure “existence.” You can only assume it.
Like our ancestors who assumed the world was flat, you could be
wrong.
The real problem is that words like “existence” and “time” are

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“memes,” or cultural ideas that caught on and survived through
many generations because of their extreme usefulness. What would
we do without clocks (which is a meme), or without the verb “to be”?
(An exception to the assumption behind “existence” that proves
the rule is that, in the Russian and Hebrew languages, you can’t say,
“I am.” You can only say “I.” The “am” is understood. The underly-
ing concept, that “existence” is a figment of imagination, is therefore
implied.)
Memes represent memories formed from neural keystrings that
you were ready to “believe in” even before you became aware of
what the memory was (because a neural keystring that locates a
memory forms before the event occurs that causes the memory).
Actors are especially sensitive to the paradoxical problems sur-
rounding the verb “to be.” For example, actors are commonly in-
structed to disregard “being” type concepts. “Character” must be de-
fined in terms of actions (that is, verbs and adverbs, to be denoted by
placing the word “to” before a description of the action), not states of
being (that is, nouns and adjectives).
“Tell me what you do, and I will tell you who you are,” Herbert
Berghof used to tell his acting students.
It doesn’t help an actor to know that Hamlet begins the play
mourning his father. “To mourn” has to be “played” through actions:
the more unusual, poetic, and dramatic, the better the playwright.
Thus, Shakespeare gives Hamlet the following list of actions in
his opening speech:

’Tis not alone my inky cloak [“To wear black”]...

Nor windy suspiration of forced breath [“To sigh”],
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye [“To cry”],
Nor the dejected ’havior of the visage [“To grimace”]...
That can denote me truly [“To expose my feelings”]....
They are actions that a man might play [“To pretend grief”]:
But I have that within which passeth show [“To reveal my inner grief”];
These but the trappings and the suits of woe [“To disparage custom”].

A less talented playwright might have relied more on “exposi-

tion,” where one character talks about another. Best is when an actor
creates subtle, new actions to convey aspects of character a play-
wright may never have considered.
In any event, an actor can’t write letters to the audience! The
audience must infer the character’s qualities solely from the actions it
perceives, not the words.
While you’re Acting Well, you’ll probably encounter several new
concepts that defy common sense. For example, it seems obvious that
anyone would be more likely to exercise three times a week than
daily. Who can afford to take time out of every day, seven times a
week, going back and forth to the health club; or run a mile or two af-
ter every workday and on weekends?
A three-times-a-week regimen seems more like common sense.

81
 It happens to be wrong.
The truth is that if you exercise only a few days a week, then
every other day (and twice on weekends!), you’ll constantly be break-
ing the good habits that would otherwise be forming. Eventually
you’ll start looking forward to “days off.”
No one can form good habits under these circumstances! Eventu-
ally, the game is up.
Viewed in this more accurate light, what seems like common
sense can begin to look foolish; and what seems to defy common
sense can begin to look practical.
Another way to look at on-again, off-again schedules for fitness is
to consider the fact that you can literally drive an animal crazy
through inconsistent training.
When Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell,
he didn’t give them meat one time he rang the bell and withhold meat
the next time. He gave them meat every time he rang the bell until the
new habit was fully formed. Only then could he discontinue feeding
the dog when the bell rang and still observe the dog salivating.
If you associate the ringing of a bell with the shocking of a rat,
you’ll eventually train the rat to cower at the ringing of a bell. How-
ever, if you associate a shock with a bell randomly, you’ll drive the rat
insane. Thus, consistency is an essential part of forming healthy hab-
its.
Another belief that seems like common sense is the idea that peo-
ple have “willpower.”
It seems obvious that if I lift my finger, I have willed my finger to
rise. If I don’t lift my finger, it seems like common sense to say that I
didn’t “will” my finger to rise.
The truth is subtler.
Years ago, the neuroscientist Benjamin Libet conducted tests on
patients who were being treated with invasive procedures (for exam-
ple, lobotomy) that scientists are no longer permitted to perform, for-
tunately. (Thus Libet’s experiments can no longer be repeated—
unfortunately.) During the course of these experiments, Libet proved
that the “will” to raise your finger occurs 10 milliseconds after your
finger is raised. (These experiments are reported in further detail and
confirmed by several distinguished writers on the subject of con-
sciousness; for example, Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker.)
Whatever it is that motivates your finger to rise, the reason is un-
conscious. (It may be as simple as a random impulse.) However, once
your finger rises, your conscious brain concocts a rationalization to
explain why you raised your finger. That rationalization takes the
form, “Well, my finger moved up. I must have moved it. Therefore, I
willed it to move!”
It doesn’t matter that your assertion is false. You can be forgiven
for lying to yourself because the period (10 milliseconds) is so short,
who would know? Secondly, you’d be very upset if you couldn’t ex-
plain to yourself why you raised your own finger! —even though
human beings constantly do things they habitually do without

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“thinking” or willing their actions. (How often do you “decide” to
wash your face?)
If ever there was a scientific finding that defies “common sense,”
Libet’s discovery takes the cake! His assertion, however, happens to
be true; and his resulting challenge to such commonly accepted ideas
(and even religious convictions) as “free will” and “willpower” is a
theoretical basis behind Acting Well.
The implications of Libet’s scientifically “uncommon sense” in-
clude the idea that if you’re overweight it isn’t because you don’t
have “willpower.” It’s entirely because you haven’t formed the right
habits to protect your body from overeating.
An important consequence of that idea is that being overweight
should never become a “moral” issue. Not only can’t you “help”
yourself from being overweight; but, more importantly, you can rem-
edy the situation through a relatively easy process (that is, Acting
Well) if you just get over other people’s “common sense” approach to
the problem.
Morality has nothing to do with it. Therefore, stop beating your-
self up for being too fat! Just prepare yourself every day for each
day’s “performance,” following a few simple suggestions. Your re-
vised daily routines may defy other people’s common sense, but
they’ll work for you as reliably as rehearsals do for actors who have
to repeat the same, identical actions during every evening for the run
of a play.
Let other people be “common sensible.” You just lose the weight,
and concern yourself with Acting Well.

Acting vs. Impersonation

After “Carlotta” (not her real name) was taught the rudiments of
Acting Well, she asked, “When do I get my script?”
Carlotta, who was a fine musician, believed that if she was going
to act, not as a musician, and off the concert stage, she needed to be
coached or told what she was “supposed to do” and what she was
“supposed to say.”
She figured that Acting Well was a kind of “Life Theatre” that
helped people like her to lose weight. (She weighed at least 50 pounds
too much at the time.)
Carlotta further suggested engaging the services of her friend
“Clarice,” who was younger and more attractive than she was.
Clarice had lost a considerable amount of weight some years before.
Carlotta promised that, if necessary, Clarice would claim to have been
on the Acting Well “diet” for ten years, thereby delivering a compel-
ling and credible (albeit dishonest!) “testimonial.”
Both of these reactions reflected the same misconception. Carlotta
didn’t understand the difference between acting and impersonation.
Carlotta’s mistake wasn’t just confined to Acting Well. For exam-
ple, when it was suggested that Acting Well could help her create a

83
confident character when she simply walked down the street, Carlotta
said, “I don’t care about projecting any kind of character when I walk
down the street! I never dress up when I go out to the grocery store. I
look my worst, and I couldn’t care less who sees me or what they
think! They could all die, for all I care!”
From such a violent response, one could rightly suspect that un-
derneath Carlotta’s air of indifference toward the public lay a deep
hostility toward the world in general; and toward her former hus-
band in particular, who had abandoned his family, thereby forcing
Carlotta to fend for herself professionally in a man’s world.
Most women Carlotta’s age were raised to expect to depend on a
man to take care of them. Thus, they respond more frequently to
“self-help” books and trainers who act as puppetmasters on whom
they can depend. It rarely occurs to them to blame their “coaches,”
therefore, when they fail on self-help programs time after time. Not
only are these women used to feeling inferior to a coach, but many
coaches deliver messages in a condescending way that convinces the
reader, “You’ve been wrong most of your life! Therefore, if you can’t
execute my instructions, it’s your fault not mine!”
Thus, like many people, Carlotta assumed that as an “actress” she
would be helped by a “director” (or coach) to dress up and pretend to
be someone other than who she was. She figured that her basic “self”
would remain intact, inviolate, invisible, unique, and private. But she
thought it might be useful to create a character over and above herself
who could learn how to lose weight and keep it off.
Thus, what Carlotta wanted to learn was how to impersonate the
thin woman she wanted to be, not act her. She really wanted a charm
school, or a personality makeover, not a technique that required her
to change the depths of her being. Thus, she wasn’t prepared to do
the work required. She wanted it to be done for her, for example,
through a “script” or a “director.”
The major contribution Stanislavski made to the world of the
theatre was to caution actors not to confuse skilled impersonation
with skilled acting. In his day, actors like Sarah Bernhardt became
famous through acting methods that were more like impersonation
than acting. Other actors, on the other hand, such as Eleanora Duse,
perfected the art of acting through “inner” techniques that created
characters that conveyed a more eloquent sense of truth (or “hon-
esty”).
People over 50 have often been entertained by skilled impersona-
tors pretending to be Cary Grant or Bette Davis. These impersonators
could be considered talented actors (or, more accurately, comedians);
but they were obviously doing something very different from what
the real Cary Grant or Bette Davis did. Real acting imparts a sense of
honesty that impersonations can’t possibly convey.
When Roy Scheider says (in The Magic Bullet videotape), “If I’m
not honest with you right here and right now, it’s not going to sound
very good, because the camera doesn’t lie,” he’s talking about acting,
not impersonation. The implications to the viewer are far more credi-

84
ble than a formerly fat woman lying to the public that Acting Well
made her thin!
All that Carlotta’s friend Clarice could have done for Acting Well
would have been to impersonate the kind of actress who gives testi-
monials on infomercials. Who would believe her? How could Acting
Well, which is about honesty, include a dishonest testimonial in its
marketing?
Nevertheless, the basic flaw in Carlotta’s understanding went
deeper, and mirrored her flawed understanding about “who we
really are.”
The problem was that Carlotta thought she had a self. For her it
may have been a secret and private self; but she believed her self was
always there, whether or not she, or anyone else, was aware of it.
The truth is that when Carlotta isn’t conscious, she has no “self”!
All she has, generally, is a bundle of semi-conscious habits accompa-
nied by momentary “observances” of what she’s doing that echo in
her brain for about three seconds and disappear.
The only reason she can walk down the street not caring how she
looks is that she allows herself to become semi-conscious when she
does it. In this way she muffles and suppresses her “self,” which is al-
ready afflicted by neglect and the resulting low self-esteem.
Consciousness is “self,” and “self” is consciousness. Both are illu-
sory in the sense that you can’t pin them down, measure them, or
point them out. They’re inferred, and they’re always together. That’s
about all you can say, definitively, about those two subjects (or about
such related concepts as “real self,” “soul,” “spirit,” etc.).
What an actor does is to create a “self” to “play.” That “self” is
called “the character.” When the character is brought to life honestly,
through techniques that exercise the actor’s imagination, the actor re-
places his or her “self” with the character’s, and the audience believes
what happens. What most people don’t realize is that when they’re
not conscious of their character (which means not being conscious of
their actions), they have no “self.”
That idea sounds spooky; but nowhere will you find something
called “self” when an individual who “owns” it isn’t aware of it.
What Acting Well does is to teach people techniques to create a
“character” of which they can be conscious. If that character com-
prises a “self” that complies to what they want themselves to do and
believe they should be doing, then they can be proud of who they are.
They can walk down the street conscious of themselves and their
neighbors. They can feel they’re a vital part of a vital community.
They can feel happy to be alive!
Carlotta finally began to understand the concept of Acting Well
when she related it to her musicianship. She understood that if a pian-
ist plays Bach, the music would sound quite different from how it
sounds playing Beethoven. The gestures of the pianist may also look
different according to the composer.
Similarly, an actor will take on different personas depending on
the material the playwright creates.

85
 A pianist who performs either Bach or Beethoven “in the style
of,” say, Glenn Gould, or some other idol or teacher, will never reach
the heights of a Glenn Gould; for although imitation can produce re-
markable results, unless a pianist can interpret music honestly, an
imitative performance will never rise above the level of a skilled im-
personation.
The same goes for acting, whether on the stage or in life. If you
pretend to be sophisticated, you’ll come across as pretentious. How-
ever, if you do sophisticated things in an honest fashion (which gen-
erally means doing the best you can), you’ll come across as...sophis-
ticated—because you are sophisticated!
At last, Carlotta had to face the question, “Is a pianist a pianist
when she’s not playing the piano?”
The answer, by convention, is “yes.” In reality, the answer is ob-
viously “no.”
Another way to ask that question is “Am I myself when I’m
asleep?”
The answer, again by convention (that is, according to the way
we use the English language), is “yes.” In reality, however, when
you’re asleep, your body only represents your “self.” Since your brain,
which is the seat of your consciousness, is asleep, the rest of you is
asleep as well. “You” (that is, your character or personality) are no-
where to be found!
Thus Acting Well, by creating your character, can bring your
“self” alive and make it conscious in a way more real than any reality
to which you (or it) has previously been accustomed.

Comprosoft
(Compliance Program Software Company)
Business Plan
(Excerpts)

Heart attacks, heart failure, and strokes kill more people and
drain more money from national economies than any other disease,
making cardiovascular disease the most serious health problem in the
world.
A number of dietary, exercise, and stress reduction practices can
lower the risk of dying from heart disease by 20%-25%. Yet few of the
world’s susceptible population heeds the well-publicized, good medi-
cal advice they know perfectly well they ought to follow.
For example, according to the American Heart Association, only
15% of all post-infarction candidates enter rehabilitation programs. Of
those who do, less than 50% to adhere to healthier practices after four
years. The primary reason for such low participation rates, according
to the AHA, is “lack of physician referral.”
COMPROSOFT’s business plan aims to sell exclusive services that
will raise low compliance ratios to substantially higher fractions

86
worldwide. These innovative services are composed of integrated
techniques relating to diet, exercise, and stress reduction. The tech-
niques are simple and designed to be enjoyable. Some have been in
development for decades.
Several integrated delivery systems will bring these techniques to
market. These systems include professional health services, custom
designed software for small personal computers, cellular telephones,
radio and television infomercials, the Internet, e-commerce, and
printed literature.
COMPROSOFT’s ultimate plan is to franchise its services to reha-
bilitative and preventive cardiology centers around the world primar-
ily through patient referral.
There are many diet and health programs available through hos-
pitals, clinics, and privately held companies. These programs are of-
ten too expensive (costing as much as $12,000) to qualify for health in-
surance reimbursement. Therefore, only a small percentage of people
who need these services take advantage of opportunities to acquire
them.
However, even for wealthy patients, who can afford to spend a
month at a rehabilitation center, these programs produce relatively
low compliance ratios. Therefore, cardiologists don’t usually recom-
mend them. Thus, for example, blood pressure, stress, and cholesterol
problems are mainly treated with medications instead of exercise—
which has been shown to be the preferred therapy for these condi-
tions in almost every case.
Programs available that would compete with COMPROSOFT for
heart patient referrals would be diet plans (such as the Pritikin and
Ornish methods), exercise venues (such as health clubs), and pri-
vately taught Hindu meditation classes (available at spas and yoga
centers). Occasionally all three services (plus smoking cessation pro-
grams) are available at hospital or university rehabilitation centers.
Compliance is the main factor affecting results in all these pro-
grams. Psychologists occasionally address the problem of compliance
by publishing such pointers on how to stay on a diet as chewing food
slowly and always sitting in the same position while eating. However,
these behavioral tips have no effect on exercise compliance, for exam-
ple, which is infinitely more important to maintaining weight loss
than practicing dietary trickery.
To date no one has offered an integrated service plan with a sin-
gle, effective compliance method. COMPROSOFT has developed such
a method and seeks to market it widely.
The main problem people have with preventive cardiology pro-
grams is that they find it difficult if not impossible to maintain enthu-
siastic compliance to health enhancement programs after an initial
burst of success. Thus, although they may lose nine pounds in three
weeks at a rehabilitation center, they may gain all the weight back
(and often more) over the next six months. They may stop smoking
for three weeks but more than half will start smoking again within the
year. And although they may enjoy practicing yoga exercises for sev-

87
eral years, they may eventually find the practice unrewarding or find
it too difficult to continue taking time out of each day “for them-
selves.”
These “willpower” problems are common to the human condi-
tion, and there’s not a single person who has ever lived who hasn’t
suffered from them.
COMPROSOFT addresses the “willpower problem” by denying it
exists. When a person with a tendency toward obesity succeeds in
maintaining ideal weight for 20 years or more, it’s not done through
brute force but through other means. COMPROSOFT provides those
alternative means, and no other program does.
The concept behind COMPROSOFT is the idea that the main
problem of trying to regulate behavior is exactly the same problem as
an actor faces that must recreate the behavior of a character onstage.
Such an effort can’t be done through self-discipline; but it can be
done easily through the stealth of various acting techniques. In other
words, the best pathway to “wellness” is to learn how to “act well.”
Therefore, in their initial compliance phases, COMPROSOFT cli-
ents will attend interactive seminars that are similar to acting classes.
These classes will teach clients how to practice good health habits that
involve eating, as well as physical and contemplative exercises. After
a while the clients will become seasoned actors adept at recreating
their particular “character” for each day’s performance. The objective
of these characters will be the same: to be a “major player” upon the
stage of life.
Since the clients’ job is only to recreate one character consistently
(who is very much like themselves), they do not require Lawrence
Olivier’s talent to refashion many fictional characters’ personalities at
will. In fact, acting talent is unnecessary to master Acting Well.
Once the clients’ character actions are defined, compliance to
“stage directions” involving diet, exercise, and stress reduction meth-
ods will become second nature: easy, and pleasurable to do.
These methods may involve a variety of different approaches that
aren’t necessarily new. However, the focus on compliance (rather
than methods), and the programs and software that make the Acting
Well approach possible, are sales opportunities unique to COMPRO-
SOFT.
Once cardiologists and primary care physicians become ac-
quainted with COMPROSOFT’s compliance ratio success, they will be
much more likely to refer their patients to its service centers. These re-
ferrals will be the primary source of COMPROSOFT’s profitability.
Ancillary profitability will become available through clients’ life-
long use of COMPROSOFT’s website reporting facility and feedback
opportunities (yielding approximately $20 per month per client) as
well as food delivery services managed in conjunction with new
business-to-business website catering services. Two or three times per
week, these services will prepare and home-deliver 20 “approved”
meals per week for clients who want (and can afford) to participate;
plus offer one deluxe (non-dietetic) meal per week in an upscale fine

88
restaurant.
The measure of COMPROSOFT’s success will not only be profit-
ability, but also how effectively the company’s plan helps lower the
rate of heart disease throughout the world. Thus, compliance ratios
will be used to measure the company’s effectiveness. Should clinical
trials prove those ratios to be extraordinary (as they are expected to
be), profitability is likely to be assured.
The cost to a client for participating in a 4-week intense, and 8-
week follow-up program would be $5,200. COMPROSOFT’s direct
cost per client (not including overhead) would be $1,000. Direct costs
would be distributed among an acting teacher, a physical trainer, a
doctor (in most cases the client’s own cardiologist), and a registered
nurse. Average hourly fee would be $36 paid directly to each consult-
ant, with most services lasting two hours. 5 other consultants would
service each client, but these consultants would represent retail sales
opportunities in food, clothing, computers, and home decoration and
lighting. Rather than being cost centers, these consultants would con-
tribute to COMPROSOFT’s profitability through commissions on
sales. Ancillary profits, however, have not been included in the 5-Year
Profitability Goals.
The risks of the business plan include the following:
The cost of the program may be too high to attract clients or too
low to pay all expenses including unanticipated start-up and subse-
quent operating expenses; the program may fail to attract enough
participating cardiologists to provide sufficient referrals to make the
operation profitable; the initial feasibility study and subsequent clini-
cal trials may prove that the theoretical basis for COMPROSOFT is
flawed, or that its program does not, in fact, promote compliance; the
clients may not like the program once it’s in operation and may there-
fore generate damaging word of mouth.
In order to address these issues, much more work will be done
during the feasibility study to fine-tune the budget and operational
plan. New York cardiologists will be acquainted with the opportuni-
ties the program offers to them to increase their patients’ compliance
ratios. The feasibility studies and initial clinical trials will also test the
theory behind COMPROSOFT in order to determine continuing com-
pliance ratios before too much money is spent to activate the pro-
gram. If clients aren’t satisfied with the program after 12 weeks, it will
either be improved or abandoned.
We hope you will give serious consideration to participating in
this exciting and important new venture!

—April 2000

Morning Preparation
Doing Morning Preparation resembles certain forms of “medita-
tion”—but with enormous differences.

89
 Because of these differences, certain characteristics of the place
where you meditate are inappropriate for doing Morning Preparation.
Many people meditate while sitting in a special position on the
floor (for example, in the “lotus” position). Doing Morning Preparation
should only be performed while sitting at a desk. Any other choice for
writing is impractical. (However, while on vacation, you may have to
practice Morning Preparation in a bathroom or while sitting up in bed,
or wherever you can be alone.)
While doing Morning Preparation, you will write quite a lot. You’ll
use both hands and rest your elbows on the desk. Stay away from
computers and typewriters. They take up too much room and make
noise.
Close your eyes when beginning Morning Preparation.
The special desk or table should be used only for doing Morning
Preparation so that it will be free of all extraneous papers or any mate-
rials not really necessary (such as photographs or pencil holders); and
so that you can return to it every morning without having to clear
things away or be reminded of problems to solve or “busy work” to
accomplish. Having a cleared desk with the proper materials ready is
the best way to defend yourself against “relapses” (that is, mornings
in which you “just don’t feel” like doing Morning Preparation). The
urge to give into these “relapses” disappears after a while (except, for
some, while on vacation, in which case you can give into them with-
out penalty).
If you do “paper work” at home, you should do it in another
room. For example, if you have a small office in your dining room for
working at home you should prepare a special area in your bedroom
for doing Morning Preparation.
The desk you use for doing Morning Preparation should be per-
manent, not something you have to rig up every morning. It should
sit waiting and cleared for you to begin. (If you have to do too much
to start, it will discourage you from starting.)
Think of your room as a control room, and your desk as a control
board in a television studio, responsible for both recording and en-
lightening the world outside. The time you spend in your “studio”
should seem as costly as the time a network spends running a control
room.
Your logbook, one pen or pencil with eraser, a paperweight, a
place marker, and a source of scent are all that need to be on the desk
or table.
If you use your bedroom to do Morning Preparation (we think it’s
the best place!), there are some things you should do before you be-
gin. Certainly: make your bed, leave nothing strewn about, turn on
the lights, and open the curtains. Let the sun shine in!
You should have as many sources of lights shining as practical. It
would not be excessive, for example, to turn on track lighting from
the ceiling, recessed lighting behind shelves, one or two table lamps,
and a standing halogen light—all at the same time—especially in the
early winter morning, while it’s still dark outside and you’re waiting

90
for the morning sun to shine in. Let the neighbors behind the win-
dows across the street see how much earlier you’re getting up these
days!
Multiple sources of lighting are better than one bright bulb.
In the wintertime, the more light you have, the more your spirits
will rise, especially if you suffer from any degree of seasonal affective
disorder.
If you live alone, it’s probably not difficult to have two desks in
separate rooms. If you live with others, then you may have problems
finding privacy to do Morning Preparation. It’s crucially important that
you solve these problems! Negotiate with your mates! Evangelize!
Your sensitivity, reality, and the control of your life are at stake!
Beginners who begin Morning Preparation “first thing” do better if
they don’t wait to start until after they’ve eaten and read the newspa-
per, for example. Many systems have been tried, and you should
never avoid experimentation; but the overall results so far indicate
that the less one does before doing Morning Preparation the better.
That means: no coffee or food before beginning. No need to shave
or put on makeup. You should nevertheless “beautify” yourself in
some way. In other words, you should pay tribute to the period by
trying to look your best under the circumstances. However, if you
take time out to shower first, shave, or put on makeup, boil coffee,
and dress for the day, you’ll waste too much valuable time getting
started. Any kind of wasted time tends to become habitual.
Doing Morning Preparation consists of two parts: Steps & Landings
and transcribing notes. These two processes are part of a psychic, cy-
clic “respiratory” process like “inhalation” and “exhalation.”
You can’t do both at the same time, any more than you can
breathe in and out at the same time. In addition, you can’t transcribe
before you do Steps & Landings any more than you can exhale when
you haven’t properly inhaled.
You shouldn’t do Morning Preparation more than once a day. It’s a
waste of time.
You shouldn’t mix doing Morning Preparation and working for
money by trying to do Morning Preparation “at the office”—as some
people who do meditation during work breaks do.
Morning Preparation isn’t really about reducing stress, although it
may serve that function admirably.
You should not do Morning Preparation at night or while reading
or doing creative writing or art.
Never wear pajamas or sleeping clothes to do Morning Prepara-
tion. Always “dress for work” in special clothes that are casual and
comfortable (unless you’re more comfortable dressing formally).
These work clothes may be worn for other casual purposes as well.
(In other words, you don’t have to change clothes when you finish
doing Morning Preparation.) You may want to replace this work cos-
tume every season with something different.
Wearing a special scent in the morning to “beautify” yourself is
helpful. Scent helps to wake the other senses to realities that float

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your way.
You should keep track of the exact times you spend doing Morn-
ing Preparation. It’s a way of keeping “score.”
Always keep a permanent record of each day’s time you begin
and end doing Morning Preparation.
Once you’re settled, the preliminary part of doing Morning Prepa-
ration takes about 25-35 minutes. Then (at least for the first six
months) you’ll write an essay that takes 15-25 minutes.
You can’t complete these processes in much shorter times; but
they can take longer on some days.
On days you practice Morning Preparation (especially when things
go well), you may find yourself carried away with the idea of it. On
those days, a special feeling of greater sensitivity to the world and to
yourself may follow you throughout the day.
It’s a feeling you can neither command to appear nor refuse to
feel.
If you fail to do Morning Preparation on a particular day, you may
realize, at some point (although chances are you won’t!), that you
don’t have the feeling on that day; but you won’t be able to get it back
or identify exactly what it felt like when you had it.
On the other hand, there may be times when the feeling comes by
itself, inexplicably, unrelated to Morning Preparation. However, those
times will be rare and you can’t depend on them. When you do Morn-
ing Preparation, you can rely on the fact that at least once during the
day (called “pre-closure” or World Walk) you will experience the feel-
ing again, and can use that moment to prepare the following day.
While experiencing such feelings, you may have the urge to share
your experience with others. This urge is related to the religious serv-
ice offered, for example, by artisans who decorated great cathedrals at
the beginning of the Second Millennium. Those artists weren’t just
hired workers who gilded halos over the images of saints. They de-
signed and probably often executed their tasks with elevated con-
sciousness. Thus, the images were able to inspire more than 50 gen-
erations of visitors.
You should seek some similarly elevated service with which to
share these essentially religious feelings lest they be wasted, as are
sperm, when prevented from creating more life out of the moments of
pleasure that accompanied them into the world.
You may not have a cathedral to decorate, but you can surely find
some task to express the attachment to life that breaking the day with
Morning Preparation offers.

Your Treasure Chest

Supposing you wanted to teach a child to wash her face every
morning and evening. Would you then throw dirt and ashes on her
head a half-hour after she rinsed and wiped herself clean every day?
Hardly!

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 Yet, consider how many people eat pretty much the same regular
breakfast every morning; then shortly after they arrive at the office,
begin to stuff themselves with sweet rolls, sugared and creamed “cof-
fee breaks,” carbonated non-diet beverages, and whatever miscella-
neous “snacks” strike their fancy throughout the day.
Such practices are the equivalent of dirtying your face after you
wash it. What’s the point in washing it if you soil it right away?
What’s the point of establishing a regular breakfast with which you
can maintain a constant healthy weight if you cancel its value every
day with extra food? From the point of view of maintaining healthy
weight, it would be better if you cut out breakfast and relied com-
pletely on snack food! (However, in that case, you would negate the
nutritional values you normally get from breakfast.)
If this analogy seems extreme to you, then you’re almost certainly
a victim of one of the Colossal Blunders that torment the world. You
believe that eating has nothing to do with washing your face: that the
two activities are entirely different forms of behavior with entirely
different purposes. You fail to see how much alike they are: that eat-
ing the right foods in the right amounts can only be accomplished if
your eating behaviors are habits not options.
You wouldn’t teach a child that washing her face is an option.
You simply see to it that every morning and evening she washes her
face! After a while, this required behavior becomes habitual. You can
stop watching your child to see if she washes her face because you
know for sure that she’ll do it. Optional behavior, on the other hand,
can never become a habit. If it were always up to your child to wash
her face, you would have to watch her all her life to make sure she
did it. In other words, you’d have to become her puppetmaster.
The same principle applies to other habits, such as brushing teeth,
going to the bathroom, making the bed, and performing chores. If
these activities aren’t habitual, in most cases, your child won’t do
them at all.
The same phenomenon is true of “eating healthy.” If it’s not a
constant habit, you won’t do it. You may pretend you do it; you may
fool yourself into thinking you’re doing it; but the truth is, you’re not
doing it.
If you’re reading this book, it’s almost certain that you’re not
“eating healthy.” If you were, you wouldn’t need to read the book.
You’d like to be eating healthy, but you don’t know how. You’re a vic-
tim of a Colossal Blunder that many people make who believe that
healthy eating should include novelty, variety, and above all, options.
The very opposite is the case; and this Colossal Blunder is a par-
ticular evil.
The correct thing to do while Acting Well, as it applies to food, is
to create a neural column combination on which to hang your daily
eating practices. That’s all you have to do, and you won’t have further
problems.
Think of your meals as treasures locked in a chest that can only be
opened by you, using a key that’s only owned and available to you.

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Three times a day, you open the chest and take out your breakfast,
then your first lunch, and then your “second lunch.” On special occa-
sions (but not regularly!), you might have a tidbit or two in addition.
Once you’ve created and practiced a regular schedule long
enough, you’ll never have a problem going to the chest, unlocking it,
and eating and enjoying your food.
However, if you snack all day long; or if you permit yourself to
vary your menu according to whim, you’ll never create the key.
Without the key, there can be no chest—in which case you’ll become
entirely dependent on people who either give you food or sell it to
you.
People who sell you food are generally not interested in your
health or welfare. They just want to make money by getting you to
gorge as much as you can on what they sell. Since they compete with
other food purveyors, they want to make sure that whatever they sell
you is as tasty and tempting as possible (otherwise the competition
will take your business away from them). Thus, they’ll tend to load
their foods with unhealthy ingredients (mainly sugar and fat) that
will make you gain weight and/or develop heart disease, adult-onset
diabetes, etc.
They want to share their treasure chests, which are bound to be
more appealing than your own. There’s something different in them
every day. Your diamonds and pearls may be fine; but selections of
semi-precious stones in quality settings have a lot to be said for them!
Like the purveyors of cigarettes, these merchants hope you’ll be-
come addicted to their lethal products. Better for them that you die
early and they make money, then for too many of you to ignore them
and put them out of business.
These food manufacturers use all sorts of wiles in order to trick
you into trying their wares. They suggest, for example, that you
“owe” it to yourself to exercise your inalienable right to sample every
new thing that comes along because “maybe you’ll love it!”
There’s nothing wrong with sampling things once in a while (like
once a week); but when you’re not just sampling, but eating things
every day that you shouldn’t eat, you’re slowly destroying yourself
while others make money by making you fat and sick.
These purveyors encourage variety: eat other things, but eat our
things too! Don’t get into a habit of eating foods that don’t include
some of ours! If we can’t get you every day, at least eat our stuff once
a week. In other words, snack and indulge yourself.
They may tell you to substitute “healthy snacks” for unhealthy
snacks in their diabolical efforts to keep you eating. You must there-
fore understand that any snack is unhealthy because it prevents you
from forging a neural column combination.
These diabolical food purveyors have taken over the food rec-
ommendations of the United States government to such a degree that
if you’re foolish enough to try to follow the U.S. Department of Agri-
culture’s food “pyramid scheme,” you’ll almost certainly gain mas-
sive amounts of excess weight.

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 Your only protection against these evil forces is what you put in
your own food chest and the column combination you retain in your
brain to open and use it every day. If you complicate your life with
snacks and varieties of “goodies,” you will destroy your chances of
ever creating a column combination that regulates your intake of
food. Therefore, you must resist anyone’s advice (particularly any
professional nutritionist who wants to be your puppetmaster) that in-
sists (among many other things) that you need “variety” (so that you
can make sure you get “all” the nutrients you need); that you should
eat a “balanced” dinner (they can’t give a good reason for that idea);
that you should drink a glass of sweet orange juice every morning to
get your vitamin C (thereby consuming so much sugar in the morning
that you’ll want to go back to sleep by noon!); that you may eat more
than three meals per day; and, therefore, that snacks are good for you
(because they help to balance blood sugar levels, for example—which
is a major Colossal Blunder!).
These would-be puppetmasters are your enemies, and they
should be resisted at all costs. They’ll ruin your health while collect-
ing your money. They’ll put you permanently out of business in order
to help their businesses temporarily flourish.

Perceptions, Actions, and Results

by William Rodman Shankle, M.S., M.D.

If you were to observe your own behavior, it might appear that

first you “perceive” something, then you “do” something.
For example, when hitting a backhand return in tennis, you might
conclude that first you watch the ball; then you instruct your shoul-
ders to rotate, your arm to drop the racket below the ball, and then
you swing your arm forward in an inside-out motion to hit the back-
hand return in front of you.
Likewise, an actor playing Hamlet may listen to the lines of an-
other actor (perception) to know when he should speak (action).
Perception and action seem to be separable events if you observe
your own behavior. However, they are inextricably linked—as we
shall see.
Let’s take the tennis example a bit further. If you are taking a les-
son, you may be “learning” the backhand. In this case, you pay “at-
tention” to the shoulder rotation, the arm drop, and the inside-out
forward motion. In other words, your perceptual system is now fo-
cused on your muscles moving properly.
Once you have “learned” the backhand, your perceptual system
(your attention) now focuses on the ball so that you can hit it out in
front of you. You are no longer conscious of your muscle movements.
Such is also the case of the actor playing Hamlet. His perceptual

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system is no longer focused on the lines of the other actors and the
words he will say. Rather, he “perceives” the other actors’ intended
meanings through their speech and body language. He then “re-
sponds” with meaningful words and body language of his own. In
both cases, the motor response depends directly upon what is being
attended to (that is, perceived).
This perception-action system is a fundamental feature of nerv-
ous systems. The simplest common example of this system is the knee
jerk reflex that occurs when the doctor taps a rubber mallet on your
knee. The knee receives this perception translated through stretch re-
ceptors. Your leg then kicks forward (without your consciously “will-
ing” it).
The brain’s “perception-action” system has been honed by evolu-
tion to be extremely efficient. However, this system, like evolution,
does not care what the outcome is. For example, bad acting is a result
of most people’s difficulty responding “naturally” when they know
others are watching them. Professional actors are able to attend to the
human interaction taking place onstage and thereby block out the fact
that others are watching them perform. This difficulty with attending
to the appropriate stimulus can be overcome through correct practice
attending to the proper stimulus. Bad actors can become better actors;
and some theatrical directors, such as Konstantin Stanislavski, have
developed effective methods to teach performing artists to attend to
the proper stimulus to elicit more “natural” responses.
Addictions and obesity are other examples of the perception-
action system that result in seriously harmful conditions. Individuals
suffering from these conditions normally respond to the stimuli to
which they pay attention by eating too much food or eating at inap-
propriate times; or by self-medicating too much.
The exciting thing about understanding the way the brain is built
and the way it works is that you can make it work for you.
So, what is a perception really?
It is a representation of what we are attending to at any given
moment. This representation allows a perception to be something we
are thinking about with our eyes closed, or something we are looking
at, hearing, touching, tasting, or any combination of these senses.
How is a perception “perceived”?
The brain must deconstruct what it perceives into simple building
blocks, then reconstruct it.
When you see a red rose, your retina collects the image, sends it
to the thalamus, which divides the image into high and low contrast
components. The thalamus then sends the image to the primary vis-
ual cortex, which breaks it further up into lines, colors, borders,
depth, and other simple visual building blocks. This information is
then transmitted to other visual areas of the cerebral cortex that ulti-
mately reconstruct these building blocks into the original image of the
red rose.
Each of these cortical areas is many thousands of square millime-
ters in surface area, and each square millimeter of cortex corresponds

96
roughly to one of its “functional units.”
About 100,000 neurons make up each “functional unit” of the cor-
tex. Each functional cortical unit does one—and only one—simple
thing. For example, a functional unit in the primary visual cortex may
only respond to the color blue, and nothing else.
Each functional unit in the cortex has six layers that act like six
different components of a machine. Each of these components (or lay-
ers) has a different job and “talks” only to certain specific layers. This
arrangement permits a regimented yet sophisticated communication
network among the functional units of the human cerebral cortex.
A perception is therefore made up of a large number of co-
activated functional units that contain the building blocks of the per-
ception. Similarly, an “action” in the brain is represented by a se-
quence of activated functional cortical units that connect to the motor
neurons of the brainstem and spinal cord, which in turn connect to
the muscles of our face and body needed to perform the action.
Hence, the perception-action system is really a single system in which
the functional cortical units activated during a perception communi-
cate directly to the functional cortical units that produce the action.
Understanding this fundamental principle of brain function leads
to the breakthrough that directing our perception is literally equiva-
lent to directing our action. Such knowledge is an important key to
changing destructive behaviors such as addiction and overeating—as
well as altering inexpedient behaviors, such as bad acting!
Stanislavski conceived of his acting “System” as a means to help
actors overcome problems caused by the improper focusing of the
perception-action system. Amateur actors who “go for results” focus
their attention on the lines and emotions they are trying to perform.
This deficient form of concentration means that the focus of attention
(perception) is internal and not on the person with whom the actor is
supposed to interact. Such a performance comes across as simulated,
rather than believable, to most theatergoers.
In contrast, professional actors focus their attention on the person
or thing to which they are responding, which is what humans natu-
rally do during non-acting situations. Such performances therefore
seem credible to audiences.
Therefore, by choosing what we attend to, we determine our ac-
tion. For example, John Barrymore used to “get into” one of his
worldly cast of characters simply by putting on a costume. He chose
the perception needed to act. As the great actor, Maureen Stapleton
once said to her teacher, Herbert Berghof, at the precise moment she
“got it”:
“I understand! Don’t move a muscle!”
This idea is profound. She discovered that voluntarily moving
any muscle would require her to shift her attention (perception) to the
muscle and not to whatever was happening onstage (to which both
playwright and audience expert her to respond). In the same way,
when we play a game of tennis and are hitting terribly, it is usually
because we are focusing on our muscle movements instead of on the

97
ball.
With the serious behavioral problems of addiction and obesity,
we therefore cannot control addiction or lose weight simply by effort,
trying harder, or exercising “willpower.” We need to know what to
attend to so that we can give ourselves the proper perceptions (for ex-
ample, keeping a “compliant activities diary” that forces us to pay at-
tention to those activities) in order to drive the proper actions (for ex-
ample, doing daily exercises), which will lead to the desired results
(for example, losing weight).
Therefore, to choose a healthier lifestyle, do what actors do: create
the proper circumstances (perceptions) that leave you no choice other
than to “act well.”

Memory
Chemical and “natural formulas” to forestall memory loss are
popular these days.
In 1997 the amount of sales of the herbal extract ginkgo biloba,
derived from an ornamental tree that originated in eastern China,
were $240 million. Yet there is currently no scientific proof that this
herb, or any of the antioxidants, vitamin mega doses, “nutriceuticals,”
or other unregulated “natural medications” found in health-food
stores and supermarkets, work.
Some geriatrics doctors see these products as nothing more than
placebos run amuck. [See, for example: “Elixirs for Your Memory,”
Time, September 15, 1999.]
However, even if ginkgo biloba worked miracles on memory, it
remains true that the brain didn’t naturally evolve in a symbiotic rela-
tionship with exotic substances. Thus, when artificial means like
gingko biloba are ingested to affect the brain in one way or another,
long-term results can be unpredictable.
Alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and marijuana are other substances that
affect the brain in powerful ways. The harmful results these sub-
stances can produce in you make it clear that evolution didn’t depend
on your ancestors ingesting drugs through blood, lungs, or stomach,
no matter how wonderful they can make you feel. If it had been oth-
erwise, you wouldn’t be risking addiction, lung cancer, or brain or
liver damage from substance abuse. Therefore, you can be sure that
your body will stay healthier if you avoid trying to enhance your
brain functions artificially.
On the other hand, no one disputes or warns against the effect on
memory of moderate aerobic exercise and challenging mental disci-
plines (for example, exercises such as reading books and doing
crossword puzzles). These natural efforts really do enhance memory
retention, although no one can prove exactly why.
It’s no coincidence that Acting Well requires you to practice
aerobic exercises daily, face psychic challenges associated with daily
journeys on a World Walk, and do some writing exercises during

98
Morning Preparation. The point of practicing Acting Well is to liberate
your willpower so that you may engage in activities that are good for
you every day without fail.
Thus Acting Well offers a practical system that can be tested to
enhance memory.
If you are older, be warned that theories about people’s memory
are so fraught with misunderstanding, confusion, and misconceptions
that much of the distress associated with the kind of memory loss that
occurs in older people is probably unnecessary.

Mental degradation isn’t a normal part of the aging process.

Although it’s generally true that “if you don’t use it you lose it,”
it’s also true that most experiences of memory loss have nothing to
do with age or general health.
Young people forget things too; maybe some young “absent-minded
professors” forget more than older people do. Young people just
don’t worry as much about losing their mental powers.

Memory isn’t a “power.”

An older person’s beliefs about memory are important factors in
successfully navigating middle age. Unfortunately, most people be-
lieve that memory is a power, when, in fact, it’s a potential effect of
a process—as muscle strength can result from strenuous exercise;
but it isn’t there until something challenges the body to exercise its
strength.

You’re not supposed to remember everything!

Some people think they have a right to remember everything; yet,
they constantly, subconsciously go about forgetting what they deem
not essential.

Memory isn’t like a bank.

Finally, most people—and some scientists—seem to believe that
memory is something like a “bank” in which you deposit and with-
draw information.
The brain wasn’t built with impressive marble floors and steel
vaults. Nor does the brain work like a storage device. It’s dynamic,
it gets confused, it forgets, and it remembers the damnedest things.
All you really need to know about memory enhancement is that if
you practice Acting Well daily, your memory will appear to you to be
so perfectly normal that when you occasionally misplace your glasses
(which you will!) you won’t feel any differently about it than you felt
the time you misplaced your keys when you were around 20 years
old.
Do you still remember that incident?

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 _________________________________

Much has been made about a mouse bred for enhanced memory
that the scientist Joe Tsien of Princeton University’s molecular-
biology department recently announced.
The academic community received the news with the proper
amount of skeptical reaction; but the media played the event to the
hilt, implying that the discovery might make it possible, one day, to
engineer smarter human beings. This misconception throws some
light on how better to regard the subject of memory.
The media’s conclusions were unwarranted. What Tsien en-
hanced wasn’t memory. (We can’t know anything about what a
mouse “remembers.” We can only observe what it does.) What Tsien
enhanced was “plasticity,” meaning the enhanced ability for sensual
data rising out of events to impress themselves on neural patterns
that lead to predictable behavior.
You may lose some of these switching devices (that is, “neurons”)
as you get older; but the reduction in memories you can retain is
probably infinitesimal. What mainly changes as you get older is the
amount of attention you direct toward phenomena coming in from
the outside. If you pay attention, you will remember. If you fail to pay
attention, you will forget.
It may be almost certainly true that whatever “intelligence” is, it
depends on memory. However, there’s no reason to connect the ex-
tension of plasticity beyond sexual maturity with the improvement of
the mouse’s (or human being’s) intellect.
One of the reasons why there has been so much fuss about adver-
tising to children is that children tend to believe what they’re told and
pay attention simply because someone directs them to. We consider
children too “gullible” to be exposed to certain forms of advertising
(such as classroom advertising). It’s the children’s plasticity that
causes their gullibility. If your plasticity were enhanced (or its dimi-
nution slowed down), you would be as gullible as a child would.
However, certainly no one considers “gullibility” a sign of enhanced
intellect!
There are reports of people for whom plasticity doesn’t mature as
readily as it does in most human beings. The result for these people
isn’t greater intelligence but confusion and inability to make deci-
sions. Therefore, if Tsien could alter human beings genetically in or-
der to enhance their plasticity the result might cause a great bother
and offer no advantage to anyone.
As you grow older, as plasticity declines, it’s not that your mem-
ory fails. It’s that you require more stimulation to notice things that
you need to notice if you want to remember them. That subtle distinc-
tion means that the aging process isn’t something to fear (it represents
a decrease in gullibility and a corresponding increase in “wisdom,”
after all); it’s just a process to which you need to adjust.
Acting Well can help you adjust to what happens to your mem-
ory as you get older. It won’t make you smarter or affect your mem-

100
ory in any way (although many people might swear that it does!).
What it can do is to make you sensitive to the memory-making proc-
ess (which is consciousness) every day of your life so that you feel
more in control of the things you want to remember. In a way, it will
force you to pay attention to things you want to remember. In that
way, you won’t forget them.
Acting Well isn’t to be practiced only to enhance your psychic
powers. It includes menu and physical activities that are equally im-
portant. But if you follow Acting Well’s practices, you should never
again fear that your memory is failing, no matter how old you get;
providing, of course, that no physical problem, such as Alzheimer’s
Disease, alters your brain. Not even Acting Well can stop the inevita-
ble process of mortality.

—September 1999

Hats
Last night, Len E-mailed us the latest “final” electronic version of
our first book, and so I feel like an enormous task has ended, and it’s
time to start on the next.
“What?” Ellen asked. “No champagne? No weekend in the Ba-
hamas?”
I’d forgotten what it’s like to feel so free of responsibility! How-
ever, Acting Well was what I really wanted to work on for the past
months; and at last, I have some leisure time to write it!
How shall I begin?
I read a New York Review last night about a book by Oliver
Sacks—surely one of the most respected brain specialists around. Un-
fortunately, his article embodied most of the chronic problems of
modern-day brain science, touching on the most prominent “Colossal
Blunders” that have been tormenting the field for 50 years, and gloss-
ing over some “theoretical-deathtraps” with all the self-assurance of a
doomed soldier stepping gingerly on a landmine.
“He never knew what hit him!”
His analysis mirrors so well the dilemma in the dramatic arts for
all the would-be (and terrible) performers who are mistaught either to
indicate results (“Always sit, stand, and walk elegantly!”) or to pre-
pare their performances by isolating themselves from the world like
naked yogis trying to contact their “inner beings” and emotions
(wherever those animals reside!) untouchable by real events (such as
the truthful emotions of an acting partner or a falling piece of scenery)
that might occur during a performance to spark it up.
Human beings don’t follow either of these courses in real life; and
that’s why audiences don’t believe the performers who “indicate” or
“isolate.”
“Ah,” say the theatre puppetmasters, “but dramatic arts are larger
than life!” Therefore, I suppose brain science only deals with larger-

101
than-life brains!
Let me be more specific and analyze the precise words Sacks uses
that so agitated me.
“How do we recognize a thing—a hat, a flower?” he asks. “It is
easy to show that there is no single location, no module, no ‘hat cen-
ter,’ so to speak, in the brain.”
Oh really? Right here he commits “Colossal Blunder #1,” which is
the idea that, at least in the brain, there’s nothing new under the sun.
For at least 50 years, scientists have been convincing each other
that the brain cells you die with are the same ones you were born
with. You never gain new neurons, they said; you only lose a small
percentage of them every year—which purported “fact” explains why
the brains of the elderly are smaller than the brains of 20-year olds.
If adult neurogenesis doesn’t occur in humans, then how can
there be a “hat center” in the brain? It would be inconceivable that
some vacant real estate inside the skull could, through some magic
process or other be assigned “hatness.” How? Why? What about all
the other millions of objects waiting to be assigned each year? How
could such choices be made? There’s not enough room! —is how their
implicit arguments go.
These questions spin the head in their complexity and inscrutabil-
ity. Better just to go along with the fashionable idea that “hatness” is
spread all over the brain (which is the subject of Sack’s article; he calls
them “gradients”), and that its uniqueness results from a network
dedicated to some object or other that joins various disparate parts.
Sacks continues his argument: “For if a patient develops a so-
called visual agnosia (as did my patient, the man who mistook his
wife for a hat), he may be unable to recognize anything visually, even
though the elementary visual sensations (and even the capacity to
draw) are perfectly intact. But as soon as other senses are called into
action —the sense of touch, or hearing, or smell, or taste—the object is
recognized, categorized, without the least difficulty. Thus the look
and feel of a hat are separately represented in the brain, and one may
lose one without the other.”
Implicit in this argument is “Colossal Blunder #2,” the parsing of
“object designators” by means of nouns (or adjectives) instead of
verbs.
That is, neuroscientists seem to believe that the “mental compo-
nents” that co-join in order to remember or recognize a “hat” are the
usual suspects commonly assumed to describe any hat—such as
color, shape, and texture—that is, Sacks’ “look and feel.”
The truth is different. The designators are neither nouns nor ad-
jectives. They’re always verbs. More precisely, they’re “skilled ac-
tions.” Just as every person’s collection of skills is unique, so every
person’s concatenation of skilled actions to designate “hat” is also
unique and unpredictable from brain to brain.
How might “hat” be designated, for example? First, you can only
think about a specific hat. There cannot be a general “hatness” located
anywhere in the brain, whether it is located in specific neurons or in

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unique associative networks. Only the word “hat,” whether spoken as
if it were a noun by the brain or written (both of which are different,
albeit related “hatnesses”) can be considered by the brain as if it were
a noun describing “hatness.”
Otherwise, if I think of a hat, I have to think about various skilled
actions in order to conjure (that is, perceive, recognize, or remember)
“hatness.”
For example, if I were a baby, I might try to suck on a man’s hat
in order to investigate and absorb some of its “hatness.” I would cer-
tainly see the hat! I could feel its smooth felt fabric and pull out its in-
terior hatband.
Thus, my concept of “hatness” would comprise these skilled ac-
tions: I can suck it, see it, feel it, and pull out its band.
Those four actions conjoined might completely describe a particu-
lar hat experience located somewhere in a baby’s brain. Every similar
object would have a similar but different list of skilled actions con-
catenated in a specific column combination able to locate it.
If someone asked me “What does this brain theory have to do
with Acting Well?” I would answer that “Colossal Blunder #2” de-
pends on the same misconceptions as befalls amateur actors who ha-
ven’t yet learned to act, who tend to think about what they have to do
in terms of nouns instead of verbs.
Thus, an actor playing “the father” might think “authority,”
“sternness,” “older man,” and the like (none of which will help him
act!) instead of making such choices as “restrict my daughter’s free-
dom after 10 p.m.,” “hold the baby in my arms,” or “kiss my teenage
son—for the last time ever—following his Confirmation ceremony,
because he has—at last—become too old to kiss.”
Thus, Stanislavski-inspired actors are much better as neuroscien-
tists, at least in locating thoughts based on how they must be used.
We get around the planet as we do regardless of the incorrect theories
repeated by brain experts such as Oliver Sacks (whom I don’t mean to
disparage even slightly—he’s one of the best!). However, a profes-
sional actor can’t navigate the stage believing false information.
Stanislavski somehow “corrected” the flawed understanding of
how we think (which includes how we behave and make art). Those
who adhere to his teachings don’t make Colossal Blunder #2. Those
who are Acting Well know they’re dealing with verbs, not nouns, be-
cause they understand their own actions better than the words of a
puppetmaster.
Thus, they don’t lie to themselves or others about how often they
exercise (“most days of the week”), or how careful they are in count-
ing calories (“most of the time”).
With regularity (“Every day!”) comes exactness.
With repetition (“Every day!”) comes truth.

—April 2001

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 It’s My Hormones!
“Hormones,” whatever that term means, have long been blamed
as a cause of obesity. For example, some of us may have had a chroni-
cally obese family member about whom a relative once whispered,
“It’s her hormones, you know. She can’t do anything about it.”
One might then imagine some fat producing substance manufac-
tured constantly in the poor woman’s body that activates her fat cells,
making it impossible for her to reduce.
There’s no question that certain hormones are involved in peo-
ple’s failure to maintain a healthy weight. However, the precise
mechanisms by which these hormones operate, and exactly which
ones are involved, are rarely specified.
It’s clear, however, that while practicing Acting Well, testosterone
may play the most important role in shedding excess pounds and
maintaining ideal weight. The way in which it works, however, is
roundabout.
There’s no question that intense regular exercise increases feel-
ings of well being, self-efficacy, sociability, etc. These positive psycho-
logical effects are probably caused by high testosterone levels, which
create almost identical effects in people who inject testosterone di-
rectly into their systems. (HIV patients, for example, use the hormone
to stimulate their appetites, among other benefits.) What makes an
exercise practitioner feel better may therefore be a surge of testoster-
one that regular intense exercise produces.
(Runners often claim to feel the benefits of “endorphins.” What
they’re really feeling, however, is probably more related to testoster-
one than “endorphins”—which are more like metabolic byproducts of
other chemicals that make people feel good than “feel-good” chemi-
cals themselves. Endorphins, however, can be measured more easily
in the blood stream than other, more effective chemicals, which never
leave the brain intact.)
It’s been documented that both male and female victors of a ten-
nis match exhibit marked increases in testosterone compared to nor-
mal levels for their respective sexes. One might conclude from this
observation that if one wants to feel better more often, one ought to
take up tennis.
That conclusion would be wrong: the only players who exhibit
increased testosterone levels are the winners. The losers experience
the opposite: their testosterone levels drop to below normal for their
respective sexes. Thus, tennis as a mood elevator is an iffy proposi-
tion.
Although it’s clear that testosterone is a key element in hormonal
activity while playing tennis, it may be that when one exercises in-
tensely and has some kind of “winning” experience, what gets re-
leased in the bloodstream is a cocktail of “victory hormones.” These
substances probably include not just testosterone but other, as-yet

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unidentified substances associated with the experience of winning.
Likewise, there may be a “losers cocktail” that consists of the
dregs from a leftover “danger cocktail” that included adrenaline, cor-
tisol, etc. From the viewpoint of evolution, there was probably a sur-
vival value to ingesting a “loser’s cocktail.” If you fought an opponent
and won, you could have continued fighting others and probably
come out ahead. However, if you lost, it might have been safer for
any future contributions to your gene pool to resign from the conflict
and slink away.
It should be obvious that the exercise practitioner who regularly
sips a victory cocktail will comply more consistently with an exercise
regimen (as well as a nutritional or psychological regimen). There-
fore, it’s important that the experience of intense exercise be one in
which the practitioner consistently wins. (For that reason, the most
important benefit of the Acting Well logbook is that it documents and
thereby reinforces each day’s “win.”)
Personal trainers often concoct an illusion of winning to keep
their clients coming back. Cheering crowds (at least before the conclu-
sion of a game) probably provide contenders with much needed hor-
monal assistance they would never get from practice games, or even
from their coaches. For these reasons, for the sake of compliance, in-
tense exercise practitioners should probably never engage in competi-
tions in their particular daily sport. They not only risk losing their
current competition, but also may compromise their entire motivation
to continue regular exercise.
A “loser’s cocktail” affects motivation as much as a “winner’s
cocktail.” If evolution makes you want to slink away from a losing
battle, you’re going to comply with nature’s imperatives regardless of
what your conscious brain tells you you “ought” to do. If your expe-
rience of exercising (or of dieting) is a continuously negative one,
your hormones will insist that you quit the practice no matter how
well motivated you were the first day you tried it.
Thus, in the conflict between hormones and conscious “will” (or
“moral ought”), the regular victim is “willpower” or “motivation.” In
other words, compliance to medically prescribed behavior relates
more to what’s in your blood than to what’s in your brain. Thus, ef-
forts to “educate” patients in the importance of changing their life-
style have historically failed. Only subconscious, often hormonal
changes within patients’ bodies and brains can make the difference
between compliance and failure.
It’s not true that human beings possess something called “will-
power.” What appears to us as “will” is more like rationalization.
That is, your subconscious makes you do something. Then, after
you’ve done it, your brain creates the rationale behind what you just
did. These events occur microseconds apart, which explains why
people think that “will” is a constant motivator. Benjamin Libet’s
revolutionary experiments, which exquisitely timed the relationship
between “will” and behavior, proved beyond doubt (though not be-
yond controversy, for ignorance dies hard) that behavior always pre-

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cedes “will.” That scientific finding explains why all of us constantly
behave according to subconsciously derived motivations over which
we have little or no control. If these conjectures weren’t true, no one
would ever break a single New Year’s Resolution!
The immutability of hormonal cocktails doesn’t mean that you
can’t replace one cocktail with another. That’s the only way to change
(or “reprogram”) your subconscious to make it work for you instead
of against you. The most talented people to practice such techniques
are actors.
Acting Well is a discipline created to reprogram the subconscious
parts of a person’s brain (with emphasis on hormonal effects) so that
the practitioner’s behavior complies more with rational self-interest.
In other words, Acting Well reprograms the subconscious. This proc-
ess is similar, and in some ways identical to how actors derive their
“characters.” These characters’ ranges may run the gamut from divine
saint to foulest murderer, even in the same play. For Acting Well
practitioners, however, the main effort is to simulate (but “for real”)
the behavior of a single character, namely a “winner.”
The value of Acting Well is probably greatest for recovering car-
diac patients whose doctors have prescribed a “change of lifestyle.”
The method by which a doctor would measure adherence to a life-
style change program would be to measure compliance to the medical
program. If the patient takes a particular medication every day for a
week, the weekly compliance ratio is 1. If the patient fails to take any
pills during the week, the weekly compliance ratio is 0. The number
between 0 and 1 is a good predictor of whether a lifestyle change has
occurred and whether it will continue or fail.
Acting Well programs used for preventive cardiology must be
customized to individual patients (by patient and doctor) to measure
compliance to prescribed appropriate behaviors. The simplicity of the
program and the daily dose of automatic rewards help maximize pa-
tient compliance.
The relationship between being a “winner” and compliance is
overwhelming. Since the main purpose of Acting Well is to produce
“winners,” its use can be decisive in the eternal struggle against dis-
ease and the aging process.

A Letter from Screwtape

I discovered the following fragment of a letter in my files. I have no
idea who authored it. My only clue is the scrawled signature (which
looks like the word “Screwtape”) and my memory of reading a book
by C.S. Lewis purporting to be an exchange of letters between a jun-
ior and a senior devil named “Screwtape.”
I’m probably one of the few people who remember that Mr. Lewis
died on the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated.
Therefore, I can’t imagine that he could have written this letter.

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 Knowledge is our power, but our clients’ ignorance is bliss. Your
job is to keep your client from catching on to the truth. Extend his life
as long as possible through medication (your situation depends on his
longevity, especially if his propped-up end is filled with decrepi-
tude!). Just make sure he experiences as few of of life’s wonders as
you can muster so that you maximize the pleasure of our victory,
which, after all, is inversely proportional to our clients’ misery!
It’s not hard if you catch the knack.
In the field of health care, for example, which is currently all
muddy and kicked-up, all the knowledge they think they’ve accumu-
lated has threatened an oppressive tyranny over them. That threat
was our intention, and it serves us awfully well. Not only does
knowledge do them no good; it insults their injuries!
Take smoking, for example. If they smoke, they will never stop
hearing about how bad smoking is for their health. Thus, we’ve de-
flected attention away from all the coordinated good health habits
they could have learned simply by analyzing “data” and separating
the smoking habit from everything else. We’ve even gotten legislators
and city officials to pass laws against smoking! Now whole genera-
tions will pass through the smoking habit only to be replaced by
younger generations of smokers. Meanwhile, the habit continues in-
definitely! The whole system is expensive, and many will break the
law. Nothing good will happen. Joy!
Let the doctors, scientists, and government officials climb the
highest trees and shout that smokers are killing themselves! They
only upset the smokers, make the non-smokers feel superior (while
they indulge their own life-threatening ingestive habits with food!)
and encourage people to denounce the foul air. None of this activity
helps anyone.
Therefore, we can’t lose on smoking! If we get them to ban to-
bacco altogether (believe me, we’re working on it!) it will spawn an-
other Prohibition with all the disrespect for law that kind of legisla-
tion sets loose. Look at our victories with crack and heroin! We’ve
decimated an entire generation of young, African American men—the
cream of the crop, in fact!—by dragging them through the penal sys-
tem for pursuing the only solid career choice American society leaves
open to many of the more educationally-challenged ones, which is
dealing drugs.
Some of them win, of course; but most of them—and all Ameri-
cans—will lose! Our gain.
Then there’re all the diets!
Your clients all know, more or less, what makes for a healthy
menu; yet, they go on eating junk food. They see “Fat Free” on a label,
even for some huge muffin or cookie loaded with sugar, and they fig-
ure it’s good for them! Their stupidity is monumental for such a
bright species when it comes to food!
They know they should engage in athletic activity, and that they
should keep challenging their brains after college by reading books

107
and pursuing other forms of intellectual stimulation. Yet, they avoid
these responsibilities for the sake of spending time watching public-
ity-driven trash television and escapist movies.
You can bet they won’t do much to reduce the causes and effects
of unhealthy stress! That’s why we’ve taught them “relaxation exer-
cises”—which are probably the worst choice for the kind of stress that
kills them! Instead of taking control of their lives, they settle for half
an hour or so of mindless calm that supposedly helps them get
through the rest of an active day feeling out of control. It’s wonderful!
They constantly claim they have no willpower (as if “willpower”
were something separate from themselves that they owned) because
every time they try to change their life, after an initial flurry of suc-
cess, something makes the effort too hard to continue. Like the stub-
born children they are, they just don’t want to do it! No argument.
Truth is, when they really want to do something, nothing stops
them!
You often hear them say (in their finer but briefer moments when
reality almost intrudes), “I hate my life!” But they won’t examine
why. (I love such moments!—unless, of course, they lead to inner re-
flections that can be highly dangerous to our existence!)
The problem is, they know too much! We’ve confused them ut-
terly with disconnected facts. They stop paying attention to their own
actions, thinking that’s the last place they’ll find an answer. (Of
course, they don’t realize their actions are the first place they should
look!) We’ve done our work so well that, like Poe’s “Purloined Let-
ter,” they can’t distinguish the truth from the detritus—the menus,
the diets, the self-help books, the gurus, the religions, the disciplines,
the personal trainers, the dieticians, the health clubs, and the infomer-
cials.
They haven’t figured out that no one can know exactly what kind
of regimen would be best for each of them. There’s no “Best in Show,”
of course. Yet, their authorities keep issuing new, conflicting reports.
That’s half our battle won!
Not so long ago, the great-great-grandfathers of these same doc-
tors and experts thought that leeches were the answer to most ail-
ments. Even today, stores sell dietary supplements with an amount of
iron in them that can be fatal to people with hemochromotosis. Doc-
tors and scientists who tell people what to eat, how to exercise, or
how to meditate are merely exercising a parental authority that hu-
miliates our clients’ willpower. (Why, you ask? Because feeling like
parents strokes their egos!) How, then, can these poor fools retain any
“willpower” while continuing to obey these surrogate-parent “ex-
perts”?
All the knowledge in the world will only continue to rob your cli-
ents of their willpower to change. It’s part of their genetic makeup.
There was obviously survival value in resisting parental authority
once a human child became an adult. Your clients secretly want to
take their experts’ place, not their advice. They would do that natu-
rally when they become a parent to their children, except that we’ve

108
covered that base as well with “permissive parenthood,” even to the
point of charging parents with child abuse who spank their children!
(That was a major victory!)
Of course, your clients’ problems don’t come from their children
but from themselves. But watch out: If they ever learn to treat them-
selves as they would treat their children, you’re cooked! Fortunately,
they’re just not very interested in themselves. Although they are their
only experts on themselves, they refuse to record even the most sali-
ent facts about their lives to help them become more fully conscious
of what they actually do. They’d rather search for entertainment than
record the time they start and stop their compliant activities. Leave
science to the scientists. Throw caution to the winds.
So many failures warm my heart! Let them dream about their
Nobel Prizes while we quietly work, behind the scenes, to crank their
treadmills to oblivion....

Here, the letter breaks off.

Maharaja Yoga: Triumph of the Will

(Book Proposal)

This book will take a novel approach to self-help books.

Based on a conviction that the only books that can permanently
change your life are ones you write yourself, Maharaja Yoga will show
the reader how to spend a small part of every day composing his or
her own book.
The book may never be completed; but the lifelong discipline will
sustain the willpower to live a more creative, self-assured, and
healthy life.
Maharaja Yoga will show people of privilege (which virtually all
Americans are) how Indo-European potentates prepared themselves,
and how others prepared them, to rule their people.
Just as a Shakespearean actor had to convince his audience that
he was Hamlet by using costumes, lights, sound, and makeup, as well
as by imitating the quaint behavior of a neurotic Danish prince, so a
maharaja had to make decisions about what to wear, what rooms to
enter when appearing before the public, how to enter them, what sort
of image he should project, what images and acting objectives he
could use to prepare himself emotionally for his role, and so forth.
If Konstantin Stanislavski had lived 5,000 years ago, he would
have been a perfect tutor for the eldest son of a maharaja; for
Stanislavski invented, just a century ago, a system of acting that can
prepare anyone for just about any role.
Maharaja Yoga is about how to practice the Stanislavski system of
acting to prepare a public character in which to move about more
comfortably and productively in the world. Such a character can de-
velop indomitable willpower in order to do just about anything con-

109
sistently, if properly prepared. Although the techniques of
Stanislavski’s “method” have been known for a century, their use to
activate a person’s willpower for self-improvement is revolutionary.
Although America is the richest country in the history of the
world, a lot of psychic misery still prevails. Despite countless diet and
nutrition books, one-half the American population still carries around
20 pounds of surplus weight, and 37-million Americans suffer from
eating disorders. Despite twenty years of negative publicity about to-
bacco, alcoholism, and drugs, 61-million Americans still can’t stop
smoking cigarettes. The members of every fourth American family,
involving 88-million people, have to cope with someone affected by
alcohol or drug-related problems that cost insurers, governments, and
businesses over $220 billion annually.
With so much wealth showing off these days, why do more than
one out of two marriages collapse? Why do fractured families grow
up and repeat the same mistakes? Why do Americans slow their
physical lives to a crawl as they get older? Why is there so much sub-
stance abuse? Why can’t money buy happiness?
Popular religions suggest that austerity may be the best solution
to the burdens of too much opportunity. Christianity’s New Testament
has long demanded: “Give everything you have to the poor and fol-
low Me.” Moreover, Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita requires the yoga
practitioner to “renounce all material desires and act neither to gratify
the senses nor realize the fruits of labor
These two systems (and others based on them) were invented in
societies where it benefited the power structure to convince their
slaves and subjects to abandon all ambitions for wealth and power.
The priests, emperors, and maharajas who encouraged these ideas
probably figured that if a man is dirt poor, powerless, and inconsol-
able, what difference does it make to him if he renounces all he has
(he has nothing!) to dedicate his life to invisible forces that will some-
day preside over his happiness in Paradise?
Such ideas are perfect propaganda to spread among the down-
trodden in a brutally stratified society. In the wealthiest land in the
world, however, the Hindu virtue of worldly renunciation makes less
sense than a spiritual reward of “inner glorification.”
The Hindu system of yoga based on renunciation (that is,
“samnyasam yoga”) was a discipline designed for followers. How-
ever, for the great kings of that time, a different kind of yoga (“Maha-
raja yoga”) was more appropriate. The spiritual system practiced by
these maharajas was not codified, but it was one of the de facto sys-
tems used not only in the Indo-European lands going back thousands
of years, but by kings and other political and religious role models in
more modern times as well as by the theatrical profession in the last
hundred years. It is a highly conscious practice attentive to imagery
(or the impression you make on other people) and leadership.
Ronald Reagan was an ideal model of an actor-leader that rose to
great power through techniques that may or may not have been based
on substance. Maharaja yoga can supply the techniques. It’s up to the

110
individual (and the moral, ethical, and religious values that affect in-
dividuals) to supply the substance.
The subject category into which Maharaja Yoga falls is
“diet/health/fitness”; although it touches importantly on several
other categories such as “recovery,” “inspirational,” “new age,”
“sports & recreation,” and “aging.”
The main reader who will be interested in the book is anyone
who has a problem that can’t be solved without an exceptional
amount of “willpower” (thus the subtitle).
Most health problems fall into this category, which includes prob-
lems that affect people who are overweight, people who need to
lower their blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar level, people
who need to reduce stress, sedentary people whose health has been
compromised by lack of exercise, people entering middle age who
have to attend to the new problems that appear at that stage of life,
and so on.
There is currently no integrated program offered to the survivors
of heart attacks. There are many miscellaneous diet, exercise, stress
reduction, and motivation programs thrown together at various hos-
pitals and cardiology clinics around the world; but most cardiologists
will agree that none of these programs offer a satisfactory, single life-
style-change curriculum.
Unless diet, exercise, and stress reduction programs are inte-
grated into a single, simple lifetime practice, they won’t work for
most people. Maharaja yoga will offer the first integrated curriculum
to address the general health problems of Americans from a truly ho-
listic point of view. The potential market for a book based on a prac-
tice that addresses so many dire health problems, and that has actu-
ally ameliorated them, is huge.
People entering middle age with weight, blood pressure, choles-
terol, glucose tolerance, and sedentary lifestyle difficulties will want
to benefit from reading the book. Moreover, the book will also attract
people who are creative but have self-disciplinary problems such as
“writer’s block,” problems getting started, or “day-after” problems
when doubts overwhelm talent.
The book will appeal to anyone who ever acted, if not profession-
ally, then at least in school or amateur theatricals. Thus, most people
will immediately grasp how Hamlet’s observation that “All the
world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” applies
to learning techniques for behavioral change.
No actor should or can force credible behavior on the stage with-
out technique. In the same way, all the “willpower” in the world
won’t help an actor cry onstage or tighten a belt three notches. How-
ever, by using various techniques well known to actors, tears can flow
and pounds can melt.
It isn’t magic, but it has to be learned.

—September 1999

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 The Mosaic at the End of the Long Haul
As I fit in, piece by piece, the little paper tiles and the word stones
dredged from bookcases, files, and excavation piles all over my desk,
let me anticipate the final pieces in my mosaic of advice to the reader.
My plan is not to make a pretty picture out of what’s available,
like rearranging clever mixtures of oil pigments on a canvas, or man-
aging the heroes of a novel. Rather, I see the whole, complete in my
brain, right now, made out of unique ideas that recur in my daily life.
All the random parts with which I could begin seem already to be-
long to the whole in a compelling and convincing way that could not
have happened had I just raked up random paper fragments out of
my basement boxes of essays and rough drafts that go back decades.
This vita nova began more recently than that.
What is it that gives the mosaic so much coherence and integrity
that each new thought contributes to the last—that none contradicts
the whole? Have I hit upon a truth so indisputably powerful that al-
though it challenges the received wisdom of generations of doctors,
thinkers, and religious leaders it must ultimately prevail?
Doubtful.
What makes the design of my mosaic so compelling to me is the
neat way in which my “troika” of Sensible Care practices (meditation,
nutrition, and exercise) and all the ideas about them fit together in so
ordered a way.
Like most people, I began the troika separated into three unre-
lated systems. Then, as each practice began to affect the other, and as I
learned more and more about these new arts, I gradually shifted to
more integrated ways of thinking.
For example, at some point I could no longer think of “dieting”
using that term, for I wasn’t dieting. (I was planning and testing a
menu of my favorite foods.)
I couldn’t think of “exercise” any more because I had discovered
a form of outdoor “recreation” that served me better than jogging for
a specific number of minutes or repeating regulated, counted, gym-
nastic activities.
As for “meditation,” I began playing games with memory and
observation more than 30 years ago (concerning my playwriting) that
were quite unlike the “feel-good” yoga practices currently popular in
America. Thus, decades ago I became convinced that to meditate for
pleasure, instead of for the purpose of strengthening the brain’s func-
tionality to improve creative output, was a kind of mental masturba-
tion: an unfruitful self-indulgence compared to the equivalent of sex-
ual intercourse that regenerates the human race—an activity more
satisfying than mere physical pleasure.
Let me stress that my troika was designed by and for myself. Its
usefulness is limited to me, and depends on my own self-discovery in
the same way that an analysand’s own self-discovery is essential to

112
successful psychoanalysis. Even when the analyst knows the obvious
truth, it must be kept a secret until the patient’s dreams or creative
thoughts reveal the root of the problem.
In other words, physician, heal thyself! You’re the doctor, not me.
Therefore, do not copy what I did, except to embark on a similar ad-
venture of self-discovery in your own way and time, and by yourself.
If you do embark on such a journey, and if you come up with entirely
different theories and results from me, God bless you and continue!
If you work things right, your own unique mosaic will form in
your brain as mine did in mine, but differing in many particulars.
The consistency of my mosaic at this point in my life comes from
the integration of the three aspects of the recreational troika. They fit
together—because I have made them fit together, not through force,
but patient practice. From the solidity of that integration came the im-
age of the mosaic. It forms a consistent image now because of the
hours I spend each day doing essentially the same things. Proof that
the plan is correct is that the more each day adheres to the pattern, the
fuller each day gets; the more excited and happy I feel; and the less
likely I am to get bored, lonely, or depressed.
To recognize a unique mosaic for yourself, you don’t start with
nothing. There’s no tabula rasa in the brain. There’s a structure al-
ready in place through which various archetypes can spin. Sexual at-
traction, for example, doesn’t have to be learned. Nor is the tendency
for humans to believe in supernatural forces.
There’s a floor on which you’ll find inscribed a general pattern
into which the pieces of your life will fit; and that floor in each of us is
fashioned similarly (just as we all have noses and ears) and results
from how our race’s genes assemble our prenatal brains. Thus, things
look alike to us because the million cells of our retinas, also bundled
together by our genes, tend to send similar signals to the brains of
every human being.
The brain’s mosaic is fixed—in long term memory, not variable,
like a nearly perfect mimic of a working memory’s matrix. If the mo-
saic were variable, it would be like a television screen with fixed pix-
els that constantly change according to what lights them up and gives
the overall picture the illusion of moving reality. You’d have no fixed
picture, gist, or long-term memory of the world and could only be
dragged about by external signals.
Some people seem to create a mosaic something like that in their
brain. They see their lives as constantly stimulating change that yields
no consistent meaning. Their lives are like watching television. From
moment to moment life seems meaningful and interesting until they
catch on that someone’s using tricks and razzle-dazzle to capture
their attention long enough to sell them something (that is, if they
ever figure out anything about the world!).
In a fixed mosaic, each pixel is unique. Of course from time to
time you may find a more beautiful element, or several smaller, more
appropriate ones, to replace a less perfect, larger one.
The pixels overlay an overall design, which is an idea (or “ideal”

113
or “ideational picture”) spinning through the brain of its creator.
You can’t say, in general, that cardinal mosaics are better than or-
dinal mosaics. Cardinal mosaics work better for television (in fact,
make television possible), and ordinal mosaics work best for decorat-
ing a floor, especially a monumental floor. It depends on what you’re
trying to do. In my case, I’ve created a mosaic based on observations
throughout my whole life, but mainly based on the ideas of Konstan-
tin Stanislavski as applied to preventive medicine. The resulting rou-
tines I have created (a sort of method acting health regimen) tend to
stick to the same gists and ideas (mosaic) again and again.
Proust captured the past through fictional means, stretching out
his masterful mosaic over the last years of his life. Similarly, I am try-
ing to reproduce the present in a non-fictional mosaic as faithfully as I
can; and it may take the rest of my life to do it.

—December 1997

The News on Fitness

There’s a striking analogy between reading a newspaper and
practicing a daily fitness exercise.
You probably learned how to read newspapers when you were
young as part of, and because of, the process of learning how to read.
At first, you may have had to concentrate hard to comprehend
thoroughly. However, after years of practice, you’re probably rarely
conscious now of “reading a newspaper.” Your consciousness while
reading newspapers is usually restricted to the stories and characters
about which you’re reading.
Your third grade teacher might actually have assigned you the
daily task of reading a newspaper knowing that the practice would
help develop such skills as vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. How-
ever, it was never necessary to explain to you which skills you were
developing.
Compare this analysis of your own newspaper reading with the
usual process of helping people to develop daily fitness habits.
Personal trainers, writers, medical authorities, and other fitness
coaches tend to assume that most people who want to develop daily
fitness habits will fail to be comprehensive. That is, most people
won’t exercise all the appropriate body parts or processes unless they
include a full repertoire of exercises. Thus, coaches will instruct cli-
ents that “at a minimum,” they need to practice aerobic (or “cardio-
vascular”) exercises (for example, on treadmills), strengthening exer-
cises (for example, with free weights), stretching exercises (for exam-
ple, hatha yoga), and endurance exercises (for example, jogging) in
order to get a “full workout.”
This degree of comprehensiveness is as unnecessary as telling
grade school children that to get a true understanding of the world
they must subscribe not just to the New York Times, but to the Wash-

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ington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It’s one thing for beginners practicing to run a marathon to include
stretching exercises in order to prevent muscle strains; but anyone
who has been running daily for two years isn’t going to get muscle
strains of the kind that stretching exercises will prevent! Insisting on
comprehensive fitness exercises is therefore always counterproduc-
tive. Doing all these exercises take too long to be done on a daily ba-
sis; and without daily exercising, developing fitness habits becomes
impossible.
Furthermore, since few homes have the facilities or coaches to
cover four separate fitness areas (and any others that may be poten-
tially useful), clients are encouraged to do their regular workouts out-
side the home (and sometimes outside the neighborhood) in special
facilities such as health clubs.
Since a “complete workout” (plus changing clothes, showering,
and getting to and from the health club) will take a minimum of two
hours—sometimes more, coaches recommend that their clients work
out only “most” days each week, doing “other things” (such as walk-
ing, running, housework, raking leaves, or nothing at all) on “days
off.”
The basic assumption these coaches make is that people won’t
naturally want to, or be able to, exercise every day. Therefore they
need to hire a personal trainer if they can afford one, or follow a
health club’s regimen that suggests “doable” (and, also, affordable)
scheduled activities that give clients days off so at least they’ll have
one less excuse (namely, “I don’t have time!”) in order to delay get-
ting started. Finally, clients are urged to participate in games, compe-
titions, marathons, or other social experiences in order to get more va-
riety and fun out of physical exercise.
A basic assumption these coaches make is that no single exercise
is enjoyable enough for people to want to perform it every day. This
assumption is based on the reactions most coaches get from their
typical beginning clients, the vast majority of whom will quit after a
few weeks or months no matter what the coaches do. It’s as if to say
that because some children find it hard to read newspapers, no one is
ever going to grow up to enjoy reading newspapers “naturally.”
Therefore, teachers must make the reading experience easier and
more convenient or lose the students to a lifetime of never reading at
all.
Therefore, the argument might go, let’s explain to children that
they don’t have to read every day. They only have to study their four
newspapers three days a week. (Maybe they should read a book on
alternate days, or something else, or nothing at all. Doesn’t matter.)
Given this schedule, they should save Monday’s papers and read
them on Tuesday along with Tuesday’s papers. It will take them
twice as long to read the papers on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,
of course; but that doesn’t matter, since they’ll get Monday, Wednes-
day, and Friday “off.” (Of course, Tuesday might be tough, because
they’ll have to include Sunday’s editions. However, maybe they can

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just skip Sunday’s papers. They’re too thick, they’re mostly filled with
advertising, and not much happens in the world on weekends.)
From this point of view, the specific news that a child accumu-
lates is considered unimportant. Only regular reading habits matter.
Who would ever develop the habit of reading the papers given
this kind of regimen?
Next, the children will have to be instructed as to which specific
sections to read, because, obviously, only some sections will improve
vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. Others (such as the financial sec-
tions or the classified advertising sections) can be ignored to save
time. We can let the children read the comics, however, because chil-
dren should at least enjoy the parts of the newspaper that are written
especially for them.
This analysis of newspaper reading, comparing it to fitness coach-
ing, point outs the absurdity that many fitness coaches inflict on their
clients.
The truth is that reading newspapers is an enjoyable habit! People
wouldn’t do it if it weren’t. Likewise, human beings can easily find a
fitness exercise they enjoy and can practice every single day.
Trying to make sure that daily or semi-daily fitness exercises meet
aerobic, strengthening, endurance, and stretching categories only
makes sense for someone who has never exercised before. But if
someone practices a single exercise (such as bicycling) every day for
five years, constantly “pushing the envelope” to get better (or “really
good”) at it, that person will eventually get as much aerobic, strength,
and endurance exercising out of it as can possibly be needed; and will
be sufficiently limber so that stretching exercises aren’t necessary, ex-
cept to ameliorate specific problems, such as lower back pain.
Furthermore, if you only do one exercise per day around your
home, you don’t have to spend more than an hour to prepare yourself
and do it—which is a “doable” daily regimen for practically anyone,
and which doesn’t require expensive health clubs or personal trainers.
Daily fitness exercise should become as natural a part of every-
one’s day as reading the newspaper is for most people. It’s not oner-
ous, and it’s enjoyable—except for those who are instructed to do too
much.
Many people can’t imagine not reading a daily newspaper when
they have the chance. The same should be true of exercise! It won’t be,
however, for those who aren’t able to practice every day because their
trainers have made it impossible.

What I Do
When I finally hit on my solution to my weight problem (I was
about 15 pounds overweight and had a potbelly that preceded me
into rooms), it had nothing to do with “going on a diet.” I didn’t re-
strict myself in any way, nor did I reduce the portions that I ate. In
fact, after a while I actually had to force myself to eat more than I in-

116
tended to because I had lost too much weight and people were telling
me I looked gaunt. I became too thin!
What I did was to think about my eating habits (which usually
depended on someone else’s cooking preferences or invitations to res-
taurants) and slowly create my own menu of healthy things to eat on
a regular basis. (At the time, I lived alone.) I prepared and ate virtu-
ally every breakfast and lunch myself. These meals were always the
same. Dinner was pretty much the same too, except for a variety of
entrées, mostly supermarket pastas with tomato sauce or Lean Cui-
sine dinners. I didn’t try to create an “ideal” menu with everything on
it that you’re “supposed” to eat. I paid scant attention to the “Food
Pyramid” or “Recommended Daily Allowances” of this or that nutri-
ent. I still take vitamin pills; but I don’t know what I’m doing, I
probably shouldn’t, and I don’t recommend them. Above all, I re-
nounced the bad American habit of insisting on a “variety” of foods
for every meal, as if I were a restaurant trying to keep its customers
amused. (The truth was, I don’t like to cook because it’s too much
trouble.)
Mainly, I used common sense. I still shop at only two neighbor-
hood stores to fulfill only the exact needs of my menu (a greengrocer
for fruits and vegetables and a supermarket for everything else). Since
I never buy anything I shouldn’t eat, I’m never tempted to eat high
fat, high calorie “treats.” When I go to the store, I know exactly what I
need to get, and I never think about getting anything else. Therefore,
bingeing (which I would have a tendency to do) is out of the question
for me.
(“If you don’t have it, you can’t eat it!”)
These changes in my eating habits were pretty much all I did as
far as food was concerned. What mostly took the weight off (and
more importantly, what kept it off) was riding my bike up and down
the hills of Central Park virtually every day. My experience taught me
that anyone who wants to “go on a diet” without including a daily,
major physical effort is simply foolish. Dietary resolutions independ-
ent of exercise are guaranteed to fail. If you refuse to exercise, you’ll
literally have to starve yourself for the rest of your life in order to re-
main slender. Anyone who has that much determination will proba-
bly prefer (and be able) to exercise daily.
I only exercise a half hour a day (not including some negligible
stretching exercises in the morning to prevent lower back problems)
under the theory that 30 minutes per day will not interfere with my
work or my life, whereas I would only be able to exercise three or
four days a week if I were doing an hour or two per session. Unfortu-
nately, if you don’t exercise virtually every day, you can’t create an
exercise habit! Without an exercise habit, it’s almost impossible to
maintain an exercise schedule lifelong.
The actual amount of time I spend exercising is around 35 min-
utes, including 10 minutes getting down to the park and back, and
not including showering—which I think is usually unnecessary if one
showers regularly in the morning. Thus, I only ride for about 25 min-

117
utes, “touching the envelope”—up hills—for about six minutes out of
the 25. However, for the first few years, I had to ride the full 30 min-
utes to circuit the park, which is what I recommend to others, at least
when starting out.
These changed habits were integrated with a Morning Preparation
that I started doing for about an hour before breakfast every morning.
I “steal” this hour for myself to figure out how to make myself more
conscious and to keep to my resolve. I couldn’t have created and
stuck to my daily menu and practiced daily fitness exercises without
this daily psychic reconditioning. Thus, all these practices work to-
gether, support each other, and reinvent me every day.
(I should add that keeping a log, which is part of Morning Prepara-
tion, is the most essential part of the overall discipline. However,
that’s another subject.)
My efforts directed toward these three elements (brain, body, and
nutrition) hold my life together now like the three legs of a stool. If
you want to change your life, you must pay attention to these areas.
You can’t just do one or two. You have to tackle all three.
There’s a fourth area, if you want to stay healthy, and that is to
reduce or stop smoking—or to stop drinking if you’re an alcoholic.
However, that “fourth leg” didn’t apply to me. I stopped smoking—
after considerable difficulty!—almost 40 years ago.
You shouldn’t copy me, except to experiment, as I did, with dif-
ferent foods, different psychological techniques, and different physi-
cal programs until you find the ones you love to do. I’m serious about
the word “love”! If you can’t honestly say that you love what you eat
and do, then keep looking until you can! Figure out what works for
you and what you enjoy. Avoid too many changes too quickly and all
at once. Take plenty of time to work things out—after all, you have
the rest of your life to discover, improve, and write up what works.
Take months or years if you need to, as long as you keep thinking of
each day as an important new experiment that can benefit others as
much as yourself.
If someone had told me, several years ago, how fast I would one
day ride my bike around the park, I would have been incredulous
and mightily impressed! However, even after a few weeks, I noticed
and was proud of the difference it made in my life. I didn’t need to
think about how inadequate I actually was back then by almost any
else’s standard. In other words, don’t set “goals”! They tend to stop
you dead and contribute nothing to your resolve.
After you’ve found your way (you’ll know when you do!), de-
stroy the journals and forget the good advice you thought the world
was waiting for—as I’ve destroyed just about everything I wrote
along the way. (Everything I write here is either from memory or se-
verely rewritten.)
Above all, remember these rules:
• If you’re not sick, don’t look for cures! Wellness
isn’t a disease. Don’t treat it like it is.

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 • Don’t consider the aging process to be an illness. It’s
a fulfillment that requires some special attention,
thereby giving you a golden opportunity to get better
and better!
—October 1997 and May 2000

Pep-Talk
Thanks for your comments!
I was a little puzzled by your reference to the “dogmatism” of my
style. Can you be a little more specific?
I’m well aware of the problems of people practicing wrong tech-
niques in health clubs, and didn’t mean to give the impression (al-
though I realize I did) that I disapprove of personal trainers, as you
will see from the following rewrite. I used to sit in Uta Hagen’s acting
class and watch her teach. She may be the greatest living actor, and
she’s probably the most sought-after acting teacher now, but I once
noted the subtlety of how she could make an actor depend on her.
Strasberg did the same, but differently. That kind of coaching I think
isn’t the best. I prefer my own style of coaching: in writing, from the
sidelines. No rejections.

_________________________________

If I’m not for myself, then who’ll be for me?

If I’m only for myself, then what am I?
If not now, then when?
_________________________________

These famous lines, from Ethics of the Fathers, sound mystical; but
they can be very practical at times, applying to many occasions.
Let’s take one: the idea that some people are special when it
comes to practicing good health. They just can’t do it by themselves!
They need a doctor, a guru, a nutritionist, or a personal trainer: some-
one to give them a test, a push, a schedule, or a hit over the head.
The problem isn’t that they can’t do it by themselves (they can!);
it’s that they never get started.
There’s nothing wrong with someone standing within sight of
first base to tell you whether to run or stay after you’ve hit the ball.
Many health club subscribers damage their bodies because no one
shows them how to use the equipment safely.
The real problem is failing to begin because there’s no one stand-
ing in your corner. Someone must begin to change your character,

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and that someone can only be you—regardless of who else helps.
Changing characters is an acting problem, not a sign of moral
strength. Movie stars are notorious for believing they can’t give a
good performance unless a good director coaches them. What’s
“moral” about that? The truth is that some of these beautiful and in-
secure actors just aren’t very bright. However, at some point, all expe-
rienced and dependable stage actors must declare their independence
from a coach. They need to figure out what their characters want to
do, realize what they as actors have to do, and then just do it.
You can do it too!
We’re all much stronger than we realize. When you read tales of
heroism, you wonder how folks can rush into battle, pull kids out of
fires, or risk drowning to save a grandmother. However, when you
talk to these people they seem like you and me. They don’t think they
did anything special. They only did what they had to do. What made
them heroes was having no choice but to act alone—in the presence of
witnesses, perhaps; but without a helping hand.
Why accept weakness in yourself? Believe me, you can rise to any
occasion! However, if you don’t believe you can, your weakness will
become self-fulfilling. If you slack off from the git-go, it’s probably
just your habit. Nevertheless, if you really look at your life, you’ll find
endless examples of courage and persistence.
Just getting up every morning requires a profoundly moving faith
in the future. Pat yourself on the back for it! If you can put up with
life’s tribulations you can do anything you want—and without a film
director to coach you.
This little pep talk isn’t directed at the world in general. It’s
meant specifically for you. I’m convinced you’re just like me about
this subject. I may have tried a little longer than you have, and failed
more often—because I’m probably older than you are. Nevertheless, I
found success just as fulfilling and pleasurable as I know you will.
See how I believe in you! However, what difference does it make
what I think? Why should anyone believe in you if you don’t believe
in yourself? Only when a coach knows what you can do for yourself
will that coach bother to take you on. Why would anyone bother to
help you if they think you’re going to fail? It’s like a bank loan. If you
really need one, you don’t qualify.
Part of the technique of making difficult changes—that is, adopt-
ing behavior not typical of your character—is that you have to break
down the problem into a certain “performance sequence.”
Life resembles a play script in that sense. Just as an actor has to
“put on” a new character, you must adopt a scripted sequence when-
ever you have to do something not “in character” with you.
Someone may have written down a script for you, but you still
have to memorize what comes first and what comes second each time
(even if your rule is simply “first things first”). The failure to under-
stand this principle is the primary reason why people think they can’t
achieve. They don’t know how to create a script, and so they don’t
know where to begin. Therefore, they look for a coach, director, or

120
personal trainer to start them off each time. Obviously any movie di-
rector who reads or writes a script can figure out a sequence! So can
any actor. So can you. However, if you need a coach to hold your
hand forever, you’re working with the wrong coach.
One of the secrets of character change is to realize that, just like
any movie actor, you’re performing actions for other people. That reali-
zation is the first element in your sequence: to realize that other peo-
ple will witness the actions you perform. Therein lies an important
meaning to the words: “If I’m only for myself, then what am I?”
You’re not a character unless other people know how to define your
character from the actions you perform in front of them.
One of the values of a personal trainer is to be an audience that
pays attention to you, thereby encouraging you to change each time.
However, an audience can consist of mere strangers on the street (lit-
erally) before whom you practice and perform. (You should take ad-
vantage of this idea at least once a day!) For example, if you’re a jog-
ger, people are going to see you jog. Imagining those people paying
attention to you can help sustain your jogging regimen—even though
they’re probably ignoring you, just as actors use (and need) audiences
to watch them perform.
Finally, there’s an “eternal present” to the problem of changing
your behavior. Whether or not a personal coach or the world outside
is present, if you don’t make the change now, you never will.
All life takes place in the now. The future will never arrive, and
the past is inaccessible.
Therefore, if not now, then when?

—February 1998

Fit to Play
Reprinted from THE TIMES (of London)
SATURDAY MARCH 10 2001

Acting the part of a thinner person changes your life

BY VICTORIA MCKEE

Roy Scheider is promoting a

fitness regime based on the
Stanislavski Method

WHAT if you could wake up one morning and no longer have a

desire for a cigarette, or a chocolate bar, or any of the other vices that
you know are destroying your health, figure or joie de vivre? Sound
too good to be true? Well, the American actor Roy Scheider believes
that you can, simply by following a method which actors use to pre-
pare for their roles. It’s a question of Acting Well, the name of the

121
new programme Scheider believes could be a breakthrough in the
field of health and fitness.
Think of the willpower it must have taken for Tom Hanks to slim
down for his recent role in Cast Away, or for Demi Moore to pile on
the muscle and resculpt her body to become GI Jane, so physically dif-
ferent from the stripper she had just played in Striptease. Well, Schei-
der claims that we all can accomplish such phenomenal feats with our
bodies if we mentally prepare for them in the way that actors do.
The key lies in starting to think like an actor preparing for a part
using what has come to be known as the Stanislavski Method, after
Konstantin Stanislavski, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, who
brought it to the West.
Scheider claims to have used the actor’s technique to dramatically
improve his fitness since his teenage years. “I was a fat child,” he ad-
mits. “I weighed 196 pounds when I was 14. I had to do a lot of work
recreating myself. I exercised every day in order to become an actor.
To motivate myself to do this, I created a thin character in my mind, a
Roy Scheider who was a slim, athletic person who could move well,
and I therefore did what that person would do. I became thin and fit,
not because it was my goal, but because it happened in the process.”
Ten years ago, shortly before the birth of his son, Christopher,
Scheider, now a fit 68, realised he had been smoking for too long.
“I’d been smoking heavily all my life, but I decided it was time to
redefine my character for myself into what I guess you would call a
father figure,” he says. “I had just been told by Brenda (Siemer, his
wife) that we were going to have a baby and I realised that I would be
a father for the rest of my life.
“I felt that a father should set a better example for his child than
the kind of character I played in All That Jazz, who smoked non-stop
and died of a heart attack. So I created a new character for myself
who didn’t smoke and literally gave up smoking overnight. I thought,
‘What if today I say that Roy Scheider is not a smoker’ and convinced
myself that the character Roy Scheider was too smart to be a smoker. I
told myself, ‘He wouldn’t be that dumb’ and it worked.”
Scheider, who will be at the Cannes Film Festival in May, promot-
ing his latest film, The Good War, jokes about being the “poster boy”
for the programme he has put into practice in his own personal life
with such dramatic effect. He is happy to act as a motivator and
hopes to involve interested friends, such as Helen Hunt and Gwyneth
Paltrow, he says, in promoting it too.
He is working with teachers at the Stella Adler School, in New
York, which has long taught the technique to actors, including Schei-
der himself, to bring this method to the masses. Yet the work in this
area is being pioneered with cardiologists in St Petersburg, Russia.
Scheider himself went to Russia and saw at first hand how bad the
problems of heart disease are there, with the average life expectancy
of men only 59.
“Doctors say they just can’t get across messages about eating
healthily and exercising,” he says. “Changing bad habits would go a

122
long way towards preventing the huge problem there.”
An American cardiologist, Dr Ronald Masden, is working on a
clinical trial of the Acting Well programme for Russia, where the in-
tention is to provide it free through television and the Internet, while
his colleague Dr Alexander Shaknovich is overseeing a clinical trial of
the programme in New York.
“The major problem for doctors in this field is how to get people
to exercise, eat right, and take necessary medications consistently,” Dr
Shaknovich says. “Acting Well could be the magic bullet that doctors
can prescribe for effective behaviour modification.”
Since Acting Well will be marketed as a scientific programme, it is
being put through trials to prove its efficacy, although as with any
mind-over-matter programme, it is always difficult to prove such
things conclusively. A documentary is being recorded for American
television chronicling the experiences of candidates using a variety of
weight-loss programmes — and to compare the success of Acting
Well with the success rates achieved by other methods, such as
WeightWatchers.
“To date, all candidates who have used the programme for
weight loss and maintenance have reported 100 per cent efficacy,”
Scheider says. “However, there may be a several-month ‘rehearsal’
period before a candidate can ‘perform’ in life as a thin person.”
Other benefits envisaged for the Acting Well programme are that
it could be effective in stopping all kinds of substance abuse. “People
can use it not just to conquer addictions but phobias and personality
problems, such as shyness and uneasiness in crowds — or just to
build self-esteem,” Scheider says. “You can start to act the part of
someone who deserves a raise, who is confident and outgoing.”
The Acting Well programme — which should be available in
book and video form later this year, as well as through various acting
schools and fitness centres and by telephone and Internet coaching
sessions — involves about 30 minutes of morning preparation, using
motivating psychological exercises such as those actors use.
“You keep a journal of your feelings and progress and when you
start to really feel the role and actually begin to like the part because it
is giving you benefits. There are different ways of getting there, and I
always feel it doesn’t matter if you work from the outside in or the in-
side out,” Scheider says.
“But you have to keep it up. I know that even today, at my age,
sometimes when I’m undressed and alone I can look in the mirror
and see the fat 14-year-old boy I once was. That’s one of the things
that keeps me in my daily regimen of exercises. I don’t want to be that
character any more.”

Copyright © 2001 by Victoria McKee

as published by Times Newspapers Ltd.
in The [London]Times, March 10, 2001

123
 The Placebo Effect
and Our Compliance Program
Dear Dr. Masden:

I’ve been thinking about the placebo effect in risk reduction

methods and wondering if we should include information on that dif-
ficult subject in our proposals.
For one thing, you mentioned that although specific risk factors
are cumulative (the more exercise the better), multiple factors are
geometric. To test for the placebo effect as it relates to multiplying
risk factors in an overall program seems to me to be highly unlikely,
as it would be prohibitively expensive. Just as the multiple risk results
are geometric, so the testing of several factors that could influence the
placebo effect would be geometrically determined, possibly four risk
factors to the fourth power, five to the fifth, etc.
Following are my thoughts and references to materials I’ve gath-
ered lately about this subject.
It would appear that modern medicine is sufficiently sophisti-
cated to discount the placebo effect on heart disease treatment statis-
tics. However, we may be deluded in thinking so.
For centuries, Western medicine consisted of almost nothing but
the placebo effect. (Talbot)
In 1955, Beecher published “The Powerful Placebo,” a seminal re-
port of twenty-six studies, which was undoubtedly chiefly responsi-
ble for the double-blind study design being adopted as the universal
standard. Beecher’s calculations showed that at least 32.5 percent of
any treated group would respond to a placebo effect. (Beecher)
Subsequent studies have shown much higher figures. For exam-
ple, some studies show improvement after placebo treatment for cer-
tain heart ailments closer to 50 or 60 percent of subjects, sometimes
even more. In addition, the authors of “The Power of Nonspecific Ef-
fects in Healing” analyzed data for popular medical treatments that
had been abandoned as ineffective. They found, for example, that
“good” or “excellent” outcomes resulted in 69.8 percent of almost
seven thousand cases studied. (Dodes)
A recent analysis presented at an American Psychological Asso-
ciation convention showed that of 39 studies of 3,252 depressed pa-
tients, only 27 percent of the response showed a true pharmacological
effect, and 50 percent of the drug effect was due to the placebo re-
sponse. (Self Help Magazine)
In comparisons of new drugs to relieve angina pectoris, relief
with placebo commonly exceeds 50%, a figure that presents a signifi-
cant challenge to demonstrate the effectiveness of any active test
drug. (Krentzman)
Evidence for placebo effectiveness isn’t just associated with how

124
patients claim to feel. For example, 52 percent of colitis patients
treated with placebo in 11 different trials reported feeling better; and
50 percent of inflamed intestines actually looked better when assessed
with a sigmoidoscope. (Talbot)
In 1960, Leonard Cobb tested a then popular procedure for an-
gina called “internal mammary ligation,” in which doctors made
small incisions in the chest and tied knots in two arteries to try to in-
crease blood flow to the heart. 90 percent of patients reported that it
helped. However, when Cobb compared it with placebo surgery, the
sham operations proved just as successful. The procedure was aban-
doned. (Talbot)
These data seem especially relevant to our risk reduction project,
which is generally dependent on findings about medications and
treatments whose affects on risk reduction (except for smoking cessa-
tion) rarely rise above 30%.
Compare that figure with the 35 to 75 percent of patients who
benefit from taking dummy pills in studies of new drugs. (Talbot)
For example, last summer, Peptide Therapeutics revealed that its
new allergy vaccine was only as effective as a placebo. During trials,
75 percent had improved. However, the control group data also
showed 75 percent improved after taking inert tablets. (Talbot)
Merck abandoned a new antidepressant for the same reason. In
addition, Genentech abandoned a highly touted, genetically engi-
neered heart drug called “VEGF” after it discovered that a placebo ac-
tually performed better than the drug! Two months after treatment,
patients who had gotten low doses of VEGF could walk 26 seconds
longer on a treadmill; those who had gotten high doses could walk 32
seconds longer; and those who had gotten a placebo could walk 42
seconds longer. (Talbot)
Besides these alarming considerations concerning placebos, other
problems exist that may skew data on which our treatments may de-
pend, such as:
• Spontaneous remission (some illnesses just get bet-
ter).
• Regression to the mean (a certain percentage of pa-
tients will get better no matter what, and many ill-
nesses wax and wane).
• How long various treatments last (many studies end
after only 8 or 12 weeks, and placebo effects may
flag sooner than “real” ones).
• Physicians treat so many illnesses aggressively that
their natural history (what would happen if nothing
were done) is often unknown.

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 • Finally, very few studies compare a placebo group
with a group receiving no treatment at all. The rea-
son is that such a study would test mainly the pla-
cebo, and it’s the active drug most researchers care
about. In oncology, for example, placebos are almost
never used, for oncologists presume that in cancer
the placebo effect is ineffective, and need not be
considered in clinical trials. (Zajicek)

The question is: How much can we trust the idea that treating
heart disease aggressively with drugs is effective? Given the above
data, plus the low rate of effectiveness of risk reduction through
drugs (less than 1/3), may we not conclude that the effectiveness of
all drug treatment for heart disease may be no greater than the pla-
cebo effect—especially for people with multiple risks?
My belief is that even if the compliance program we are design-
ing derives its effect entirely from the placebo effect, the net gain to
cardiovascular patients will still be much greater than if patients treat
their problems exclusively through medications.
That is, if someone gets better because their body heals itself
through mysterious psychological processes, self-hypnosis, prayer, a
personal trainer’s charisma, simple good luck, or what have you, it
still gets better—and that’s the result everyone wants; whereas, if one
treats hypertension exclusively with beta blockers, or stress with Pro-
zac, or hyperlipidemia with statins, instead of through more “natu-
ral” therapy (mainly exercise, which can affect all three conditions at
once)—whether the effects of the drugs are what the pharmacologists
say they are or not, little ultimate good will be done. If the patients
don’t die uncomfortable deaths because their cholesterol is too high,
the same patients will likely succumb to high blood pressure or dan-
gerous stress levels.
Therefore, people who go on a program like Acting Well can ex-
pect to do at least as well as people who medicate their cardiovascular
problems exclusively, and probably much better, at a much lower
cost—in fact, virtually for nothing!
—April 2000

_________________________________

REFERENCES

H. K. Beecher, compiled from several sources. The original article ap-

peared in JADA.

Robert Todd Carroll, quoting Dr. Walter A. Brown, Brown University,

http://skepdic.com/placebo.html

John E. Dodes, “The Mysterious Placebo,”

http://www.csicop.org/si/9701/placebo.html

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B. Krentzman,
http://www.loop.com/~bkrentzman/meds/placebo.html

Margaret Talbot, “The Placebo Prescription,” New York Times Maga-

zine, 1/9/2000,
www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000109mag-
talbot7.html

Self Help Magazine: “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo,”

http://www.shpm.com/articles/depress/antidprs.html

Gershom Zajicek,
http://www.md.huji.ac.il/special/cancer/19952.html

How to Stop Smoking

It happens quite often that heroin addicts who renounce drugs,
sometimes years earlier, one day find themselves among folks using
heroin and suddenly realize they’re shooting up!
What are they doing? “What happened?” they ask themselves.
It’s as if nothing changed, as if it didn’t matter that they’re throw-
ing years of hard-won rehabilitation down the toilet.
What happened is that they’ve “reverted to character”: to who
and what they were before their rehabilitation.
When they find themselves in the old environment, where every
clue leads to the same conclusion, they resume old habits as if they’d
left off yesterday.
Similarly, in the Acting Well videotape, The Magic Bullet, Hyehwa
(pronounced HAY-wa), describing how strongly her old environment
triggers smoking behavior, challenges the theory that everyone has a
sensible “true self” (or “spirit” or “soul”) underneath it all to revert to
in a pinch.
On the contrary, our characters are summations of our habitual
behavior. They have little to do with an occasional noble, healthy,
thoughtful, selfless, or desirable “out-of-character” choice.
In other words, we’re not who we wish we were, or think we
ought to be. We’re who we’ve always been, moment to moment, be-
having exactly as we’re accustomed to doing.
Thus, it’s unthinkable that a coward will suddenly become a hero
in battle. Rather, the unfortunate fact is that, when push comes to
shove, every human being is a coward. Our “instincts” for self-
preservation are too strong. Therefore, every army has to train its sol-
diers in such a way that certain actions and physical skills (such as
following orders, or performing “by the numbers”) take over auto-
matically in a battle crisis.
That’s why heroes almost never acknowledge their heroism.
Heroism often surprises them, and they’ll typically say, “It didn’t
seem so special at the time. I just did my job.”
In other words, a typical hero’s training was such that, when

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push did come to shove, the hero knew exactly what to do. No alter-
nate choice (such as dropping a rifle and running) had ever been
practiced. Only the proper course of action (such as shooting back)
was repeated and repeated, and was therefore doable.
In The Magic Bullet, Hyehwa says, “When I’m with my family,
whether, regardless, it’s for ten days, a week, three days, I don’t
smoke. I don’t go for ride, I don’t go for walk, try to sneak, because
my mother, she’s got nose of a hunting dog. You know, she can smell
in my hair, and she’ll say, ‘Oh, you’ve been smoking!’ It’s just not
worth smoking around my family, so I don’t.... People are, like, ‘Well,
if you can go for that long a period without cigarette, then you can
quit.’ And I can’t, because...the minute I land in New York City; the
minute I’m in an environment where I am allowed, I have to have a
cigarette.”
Hyehwa resumes her smoking habit when she leaves her family
for two reasons: (1) she doesn’t feel the need to quit—which is her
prerogative; and (2) the force of her habit, and her enjoyment of it, is
stronger than her need to follow other people’s “good advice.”
What’s interesting is that when she’s with her family she seems to
have no problem overcoming a compulsion to “sneak.” In other
words, her “family character” (meaning her habitual behavior in the
presence of her family) is so strongly established that she overcomes
what might otherwise be an incredibly strong need to smoke.
This cultural phenomenon obviously helped make it part of her
character not to be “a person who smokes during the day.”
“I found myself, I don’t know, like a year or so ago, that smoking
a little too much, and I decided, I don’t smoke during the day. So I
don’t smoke during the day. And maybe that’s another role playing,
I’m not a person who smokes during the day.”
Korean families, like most Asian families, are noted for their
strong bonds. If Hyehwa were born and raised in America in recent
years, it’s unlikely she’d be so respectful of her mother’s opinion!
Since Hyehwa seems to have no problem smoking some of the
time and refraining from smoking at other times (not an uncommon
situation), it seems likely that she could stop altogether if she really
wanted to. The trick to it would be to create a simple habitual action
(such as looking at her mother if it were possible to do at any time)
that would automatically turn on a “no smoking” period in which she
wouldn’t only not smoke, but not even think about it.
One Russian director created an ingenious activity in order to get
a certain actor to express his character’s violent desire to leave his
provincial surroundings. The director suspended a swing onstage.
The swing hung throughout the play with no purpose for being there
until the moment the actor’s partner sat down in it and started swing-
ing. The actor stood behind her and pushed her. He spoke his lines
with every push. They went something like, “I want to go to London!
(Push.) I want to go to Paris! (Push.) I want to go to Berlin (Push.)...!”
After the mention of each city, the actor’s partner swung higher
and higher.

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 Given this brilliant direction, there was no way that the actor
could fail to express convincingly his frustrated desire to escape pro-
vincial boredom.
If Hyehwa wanted to set up the right physical tasks for herself
that would divert her desire to smoke whenever she found herself in
“in an environment where I am allowed,” she would soon end her
smoking habit.
Similarly, if you “direct” yourself to perform certain physical
tasks (the simpler the better) as you begin your Morning Preparation
(for example by recalling your World Walk from the night before, and
actually “walking” in your chair), you’ll find it difficult not to think
the right thoughts that lead your Steps & Landings to their ultimate
conclusion, where you write an essay you never wanted to or thought
you could.
If you don’t follow this simple direction (or some equally effective
one for you), your mind will wander off the point and quickly rein-
force your old idea that you simply cannot write!
Changing strongly established habits invariably depends on es-
tablishing new and simple physical habits to replace undesirable be-
havior. Some retiring smokers suck on candy. Others snack (which
isn’t such a great idea) or find similar rewarding activities with which
to occupy themselves.
Whatever method someone uses to stop smoking, you can be sure
it won’t be psychological, intellectual, spiritual, moral, courageous, or
“real self” thoughts that do the trick! It must involve the simplest sen-
sual and motor activities imaginable to work.
In other words, it’s usually a simple habit—not moral courage—
that makes a hero brave.

The Benefits of Acting Well

Acting Well will help you understand your consciousness—a
subject that baffles most scientists—through metaphors, not scientific
experiments and proofs—and thereby extend your analytical powers
and free you from the tyrannies of doctors, politicians, healers, teach-
ers, writers, and scientists who enjoy playing God.
Acting Well will be your personal trainer, your physical thera-
pist, your psychoanalyst, your private nutritionist, and your taskmas-
ter who pushes you to ever-higher levels of endurance. You’ll de-
velop skills you didn’t know you had, and polish and prepare them
for combat against your stronger demons until daily victory estab-
lishes the hero you can be—in the eyes of the world.
Acting Well will lead you on a journey through the community,
every day for the rest of your life, to sense human realities you never
tasted. Those sensual realities are the poetry that translates and unites
you with the people and the sounds and inner visions of your neigh-
bors’ works; even to those poor people who beg or are too old or
young or idiosyncratic to become brothers and sisters who interest

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you. Acting Well will command you to evangelize.
Like all good evangelists, you’ll want to share your new discover-
ies with friends, lovers, and children; but you can share them only
with those who recognize and declare, as do recovering alcoholics,
their humanity and need to serve, receive, and lend support.
Although Acting Well may tempt you to become an evangelist, it
requires no declaration of faith—only keener observations than
you’re used to, and more cutting analyses than you thought neces-
sary. Yet, the religious fervor Acting Well inspires will persist life-
long. It will be a fervor that is worthy of you because it’s based not on
heavenly faith but on stone reality. Thus Acting Well will convert
your prayers of supplication into laboratory notes in which you par-
ticipate in wide-ranging, non-randomized experiments, use the Inter-
net both for outreach and for in-reach, and compose your own Book
of Hours.
Acting Well will stop your building chapels in the air, that float
unbridled with the spirits; but will tether your thinking to the con-
crete sounds of city and nature—off the clouded cliffs of heaven to the
humbler, stream-washed pebbles of reality that stop your throat from
humming mindless ditties, putting an end to the Nobel, Tony, Emmy,
Grammy, Oscar, and all gold-watch acceptance speeches—that
mainly charm the bathroom mirror.
If you follow directions in detail, you’ll lose weight—if that’s
what you need to do. It will come off automatically in a reasonably
short time and you won’t even think about it. You’ll notice, one day,
you need new belt holes, or you’d better see the alterations person at
the cleaners.
You’ll probably eat more than you’re used to in order to get all
the nutrients you need so that you won’t have to swallow food sup-
plements every day. You’ll enjoy purchasing, preparing, and eating
food more than you ever have; and you won’t feel guilty about that
subject ever again! You’ll never have to experience hunger, and what-
ever cravings you used to have will disappear. You’ll never have to
suffer again from food-related acid indigestion.
Your body will become the only food expert you’ll depend on.
You’ll learn to recognize what its unique and subtle requests, com-
plaints, and messages are telling you; and you’ll choose the foods it
wants you to have, in the proper quantities. It will reward you with
simple, satisfying pleasures.
You’ll feel stronger and physically better off than you ever felt be-
fore—except, if you were an athlete in school or in the armed forces
during basic training, you’ll remember and compare what it felt like
in those halcyon days.
If you’re suffering from “middle-age syndrome,” with symptoms
like rising blood pressure and falling libido, then Acting Well will of-
fer you the most elegant restoratives. They won’t come in pill form,
however. In fact, your doctor may suggest that you throw your pills
away.
Your physical endurance will shock you. If you like fast dancing

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you’ll marvel how long you can stay on the floor without getting
winded or tired. If you run, you’ll be amazed how much farther you
have to go before you hit the “wall.” Moreover, if you bike you’ll beat
everyone except professionals up the steepest hills.
Your energy will never flag. No inconvenient breaks and naps
will leach valuable time from your schedule.
However, old you are you’ll feel beautiful. Your skin will radiate
a glow so that people will tell you that you’re looking better than
ever. Maybe for the first time in your life you’ll like what you see in
the mirror (although you may not like your face in snapshots because
simple cameras don’t capture the radiance). Whatever the objective
truth is, you’ll walk amongst people feeling proud of how you look.
You’ll start dressing better and wearing finer clothes in more styl-
ish fashion, getting even more compliments on your appearance. If
you engage in weekend sports you’ll stop feeling “cool” by pretend-
ing you’re a professional competitor for whom it’s necessary to wear
expensive costumes and purchase extravagant equipment.
You’ll be relaxed, and you’ll sleep without problems. Your body
will let you know the exact number of hours it wants you to rest—
sometimes six, sometimes eight. You’ll rise every morning eager to
meet the day.
You’ll wonder what made you stop worrying. Your problems and
prospects won’t change that much; but if they start to get you down
you’ll spring back after a night’s sleep, eager to meet new challenges
and solve the old ones.
If something stresses you too much you’ll know what to do; but
you’ll practice relaxation remedies only when you have to—not twice
a day, and rarely even once. Getting rid of headaches will be simpler,
too.
To summon up the full powers of your consciousness, you’ll need
nothing more than the sound of a taxi-horn or the rumble of an air-
conditioner. The simple snap of a light socket will do it, as will the
straining of a truck transmission, the rustle of a bending tree, the coo-
ing of a lost bird, the delicious scratching of an itch, the strain of the
neck, or the constant fear concealed behind the draperies of your solar
plexus. Acting Well, like visiting the Wizard of Oz, will tear away the
curtain to reveal the mechanics of your psyche. Thus Acting Well can
disillusion you, but can also make you wiser for the backward trip to
Kansas.
Acting Well will teach you to love America because it was the
first country to guarantee the freedom to pursue happiness. Thus Act-
ing Well will provide your own personal Declaration of Independ-
ence from the protective custody of your lethargic brain and anyone
that would enslave it.

The Forest and the Trees

If neuroscientists weren’t scientists, they wouldn’t focus so exclu-

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sively on what they can see, feel, and measure. If they weren’t so ma-
terialistic, they wouldn’t fail, so often, to ignore the nature of the for-
est (that is, “content” or “thought”) for the trees (neurons, dendrites,
and axons).
An analogous situation would be if communication scientists
were trying to explain how a telephone system works. No doubt,
their science would require them to concentrate only on the material
aspects of the network (which, in many ways, constitute a reasonable
approximation of the human brain!). These scientists would undoubt-
edly ignore all conversations (or “content”) going on over the net-
work at the time of their study in order to focus on the telephone lines
and cables that connect the instruments. Scientifically speaking (they
would claim), telephone conversations (for which all telephone sys-
tems were built since Day One!) are as “irrelevant” to how the con-
nections are made as God is to a scientific explanation of evolution.
In an analogous way, neuroscientists ignore the “thinking” proc-
ess as being too “ethereal,” too will-o’-the-wisp to capture and study;
too subjective, too “always-different,” and therefore, too “unscien-
tific” to bother with.
Because of their insistence on “objectivity,” neuroscientists have
created a picture of the brain that provides the precise locations of
various processes, but no overall convincing explanation as to what
actually happens when human beings start to think.
Thus, we know, more or less, where tones are heard, where
stripes are recognized, and where words and sentences are analyzed;
but as to what “music” is, or what “words” mean, such information is
considered irrelevant—except to the thinker, who is never a scientist.
To the thinker, of course, the location of a thought is completely un-
knowable (even accurate pictures and diagrams could never be veri-
fied subjectively) and therefore completely uninteresting.
As a result, if Susie and Amy, who live in separate apartments in
the same building, are talking over the intercom system, they don’t
care about the fact that their telephone lines both go down to the
basement in order to hook up to each other through an exchange sys-
tem. They could as easily string a wire between their respective
apartments and create their own network—if the building allowed it,
and if they talked often enough to warrant it. Such a possibility, in
fact, is sometimes exercised by the brain itself through the extension
of dendrites.
Suppose we’re listening in to Susie and Amy’s conversation.
What might interest us probably wouldn’t be the sound of their
voices as much as learning about the “dirty deed” that John and Mary
did in the back of John’s SUV last Saturday night!
John and Mary are “referents” in “the world.” If we happen to
know who John and Mary are, then Susie and Amy’s conversation
can clue us into a small scandal—in which case things may start to get
really interesting!
We may only know so many Johns, only two of them may know a
Mary; we may only know so many Marys, and only two of them may

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know a John. However, we may know only one John and one Mary
who know each other. Therefore, by process of elimination, we’ve just
figured out which John and Mary got caught shtoopping in the back
of the SUV last Saturday night!
This process of identifying referents is called “thinking.” Think-
ing is probably what the brain does best. It’s less good at self-analysis.
Thus, knowing about the cabling system that helps the brain think; or
gathering information about the location of “listening posts” (that is,
the telephone instruments) won’t tell us much about anything, much
less about John and Mary!
The point of this analogy is that the brain is a massive system that
is designed only to tell us about the “world outside.” It tells us almost
nothing about itself. (It doesn’t have to.) Neuroscientists who study
the brain have done a poor job so far because they’ve concentrated on
the materials inside the brain instead of the referents—which are the
things “in the world” on which the brain focuses and on which it de-
pends for its thinking. Thus, although neuroscientists claim to be ob-
jective, they tend more often to become obtusely hung up on irrele-
vant, unhelpful, and sometimes even harmful details.
Actors can’t afford to be so self-indulgent. In order to duplicate
the manner in which a character “thinks,” they must rely completely
on what happens moment to moment on the “outside.” For example,
when they commit to doing an “action,” they commit to making a
change in the outside world, not a change within their own brain
(which would be analogous to “going for results”).
In a sense, everything in the brain is designed to “become” some-
thing in the outside world. Thus, if you really want to understand the
brain, the more you understand the outside world, the better you’ll
understand the inner world of the brain—which is more like a reflec-
tive mirror in which you have to “imagine” yourself than a videotape
that creates images at which others may gaze.
Because neuroscientists have learned so much about the brain in
the past few years, they’ve used their knowledge more and more to
try to change the interior of the brain in order to affect personality
and behavior. For example, they’ve used various drugs to treat de-
pression or to help patients lose weight. Such a system is like trying to
enhance or replace telephone instruments in order to affect and im-
prove the connections between them. Ultimately, the system doesn’t
work.
For anyone who wants to change themselves, change their life-
style, or change their body image, the place to make the change is in
the world; not in the brain or body.
When one does Acting Well, one places oneself in the middle of
the world. During Morning Preparation, for example, one listens to the
world and becomes part of it. One avoids all practices that tend to iso-
late one from other human beings (who often make noises that would
otherwise disturb). By focusing on the outer world, one becomes part
of a larger system to which it becomes a joy to conform.
What does it matter whether one takes pills to kill one’s appetite

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(which will only return—often with a vengeance, weeks or months
later) or shoots up heroin in order to feel good—temporarily? Both
processes ignore the world, affect the brain directly, and are impa-
tient, ineffective, and ultimately harmful.
An actor (especially someone Acting Well) develops patience
long enough to let the body and the brain conform to the world’s ex-
pectations.

Tobey Maguire
Several days before a friend of mine and I went to “The Cider
House Rules” in January 2000, I had seen a preview of “Wonder
Boys” showing Michael Douglas acting in three or four scenes with
Tobey Maguire.
Of course Maguire’s name was spelled out, first time I saw the
movie credits; but I remember thinking that there was “no way” I’d
ever remember it! (I had no reason to; and there are always too many
new things to remember when it comes to films!) Then, on the day I
saw “The Cider House Rules,” I watched the same “Wonder Boys”
preview again and realized that my friend and I were going to see the
same actor in the feature film that day.
I had seen a preview of “The Cider House Rules” several times
before at the same theatre; and although I must have seen Maguire’s
name each time, I must have refused to “make note” of it. I generally
don’t memorize these things because I know I’ll fail to recall them af-
ter a while. I hate those kinds of failures! So, why bother?
(I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I had seen Maguire in “This
Boy's Life” seven years previously, “Deconstructing Harry” and “The
Ice Storm” four years after that, and “Pleasantville” last year. But I
don’t remember him at all from most of those films, and only vaguely
from “Pleasantville.”)
During that second viewing of the preview of “Wonder Boys,” I
recognized the actress playing Michael Douglas’s wife as Frances
McDormand. She had “looked familiar,” but I hadn’t been able to
place her. I finally remembered her from “Fargo” and realized how
different she looked under more sophisticated circumstances, espe-
cially not speaking in her “Fargo” Midwestern accent, which was part
of my own Minnesota heritage, but not of hers. Interestingly, after
making “Fargo,” McDormand said the following: “After ‘Blood Sim-
ple,’ everybody thought I was from Texas. After ‘Mississippi Burn-
ing,’ everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. Af-
ter ‘Fargo,’ everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant,
and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform
yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people be-
lieve that you're the character you're trying to be.” In writing this es-
say about Tobey Maguire, I finally have created the “brand name” for
McDormand for myself that’s independent of the roles that have
identified her for other people. Those roles are irrelevant. “She” is

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now “Frances McDormand” and will ever remain so!
By the time I finished seeing “The Cider House Rules” and left
the theater with my friend, I had definitely created a space in my
brain for Tobey Maguire. Yet I still didn’t have a name attached to it!
We talked about the film a bit, and I mentioned “that actor” at which
point my friend said, “You mean Toby McGuire?”
(Obviously, my friend didn’t spell the name “Toby”; but I “re-
ceived” it spelled wrong; and it was a week before I discussed this
very subject with my friend when at last he corrected my spelling!)
It was at the very moment when my friend mentioned the actor’s
name that the “brand name” associated with that actor “clicked in.” I
knew immediately when it happened and what had happened. (It
“felt” a certain way.) Moreover, I knew “for sure” that I would for-
ever after associate the right name with the right actor. I also knew
that this “learning” incident was an important occasion in the devel-
opment of my theories about the brain; and that Maguire’s name
would always be associated with these theories (at least for me).
Note it was the actor’s name, and not the “Cider House Rules”
character’s, that was important and that stayed with me. (I recall right
now that his character’s name was “Homer Wells” in the story; but I
remembered it through a process of ratiocination, connecting one
memory with another, not a process that involved neurogenesis. I feel
I’ll probably forget this fact after a while.) Therefore, it wasn’t the ar-
tistic product that was “teaching” me something about the actor; it
was the marketing of the actor (via the film and its promotion) that
taught me the actor’s name.
I believe that while I was watching the film, a “learning process”
was taking place in which one of the “address slots” that filled was a
slot for “Toby McGuire.” The “clicking in” was a matter of some si-
multaneous brain column connections (visual, aural, linguistic, etc.).
From that moment on, among other things, I could “see” the name (in
my “mind’s eye”) and hear it simultaneously. It wasn’t so much the
actor’s face I remembered as it was the “brand name.” Then, when
the spelling correction came, it was a simple matter to substitute “To-
bey Maguire” for “Toby McGuire” (which I’ve done not just by re-
peating the sounds but by typing this essay, so that the correctly
spelled name is in my fingers as well as in my head).
From now on, although I may not always be able to recall the ac-
tor’s name when I see his face, I’ll never fail to “see” his face in my
“mind’s eye” when I hear his name pronounced; or fail to recognize
the correct spelling of his name when I see it spelled with the extra
“e” (although I may not recognize it misspelled if I see it). The fact
that these memories seem to go in a certain direction, but not neces-
sarily (or, perhaps, ever!) in the opposite direction, confirms the con-
cept that neural column combinations create a sequence of connec-
tions that proceeds only in one direction.
As I can’t recite a poem backwards without extraordinary effort, I
can’t necessarily recall Tobey Maguire’s name when I see his picture;
but I can’t fail to “see” his picture in my “mind’s eye” when I hear or

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read his name. These facts reveal the direction of the sequence of To-
bey Maguire’s particular neural column combination.
I learned Tobey Maguire’s name after I assigned the neural col-
umn combination that corresponded to his face (and awkward teen-
age manner). I suspect that because the father of Michael Douglas was
so famous, my neural column combination for Michael Douglas trav-
els swiftly in the opposite direction from Maguire’s. If I see his face, I
immediately think “Son of Kirk Douglas!” Unfortunately for him, he
attaches to my neural combination for his father. Therefore, for me,
no matter how old he gets, Michael Douglas will always be some-
body’s kid.

Wanna Buy a Cheap Exercise Bicycle?

My friend Stanley will definitely eat himself to death!
He’s a millionaire who loves all the wrong things: too much but-
ter, too much fat, and sweet desserts despite serious diabetes in his
family.
(“Don’t worry about it! It usually skips a generation,” so he
claims.)
At the end of a meal, when you take away his plate, it leaves be-
hind a round shadow of sugar, salt, and crumbs because he’s too vain
to wear his glasses to see what he’s doing.
Bottom Line: he’s 57 years old with a really bad potbelly, and
now he notices how breathless he gets after every flight of stairs.
Finally, his doctor says, “Don’t you realize you’re a prime candi-
date for a heart attack?”
So what does he do? He buys one of those exercise bicycles—the
ones with the single wheel, you know, so they don’t go anywhere? Of
course Stanley has to have the best!—with computer lights and every
bell and whistle. “Over a thousand dollars,” he claims he spent. (He
forgot when he boasted he’d made the deal for eight hundred.)
You can pick up a really cheap exercise bicycle in any major city
just by following the garbage trucks. Pretty soon, you’ll come across
an exercise machine left out on Garbage Day. Someone bought it,
tried it for a week or a couple of weeks—if they used it at all—then
out the door, into history.
Same thing happened to Stanley. At first, he’d brag how disci-
plined he was: “Piece of cake,” he said. “All you do is, you turn on the
TV and you smoke a joint.” (Stanley never reads.) “But it’s hard, too,”
he said. “You really sweat! I feel great!”
Stanley felt great for about three weeks. Then he got mad at the
thing. Results weren’t fast enough. He didn’t like it any more. Didn’t
see the point. He thought he’d spent too much money, but he figured
one of his rich neighbors would pay him to take the exercise bicycle
off his hands.
He figured wrong. It’s a year now and the exercise bicycle’s still
in the bedroom getting in the maid’s way. Stanley’s fatter than ever.

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It’s alarming. It makes you wonder: What went wrong?
What went wrong is the subject of this book.
It’s a book for people like Stanley who are uncertain how to prac-
tice self-help techniques (like diets, meditation, or exercise) that re-
quire willpower.
Unfortunately, when you buy an exercise bicycle or treadmill it
doesn’t come with instructions on how to maintain a life-long enthu-
siasm for an admittedly boring and repetitious task. It doesn’t come
with a personal trainer (or a class or an instructor) to get you over
humps of laziness. And it doesn’t come with a support group to offer
occasional encouragement when you need it. What you usually get is
a single appearance by an enthusiastic salesman.
Selling Stanley an exercise bicycle is like giving a little boy a real
bomb so he can play “war” with his friends. No matter how tacky a
professional machine is made, it’s not for amateurs!
If you’re a professional athlete, and you need aerobic exercise, an
exercise bicycle might make sense, even if you get bored using it.
You’re being paid to be bored, and that’s plenty of motivation.
However, if you’re an amateur, watch out for phony professional-
ism. It’s a chronic problem in America, and it affects how we eat,
play, and take care of ourselves.
For example, good nutrition begins at the supermarket checkout
counter, and probably depends more on what’s not in the shopping
cart than what is. (“If you don’t have it, you can’t eat it!”) A major
reason why Americans tend to overeat is the professionalism of food
preparation. The food industry fosters this bad influence through
marketing, advertising, and packaging. People are encouraged to
stock up on groceries as if they were professional chefs—to buy for
the future for many people, or take advantage of discounts through
food coupons—and therefore buy a greater variety and greater quan-
tities than they normally would of foods they should only eat spar-
ingly (because the foods are so loaded with sugar and fat). Often the
cook winds up consuming the lion’s share of the wasted calories.
Stanley bought his exercise bicycle because he believed it was the
best. It made him feel like a real athlete, like a gladiator, for a couple
of days. It’s sad to think how many millions of men believe they can
purchase equipment that will make them look like the hunky models
who flex their “killer abs and pecs” on television. Vanity motivates
these men to buy something—but not to continue the lifelong, strenu-
ous programs that promise to make them attractive.
The badge of professionalism also seems to motivate many of the
weekend bikers I see in Central Park wearing Lycra pants and spon-
sors’ names on their shirts, and squirting rebottled Evian in their
mouths. (I often beat these “hot dogs” up a hill, even though they’re a
generation younger than I am!) Of course, Stanley, in his solitude,
would never dress up for a one-wheel bike in his bedroom. He tends
to be cheap, and it would cost too much!
For Stanley, the truth was bound to come out: he’s a schlemiel,
not a gladiator. He’s just like the rest of us who aren’t gladiators.

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We’re amateurs at what we do, no matter how expensive the accou-
terments with which we gussy up our lives.
People who think that starting a new diet or exercise regime from
scratch isn’t for amateurs need to rethink their assumptions. Profes-
sionals don’t need new diets or new exercise regimens—they’ve
probably been eating and exercising properly for years! Only ama-
teurs need to begin something new by, first, acknowledging their be-
ginner’s status.
When amateurs imitate professionals (wearing fancy costumes or
trying to use equipment that’s inappropriate for them), they’re usu-
ally bound to fail. Furthermore, when they seek professional help,
they risk being discouraged from too much information that’s unnec-
essary for beginners. However, when “newbies” acknowledge their
amateur status, accept responsibility for their own training, take one
day at a time, realize that reaching professional status (which may
take years) isn’t a necessary goal, they’re much more likely to suc-
ceed.
A journey is more enjoyable for those who take pleasure from
watching the view along the way. It offers much less to those who fall
asleep while fantasizing about the final destination.

—August 1997

The Trip to Narrowsburg

I took two days off from working on this book to attend some
business meetings in a small town in Sullivan County, New York
(right across the narrow Delaware River from Pennsylvania).
Nothing exceptional happened, although I felt I was purposely
packing more memories of the town and the large house where we
stayed (which I still vividly recall) than I normally would have if my
subject weren’t so often “memory.”
In the two-hour bus ride home, I sat on the left side of the packed
vehicle with nothing to do other than rehearse new ways to explain
my brain theories.
I noticed a fellow sitting to my right, about two seats in front of
me, who kept alternating looking out the right window and then the
left. It was a little annoying until I suddenly became aware that his
left profile would make an excellent candidate for this morning’s Clo-
sure. I also tried testing, during my more conscious moments,
whether his profile seemed to be entering my long-term memory, or
whether it would stay in my working memory until it mysteriously
shifted positions overnight. As I type this account the following day, I
can report that I did, in fact, use his profile for this morning’s Closure,
exactly as I predicted I would (and it “worked” fine); and that I can
still conjure up his profile now, thereby producing the same “feeling”
I felt yesterday and this morning. (I can only define that feeling as a
kind of wistful envy of his youth).

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 I know that his profile did, indeed, become a new neural column
combination in my long-term memory at the very moment I noticed
his profile. Thus, I believe that three events occurred simultaneously:
(1) I became conscious of his profile (which “consciousness” consisted
of continual reverberant loopings); (2) I identified preprogrammed
neural columns “pointing” at the referents that composed his profile;
and (3) I activated a new combination of those same preprogrammed
columns located in my long term memory so that that combination
will now forever be identified with that young man’s profile.
(I know I shall never forget that profile—particularly if I ever read
this paragraph again! I believe it will come back to me—as many such
memories come back—whenever it’s called forth, for the rest of my
life—providing I use it every once in a while.)
One new thing I learned was about the nature of the neural col-
umn combinations. Although I keep applying the old prevailing the-
ory of the mind to these newly perceived phenomena, this time I
could better sense the “precision” basis of how a column combination
is selected. It is not (as I know intellectually, but often neglect to keep
in mind) “inscribed” on a tabula rasa. Rather, the process is like the
“lining up” of cross hairs in a viewfinder—except in more than two or
three dimensions. This “lining-up” process “pinpoints” a precise “lo-
cation” (or “zip code”) according to the pre-assigned address that is
identified by the referents making up a retinal image or other incom-
ing data. I could (and still can) “feel” the precise method of the “pin-
pointing” process.
When I casually try to conjure up the column combination, the
image is unclear. However, I can immediately “focus” it, simply by
trying; and the precision pinpointing takes place immediately.
I believe that the original perception and the memory of the per-
ception apply exactly the same precision process to exactly the same
column combination.
As I try to recall the elements of my memory of the young man’s
profile, I can count the following seven (not necessarily in the follow-
ing order):
• He was on the right side of my vision.
• I could see his profile from time to time (but not the
whole time).
• His skin was clear, white, and youthful (and there-
fore “lovable” as opposed to “strange” and “threaten-
ing”).
• The shape of his nose “reminded” me of my father’s
nose.
• The shape of his lips “reminded” me of how I be-
lieve my own profile appears to other people.

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 • His hat “reminded” me of a sailor’s hat (but with an
Australian’s turned-up brim).
• His thin, high eyebrows “reminded” me of my
mother’s penciled-on eyebrows.

I believe these seven “reminders” constitute at least seven col-

umns of a dedicated neural combination somewhere in my outer cor-
tex that now “remembers” this young man’s profile. (I have no idea,
and probably could not recognize, what he would look like full on.)
I also believe that this entirely introspective, subjective, and there-
fore non-scientific experiment proves that there is no such thing as
“working memory” as that concept is currently understood. “Con-
sciousness” is the process of pinpointing—that is, perceiving, recog-
nizing, or remembering—a particular sequence of referents that make
up a neural combination. The purpose of consciousness is to accom-
plish that process. What goes on in “working memory” involves the
reverberant process of consciousness, the objective of which is to
match the proper neural combination to the appropriate external
phenomena.
The other realization I had was how wrong-headed American
customs of preparing and eating food can be. There were five of us
staying in Narrowsburg. The night before last, Andy, who is the edi-
tor of a food magazine (and obviously a fine cook), prepared a pork
roast and a vegetable dish while his wife Lizzy prepared a large dish
of mashed potatoes (about half of which were left over the following
morning, thus becoming my breakfast).
Dinner was delicious; but there was too much of it. There were, as
usual, the extra mounds of food that went with the pork (that is, the
mashed potatoes and the vegetables). Even though there was neither
salad nor dessert, I believe that we all ate too much (I know I did!)—
simply because of the American custom of how we prepare, serve,
and eat food.
It occurred to me how sensible it would be if the five of us were
all Acting Well aficionados! We could have prepared a tasty pasta
dish (or whatever), perhaps sharing new possibilities of compliant
breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and never overeating. It was a rare
opportunity entirely lost!
Andy’s probably in his early 40s. From the appearance of a bit of
extra weight around his tum—which he certainly doesn’t need, unless
I can convert him to the ways of Acting Well, I predict that in ten
years he’ll be unacceptably overweight.
Stay tuned.

The Constancy of the Self

An experiment that you really should do!

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 • Place yourself in front of a mirror.
• Stare straight into the center of one eye (whichever
eye you favor).
• Look at your ear, then return to stare straight into
your eye.
• Look at your nose, then return to stare straight into
your eye.
• Look at your forehead, your eye, your ear, your eye,
your nose, your eye, etc.

While looking away, then coming back to stare into your eye, ask
yourself the following questions:
Is that an eye I see, or an image of an eye? Whose eye? Mine or
the mirror’s? Where is the eye I see: in my brain, in my “mind,” in my
imagination, in the glass, in my face, in the idea of an eye, or in the
idea of a mirror?
Touch the mirror and ask yourself: Which is more real: the eye I
see or the glass I touch? Which is more real: the glass I touch or the
silver behind the glass? Can I see the glass at the same time I see the
eye? Do I know that person? Is that person real? Is that person the
same person as the person looking at that person? Is it a person? Is it
just an image of a person? Do I think I can ever really “see” reality?
Am I disturbed by these questions?
Note that every time you return to look at your eye, it’s as if your
eye never moved. However, you know it moved! If someone else
watched you, they’d see it move. If you watched a videotape of your-
self, you’d see it move. However, when you look in the mirror, you’ll
never, ever see the “looking eye” move! Not the slightest bit!
Your consciousness, or your sense of being aware of yourself, is
like looking at your eye in a mirror. Whenever you “see” or sense it,
it’s there exactly as it was the last time you sensed it. However, when
you “look away” you never see it relax its vigilance, although you
know, rationally, that it has cycled off.
How many times a day do you seriously think about yourself?
How many times a day do you stare at yourself in a mirror? When
you shave or put on makeup? When you brush your teeth? That’s
maybe two or three times a day.
All of us experience only scattered flashes of consciously “looking
in the mirror and seeing our eyes,” and yet we think our conscious-
ness is in a constant state. That “constant” but non-existent state is a
virtual consciousness. It’s assumed to be there, but it isn’t always
there. The illusion of its being there (by virtue of the fact that it
“ought” to be there) is precisely the illusory nature of the constancy of
the conscious self.
When you become conscious of yourself, you’re simply stepping

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into a medium for information to cross. That information may be use-
ful or not; but the medium is just a medium. It may be a mirror or it
may be a form of concentration: a focusing on yourself.
Don’t think, therefore, that if you awaken the “looking eye” of
your brain to gaze into the mirror of self-consciousness that you’re
witnessing an unchangeable thing that’s always there. The constancy
is an illusion. It’s virtual.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson theorized about the rela-
tionship between the mind and the body, and believed that mathe-
matical or mechanical interpretations of the world were not necessar-
ily the most accurate. He showed that you can’t measure the experi-
enced flow of duration (which he called “duré”), nor predict how hu-
man personalities will express themselves as they evolve in that flow.
Most theologians, on the other hand, believe in an immutable soul
that’s always the same. We assume they mean we have a constant,
unvarying personality.
The reason people believe in this constancy of the self is that con-
sciousness fools the “mind’s eye” in the same way the mirror fools the
real eye. Like the eye in the mirror, the “self” never moves. It remains
exactly the same, always staring at us when we look at it as if it had
never moved when we were not looking at it.
Consider how seldom we seriously look into ourselves. When we
do look carefully, what we see is ourselves looking; and that experi-
ence is like looking at our eye in the mirror. What we see seems to be
unvarying. But that unvaryingness, that “duré,” is the same kind of il-
lusion as the apparent stillness of the looking eye.
If your conscious self is constant only as long as you maintain
your concentration, how constant is your “soul”? If you lose custody
of your soul when you’re dead, do you maintain custody of it while
you sleep? Or is the soul a “virtual,” inconstant thing we like to talk
about, as evanescent as the conscious self? Or, if the soul is constant,
what’s it made of? If the soul is made out of “mind” or brain tissue,
then its constancy would be just as virtual—that is to say, evanes-
cent—as that of the conscious self.
There’s no more advantage to looking deep into ourselves than
there is looking at ourselves in a mirror. The experiment is interest-
ing, baffling, and surprising. We have simply stepped into a medium
for information to cross. The information may be useful or not, but
the medium is just a medium. It may be a mirror or it may be a form
of concentration, a focusing on ourselves.
Don’t think, therefore, that if you awaken the “looking eye” of
your brain to gaze into the mirror of self-consciousness that you have
discovered an immutable thing. The immutability is an illusion. Your
personhood is constant only as long as you maintain your gaze.
This realization may be useful in understanding consciousness.
Functional science (when it tries to measure consciousness) video-
tapes, as it were, the gazing eye and sees it move. The neuroscientist
who reports his or her durability of personhood is merely offering
anecdotal evidence, not sufficient to prove anything. But of course

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that scientist’s anecdotal evidence is not wrong simply because it’s
anecdotal. It’s wrong because the eye moves! There is no durable per-
sonhood. There is no constancy of the self.

A Personal History
I’ve been practicing a “self-help” technique (which someone else
named “Acting Well”) for more than 40 years.
That’s a hell of a long time to be practicing the same “self-help”
routine!
Acting Well didn’t start out having anything to do with acting,
health, or losing weight. What happened was that, as a writer, I
couldn’t stand holding a pen in my hand and finding myself with
nothing interesting to write.
At times, ideas would tumble out with no intervention. Those
were the good times. However, whenever I’d intervene or force an is-
sue, a whole project might start to poop out. My “willpower,” it
seems, wasn’t only useless; it could be diabolically destructive!
After 40 years of trial and error, I finally analyzed and learned
how to correct the problem. During the same period, I came to realize
that actors have analogous difficulties. If they’re even slightly willful
during a performance, the audience catches on immediately and re-
fuses to “suspend disbelief.”
Not only that, but people trying to discipline themselves, whether
they’re smokers or overeaters, also lack “willpower.” The minute they
come to the point where it’s a real chore to adhere to a rigorous diet,
they fail.
No one’s immune to this phenomenon! I haven’t met a single thin
person (which I happen to be, thankfully) who claims to be thin be-
cause of “willpower.” I certainly am not!
I finally concluded that “willpower” doesn’t exist.
My conviction about this conclusion was considerably strength-
ened when I read about the seminal work of Benjamin Libet (a neuro-
scientist with whom I’ve subsequently corresponded). By recording,
years ago, the neuronal reactions to various stimuli in the exposed
brains of subjects who were undergoing operations that are no longer
performed, Libet established that the “will” to lift your finger occurs
after your finger “lifts itself.” Apparently, immediately after you lift
your finger, the feeling that you were the cause of lifting your finger
is a mere illusion. More precisely, you make a reasonable assumption
(or rationalization) that you willed your finger to lift. In other words,
if your finger lifted, you must have lifted it. To believe otherwise
would upset most people.
Nevertheless, “willpower” turns out to be an illusion.
What causes your finger to lift is mere habit. In situations that are
similar to the one in which you just lifted your finger, you always
lifted your finger. These “situations” are too complicated for your
conscious brain to keep track of, or to make decisions by; therefore,

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your unconscious brain makes them for you. The process is so simple
that you do it all the time. The fact that you’re not aware of the proc-
ess doesn’t negate its universal application. Any choice you make—
any choice at all—is one you’re bound to make, given the circum-
stances.
(If the human brain had to debate the desirability of this choice or
that before acting, the forerunners of the human race would have
gone extinct a million years ago.)
You may think that every situation is different, and that you have
to make creative choices all the time to which “Libet’s Paradox”
(which is what I call it) don’t apply. Of course, every situation is
unique in some respect or other. However, your brain cleverly breaks
down every situation into enough component parts with which
you’re entirely familiar (at least seven of them, each of which can lead
to seven more, etc.). The parts are “collated,” as it were; and their av-
erage outcome or response is the action you’ll take. It’s entirely a
foregone conclusion. You have no choice! You must do what the
nearly instantaneous calculations of your brain dictate.
_________________________________

Although we’ve all been raised to think we possess “willpower,”

but the idea that you can force yourself to be “strong” in the face of
temptation is as stupid as trying to force yourself to be “strong”
enough to lift a 500-pound weight repeatedly! Unless you’ve prac-
ticed weight lifting for a very long time, you’ll never manage it.
“Willpower” is supposed to be a measure of some kind of moral
“strength”; and strength—whether “moral” or physical—can only be
achieved through practice, not desire. This idea is especially pertinent
for people who want to achieve a particular goal without having to
work for it—for example, to lose weight instantly, without exercise,
and while continuing to eat terrible food they happen to “love”; or for
actors who want to rehearse too few hours for a film or a play; or for
writers who want to “create” between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 12:00
p.m. exactly.
Such rigorous schedules never work.
An actor who wants to react a certain way to an onstage stimulus
can’t “will” the reaction. However, if the actor simply rehearses the
reaction often enough (figuring out why the character would behave
in a way consistent with the play), there won’t be a problem during
the performance. However, if the actor wills the reaction without
preparing properly, the result will be what acting teachers call “indi-
cating” or “going for results”—which an actor must never do.
Amateur actors often don’t understand how much preparation is
required to act a role. That’s why they’re usually terrible. They would
achieve by means of will what can only be achieved through habit.
Such magic never works! Only simple practice will suffice. Neverthe-
less, everybody sometimes foolishly expects that desire alone (if only
it’s “strong” enough!) will substitute for the hard work that serious
practice entails.

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 Therefore, if I prepare myself as “the writer” (through whatever
exercise or preparation I choose—it doesn’t seem to matter which), I
strengthen my creative powers. There’s no need to force the good
ideas to flow. They come on their own simply because my brain is
used to “getting creative” when I prepare it properly.
Thus, for 20 years or so, I’ve never had a case of “writer’s block.”
I practice my little rituals, and the results always come. Those rituals
became the basis of Acting Well. Now other people can perform these
same rituals in order to practice and thereby become a creative artist,
a confirmed non-smoker, a thin person, a brilliant Hamlet, or what-
ever dream they want.

FAQ: How Do I Get Myself to Exercise?

What “They” say:

 Start slowly and progress gradually. If sedentary, incorporate a

few minutes of physical activity into your day, building up
gradually to 30 minutes of additional physical activity.

 Be more physically active throughout your day by taking the

stairs more, parking a little farther away, doing yard work, or
playing actively with the kids.

 Try variety. Vary your walking or jogging routes or participate

in exercise classes to help keep you motivated.

 Include family and friends. Sharing your activities will help you
stay on track.

 Keep a record of progress. A simply diary of your physical ac-

tivity is a well-proven behavioral change strategy.

 Enjoy yourself. Activities that are fun are most likely to be ac-
tivities for life.

 If you are a man over the age of 45 or a woman over age 55

and/or if you have heart disease or two or more cardiac risk
factors such as high blood pressure or cigarette smoking, you
should consult with a physician before starting a program more
vigorous than walking.
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

The problem with these “Tips to Get You Going” (by Kyle J.
McInnis, ScD and James M. Rippe, MD, published in a Time Magazine
“Special Advertising Feature” promoting health products and serv-
ices) is that they fail to address the psychological issues that any per-
son beginning an exercise program for the first time must confront.

145
 Thus, although the techniques proposed above are logical and
sensible, they’re more appropriate for teaching children how to read
or do homework, for example, or some other onerous activity a child
has to “get through.” In other words, they’re instructions from a pup-
petmaster to a puppet. Psychologically, however, what you need to
do is to develop a set of techniques that would be appropriate for a
self-taught high school graduate. It’s a whole different ball game.

(Start slowly)

No. Exercise your body as hard as you comfortably can (which

may be very little at the beginning). As long as you “touch the enve-
lope” but don’t “push the envelope,” you won’t hurt yourself. For
some people, brisk walking may be too fast—at first. Those people
may have to walk slowly at first and slowly build up strength. But
hey—they have years to perfect their sport!
Trust your body to tell you when you’re “touching the envelope.”
It won’t take you long to figure out your limits, even if it takes you
years to extend them.
Avoid doctors and advisors who don’t trust you to judge your
own limits.

(Be more active)

Don’t count walking to the parking lot, climbing a few more

stairs, doing yard work, or playing with the kids as “fitness” activi-
ties. They’re not regular enough, and they rarely let you “touch the
envelope.” Worse, psychologically speaking, you should never let oc-
casional miscellaneous and unscheduled activities (especially ones
that involve other people) lull you into thinking you’re getting fitter.
Quite the contrary! These activities will get harder and harder if you
extend a sedentary lifestyle into your later years—which practically
every American will do. Only a specific fitness activity practiced 30
minutes per day can counterbalance a sedentary lifestyle that will
continue for the rest of your life.
With regular fitness, after a few months or years you’ll begin to
notice that the miscellaneous activities listed above get easier and eas-
ier, even though you’re getting older—not because you’re doing them
often, but because you’re practicing regular fitness exercises in order
to make everything else easier.
In other words, if you’re sedentary now, you’ll continue to be
sedentary for the rest of your life. It’s okay as long as you “touch the
envelope” every day for six minutes out of a 30-minute daily fitness
exercise routine.

(Try variety)

You can’t establish and maintain a regular fitness exercise habit

by varying your activities! Period!

146
 (Include family and friends)

You can’t establish your own personal daily fitness exercise habit
if you have to depend on other people to join you! Period!

(Keep a record of progress)

You should keep a daily Acting Well log, of course; and you
should conscientiously record the start and stop times of your daily
fitness exercise. However, what is the point of recording your “pro-
gress”? What is “progress”? What good will it do to write it down?
You will generally remember that you can now run the same distance
in 26 minutes that used to take you 35. That’s all you need to know.
The truth is, after six months, you may feel you’ve reached the
top of your form. You’ll have no idea how much farther you can keep
on going over the next three years—or the next ten! What’s important
is that you practice a fitness exercise every day, not that you practice
it well at first.
It’s also important that you understand that “recording your pro-
gress” is a puppetmaster’s technique for motivating puppets. You are
not a puppet.

(Enjoy yourself)

The fact is, you can’t begin to enjoy a fitness exercise right away.
It’s like the phenomenon that most husbands and wives can’t really
enjoy each other until they stop equating sexual satisfaction with love.
Looking for “fun activities” is another puppetmaster’s technique.
It gives rise to some spectacularly interesting activities (which sell
quite well, by the way!) that people try for a while and then abandon.
In other words, most of these “fun” activities have no lasting value!
For some people, running—which is far from a “fun activity” at
first!—may become supremely enjoyable after a few years of getting
good at it. Therefore, don’t look to have fun at first. You may rule out
the very activities that are best for you. Make your choices based on
convenience, practicality, and effectiveness.

(Consult a doctor)

Usually, you don’t need medical advice to get started on the right
exercise program. These disclaimers get puppetmasters off the hook.
If you have a heart attack while jogging on Day One, you can’t sue the
puppetmasters if they warned you to consult a doctor and you didn’t.
Always use common sense in these matters.

Monotony
It’s not a bad thing to eat by yourself; nor is it a good thing. How-
ever, it is a good thing to “break bread” with other people and to
make eating a social experience.

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 Similarly with exercise: it’s not a bad thing to exercise alone in
your own home. Nor is it a good thing. However, it is a good thing to
exercise out of doors, or amongst other people in a health club, even if
the other people are strangers.
Why are social things better?
For one thing, fresh air is better for you than the stale air of an
apartment (even if you only get the fresh air while you’re on your
way to the gym).
Another advantage of getting out is that it’s much easier to exer-
cise daily when you have to leave home to do it. For example, the will
to leave your premises concentrates on transitional processes—such
as changing clothes, taking an elevator or stairway, and similar rituals
that are relatively easy to do and that commit you totally to the task
by the time you complete them.
By the time you get to where you begin to exercise strenuously,
you’re completely ready. There’s no need to force you to do it. In
other words, it’s inconceivable that once you reach the gym you’ll
suddenly decide to turn back and not exercise!
It’s during preparation times that exercise’s greatest pleasures
happen. Since your concentration will be totally affected by the exer-
cise task while you’re doing it, you won’t feel the pleasures of doing it
as keenly as you will before or after you exercise.
Your life is like a play; and you should think of your work, your
meals, and your exercise as major parts of your daily scenario, the ob-
ject of which is to “act well.” Costumes are important in every play,
and if you have a special insignia to wear on your sports clothes
when you exercise in public, the pride you feel in identifying yourself
as “acting well” will only enhance your performance.
The other people in “your play” are not the audience but your fel-
low actors. They may be members of your family or strangers on the
street or at the gym.
You don’t perform “for” these people; you perform “with” them,
which means that they rely on you in the same way that you rely on
them to give a consistent performance. If you know what to expect,
your “performance” will run more smoothly than if you’re suspicious
of your fellow players’ motives or troubled by their actions.
Sports etiquette is especially important during fitness exercises
because—although you don’t realize it—you may adversely affect the
performances of other “players.” If you run, skate, or bike faster than
a person in front of you, be sensitive to that person’s feelings if you
have to pass. For example, don’t “prove” how much better you are by
slowing down (or conversing loudly with companions) after you’ve
passed a person three times your age. You may diminish the testos-
terone levels that person has just worked hard to elevate, while
“proving” nothing neither more nor less than that you’re an asshole.
It’s the aim of every fine actor to give consistent performances
every time. This consistency depends on the actor making the same
choices during each performance. During the rehearsal period, the ac-
tor can get better and better at doing each specific choice until the en-

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tire performance is “under control.” Only then, can a performance
rise to the level of art, when the actor is “acting well.”
Similarly, your choice of what you eat every day, and when you
prepare and eat it; and what you do for exercise, should be totally
under your control. You should go through a period of rehearsals,
early on, during which you learn how to prepare your meals and get
skilled at whatever fitness exercise you choose (which should there-
fore be an exercise at which your skills can constantly improve—
obviously, “jogging” isn’t one of the best of them!). Once you’ve mas-
tered the rudiments of your choice, you can then go on to a lifetime
(or at least many years) of performing the same choices and getting
better and better at them until eventually you’re at your peak, doing
the best you can.
As you improve, you’ll begin to notice and feel that you’re part of
a community of people who are making choices in a manner similar
to your own (although the specific choices they make may be differ-
ent from yours).
When you can look at the world in this way, you’ll realize that
your days of ordering or preparing something different for dinner
every night (“so you or your family don’t get bored”) are over. You
may no more eat that way than an actor may decide to do something
different every night on Broadway. The actor’s fellow players would
be furious! Indeed, the play might collapse. For example, Herbert
Berghof used to tell a story about appearing on Broadway with
George C. Scott in The Andersonville Trial. On the opening night, Scott,
who had consistently given almost inaudible, laid-back performances
during rehearsals, suddenly stole the show with an exhibition of out-
rageous histrionics, thereby ruining Berghof’s performance.
If you lived in solitary confinement in a prison, you’d certainly
want to alter as much as you could, from day to day, to fight against
boredom and the psychic damage that can come from extreme isola-
tion. However, if you live in a community, and are sensitive to its
pleasures, you’ll fare better if you create a scenario for yourself that’s
consistent from day to day, from meal to meal, and from exercise to
exercise.
Once you experience this kind of control over your life (avoiding
the advice given to you by self-appointed nutritional “experts” as
much as you would avoid going to the same restaurant night after
night and eating only food from the same menu), you’ll find that
every performance is different and requires creative solutions to un-
anticipated variations—despite the fact that you’re trying to follow a
consistent scenario that other people may attack as monotonous.

Diets and Nutrition

Use of the word “diet” (like “exercise”) should be restricted to
temporary medical and therapeutic cures.

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 The idea of being on a permanent “health food diet” is an oxymo-
ron. If you’re not sick, you don’t need to go on a diet. It would be like
taking antibiotics lifelong. It’s a wrong attitude.
Diets give you psychologically unhealthy feelings about eating
and food. One major problem with diets is that they can make food as
irresistibly attractive as the kind of “evil” that generates guilt.
The whole concept of a diet is that of a temporary punishment.
Rather, you should seek permanent rewards.
Diets are about what not to eat and what not to do—or about what
to substitute for nots. In other words, they’re restrictive. There’s no
positive action involved.
When puppetmasters invent diets, they tend to prepare a Pro-
crustean bed for everyone: how many calories, how many servings of
fruit and vegetables. Food “pyramids.” All standardized.
You won’t die if you fail to pay attention.
Current dietary ideas are based on medieval concepts when peo-
ple ate one meal per day. Therefore, some nutritionists will advise
you to include fruit, vegetables, protein, carbohydrates, etc., at every
meal in order to have three balanced meals per day. They will also
expect you to want to have an appetizer, main course, and dessert for
lunch as well as dinner. Such directions inevitably increase the intake.
You should think in terms of an entire day’s menu. In other
words, plan one meal per day that is divided into three courses:
breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or, better: “Breakfast,” “Lunch 1,” and
“Lunch 2”).
You should eat a variety of foods spaced out over the day that in-
clude the nutrients you believe your body requires.
In order to determine which nutrients your body requires, and
the proper amounts of those nutrients (such as the size of portions)
you may have to experiment over a period of months to notice on
which days you feel your best, and how your menu can bring and
keep you close to your optimal weight.
To get the proper nutrients each day, you may have to eat more
food than your system is used to. Therefore, you may gain weight
you don’t want. The solution is to “touch the envelope” during your
daily fitness exercise, thereby expending enough calories to metabo-
lize the extra food. Thus, your weight should have nothing to do with
the amount of food you eat once you begin “touching the envelope”
daily. You should never be hungry once you get on a regular menu
system and have no reasonable way to satisfy hunger except to go out
of the house and buy more food.
If you wish you were thinner, and your menu (combined with
your daily fitness exercise) makes you gain weight, then remove two
courses from your daily menu. If your menu (combined with daily
exercise) makes you stay at the same weight, but you still want to be
thinner, remove one course from your daily menu. When you have
achieved your optimal weight, restore the missing course(s) to your
menu until you achieve an ideal balance. (This process isn’t difficult!)
You’ll constantly hear new information as to the nutrients the av-

150
erage body is alleged to require. Don’t pay too much attention to this
information. Some of it will change over time. Some of it will simply
be alarmist (most likely to benefit a scientist by justifying a founda-
tion grant) and won’t apply to you. Be skeptical.
Don’t rely on dietary supplements. They should not be necessary
if you plan your menu properly.
Don’t try to balance every meal within itself. For example, you
may wish to eat your vegetables only at lunch and your bread only at
breakfast.
Each day’s menu should be approximately (or exactly) the same
as the next.
Don’t try to divide nutrients over several days (having broccoli
on Mondays, spinach on Tuesdays, etc.). Such schedules give you too
much to remember and are too complicated to fulfill. You’ll also lose
control of your menu that way, and constantly be faced with deci-
sions, variety, counting calories, “exceptions,” “rewards,” too large
portions, bread and butter with meals, etc., all leading inexorably to
lifelong obesity.
Your daily menu should be permanent. However, you may wish
to choose from a selection of two or three dinner entrees during the
week; but those entrees should be part of a permanent repertoire. Any
changes to your menu should evolve over long periods of time.
When you go to the store to stock up on food, provide yourself
only with what you need for your menu for the next few days. Don’t
buy more than you plan to eat. If you buy just enough food to make
reasonable portions, you won’t be tempted to “cheat.” (“If you don’t
buy it, you can’t eat it!”) Thus, achieving your optimum weight be-
gins and ends at the market. Everything you have to do to stay on a
nutritional routine you must do in a store. By the time food hits your
table it’s too late.
Always eat everything on your plate at every meal, and know that
you’ll eat everything on your plate at every meal so that you’re never
tempted to eat overlarge portions. Leftovers signal bad planning.
They should never exist in your kitchen!
Don’t prepare food for guests more than once a week if it gives
you an excuse not to stick to your menu.
When going to a restaurant, people tend to choose what’s pleas-
urable. Therefore, give in to pleasure when you go out to eat. How-
ever, don’t eat out more than once a week (or twice a week once a
month). That way the amount of food you consume “out” will not be
more than 6% of the week’s total. Nothing you do under those cir-
cumstances will harm you.
This system is a foolproof system to achieve your optimum
weight. Diets never work. This system never fails!
Good health is not a disease.

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 Losers
(Proposal for a Television Series)

“Losers” will be a syndicated series of “Reality TV” programs

about weight loss. The programs are designed to be run Monday
through Friday in a particular local or national market.
Although the series will obviously spoof the “Survivor” series, it
will also show the “state of the art” of the weight loss industry, which
is currently under a long-term investigation by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture.
The series will document the six-month-long successes and fail-
ures of two weight loss groups, pitting each against the other, with
the winning group dividing a substantial prize (such as $10,000 dol-
lars per person) between its members.
Each group will be assembled from a heterogeneous group of 4
overweight people so that the weight of the entire group is 700
pounds, and the collective “goal weight” is approximately 500
pounds. At the end of six months, the entire group will be weighed,
and the lowest collective score will win. Each group will be kept in
the dark as to how they’re doing relative to any other group, at least
until the series ends. They may think that there are as many as ten
groups meeting (whereas there will be only two); and at the end of
the series, each member will be paid $10,000, win or lose.
The first group will be a control Weight Watchers group. The sec-
ond group will be as identical to the first as possible, but will undergo
behavior modification training. Both groups will be participating in a
bona fide double blind clinical trial supervised by a recognized group
of medical doctors and scientists. Fairness will require that the series
be shrouded in secrecy until the programs are actually broadcast.
The series’ group dynamics will get most interesting if some
members want to drop out of the competition (thereby ending their
struggle to lose weight). The remaining members of the group will
have the opportunity to argue with each dropout to go back on the
diet.
If a dieter returns to his or her original weight, that person will be
expelled from the group permanently (lest he or she gain more
weight, and ruin the group’s chances even further!). His or her origi-
nal weight will be added to the total from that point on, and his or her
prize money will be forfeited to be divided amongst the remaining
group members. Thus, there will be an interesting “approach-
avoidance conflict” between individuals to keep members dieting or
to encourage them to get out of the group.
The groups will meet on different days of the week in a local tele-
vision station that will videotape the sessions and provide other pro-
duction and editing facilities.
Several location interviews will be arranged with other groups,

152
and with various experts in the field of motivation, particularly sev-
eral neuroscientists in California.
In addition to following the trials and tribulations of various
characters, their struggles with weight, and their conflicts with each
other trying to keep each other’s weight down (so as to be able to
share the “big prize”), each program will cover one or more special
aspects of weight loss.
The following is a tentative list of subjects that could be covered:
• SUPPORT GROUPS (Weight Watchers, etc., espe-
cially leadership and group dynamics; “pep talks”;
charismatic leaders, “weigh in for Jesus”; computer-
ized support groups over the Internet)
• FOOD THEORIES AND SYSTEMS (Conflicts be-
tween various diets, such as Pritikin, the Ornish diet,
the Atkins Diet, “Macrobiotics,” etc.; the complexi-
ties of counting calories, “points,” fat grams, etc.)
• FAD DIETS (illegal and quasi-legal methods, in-
cluding the contemptible practice of appealing to
people’s appetites in order to get them to buy and eat
chocolate-flavored candy bar “snacks” in order to
lose weight)
• SHOPPING (the struggle between the need for vari-
ety and the need for consistency; avoiding tempta-
tion while choosing among 35,000 items available in
one food emporium; health food stores and the in-
ability for a human being to ingest all the possible
“healthy” foods that proponents claim are “essen-
tial”)
• FOOD DISTRIBUTION AND SERVICE (for ex-
ample, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, ZonePerfect,
and MenuDirect food systems; fast food chains; res-
taurant menus and portion sizes)
• FAMILIES (the difficult group dynamics within
several families in which one member is struggling
to stay on a diet; how dieters manage restaurants,
“feasts,” and holiday meals socially)
• NUTRITIONISTS (challenges to unscientifically
proven advice currently being given out by profes-
sional nutritionists, such as: keep “healthy” food
around for snacking; eat as many as five meals per

153
 day in order to balance blood sugar levels; vary your
diet throughout the week in order to ingest as many
of the nutrients as you “might” need; eat a balanced
dinner every night; and the USDA’s “food pyramid
scheme”)
• FITNESS AND PHYSICAL TRAINERS (aerobics
videotapes and health clubs that prey on the igno-
rant; challenges to unscientifically proven advice
currently being given out by professional trainers,
such as: you must include flexibility, strength, and
endurance training in addition to aerobic exercise in
each session; and the American Heart Association’s
recent misinformed recommendation that one should
“exercise most days of the week”)
• COMPLIANCE (doctors’ insights into patient com-
pliance; support group members’ conflicts with such
disciplinary issues as the Trevose Behavior Modifi-
cation System, which ejects any member who fails to
obey its weight loss “rules and regulations,” retains
no more than 10% of the original sign-ups, and
claims 100% efficacy)
• MENTAL GYMNASTICS (transcendental medita-
tion, yoga, “mind over fatness”; “it’s okay to be fat”)
• WILL POWER (experiments and interviews with
eminent neuroscientists expounding upon recent
theories that explain why there is no such thing as
“willpower”)
• DOCTORS (and various medications available for
weight loss)
• CHILDREN (According to Current Opinion in Pe-
diatrics [August, 1999], “Obesity is arguably the
most important medical problem in America today.”
As part of the overall problem, about 25% of chil-
dren are considered either overweight or obese.)

Report on “Albert”
“Albert,” who is 80 years old, has been going to North Carolina
annually for 20 years to lose weight, although he’s gone less fre-

154
quently for the past few years. He generally goes “once or twice a
year.”
His insurance plan doesn’t cover the expense, although for spe-
cial medical treatments Medicare would. (Since Albert’s wealthy, he
doesn’t mind the expense.)
The retreat he goes to is at Duke University Medical Center. It
was started by a doctor who believed that after a heart attack a person
should exercise and eat properly to avoid recurrence. This doctor set
up a preventive unit located in the sports stadium where there was
exercise and an indoor and outdoor track. (Albert doesn’t use the
track because he finds it “distasteful.”) They also have treadmills, bi-
cycles, and free weights.
The center was originally called “DUPAC” standing for “Duke
University Preventive Approach to Cardiology.”
Pepsi-Cola gave millions for a gymnasium. A wealthy donor gave
money for an experimental nutritional center and clinical building.
These buildings are now called “Duke Center for Living.”
The Center is open for locals who come from within 30-50 miles
away for $1,500/year and treat the place like an inexpensive health
club.
It’s much more than a health club, however. There are medical
personnel there (someone with a defibrillator, for example; or a Regis-
tered Nurse to take blood samples occasionally and blood pressure
and pulse rate every morning). They also have academically trained
physical therapists.
Duke has a “very expensive” center, but Albert believes it isn’t
profitable. In fact, he thinks it’s been a “financial failure,” although it
may help to act as a “feeder” for the hospital.
The Center operates retreats for “regulars” like Albert. They offer
meditation or yoga, and medical education. He also says they take
people on a field trip to a supermarket to show how stores tempt you
and how to shop according to a list. They also take people on an out-
ing to a restaurant to show how to order Chinese food without mono-
sodium glutamate and salt.
Duke also has a “Diet and Fitness Center” mainly for overweight
women. (They offer behavioral psychology programs to help people
modify behavior or explain “why they’re not exercising.” It costs ex-
tra.) Albert’s Center is mostly for men with open-heart “zippers.”
(Albert has no heart problems, but has an ominous family history.)
There seem to be political problems between the various centers.
Albert understands that he’ll be eating evening meals at a local
YMCA probably because his Center can’t afford to feed him dinner.
There’s a third Center at Duke that’s 50 years old. It was started
by an internist who created the non-salt “Rice Diet” that became suc-
cessful when it brought about “miracle cures” for diabetics, such as
restoring sight to blind patients.
Albert (who is an exceptionally successful retired businessperson)
feels that although his Center is the best, it hasn’t been marketing-
oriented and therefore failed to make money. He says the marketing

155
people they hired are incompetent. For example, the head of the Cen-
ter is a medical doctor who has no talent for business.
Albert mentioned other programs that are much more expensive,
such as Pritikin in California and Dr. Kenneth Cooper (who created
the Air Force exercise plan). Also Dr. Ornish.
Kenneth Cooper is very expensive compared to what Albert pays
(which includes the $50/day cost of a nearby hotel and a car rental of
$1,000 for the month). It costs Albert $1,500 for the month. (He buys a
year’s membership and uses it only for one month.)
Albert claims that the Center denies him nothing, although it
counts calories and fat grams. He loses about 3 pounds a week based
on a 1,000 calorie diet per day. He also walks ten miles, which equals
the loss of 1,000 calories (100 C/mile). Therefore, it’s as if he’s fasting.
At Albert’s Centers in the past, there have been occasional after-
noon lectures by doctors. They once showed Albert the clogged veins
of a cadaver!
They have a 100-200-seat auditorium with a demonstration
kitchen. Pepsi built them a pool about 4 feet deep for arthritics.
Albert gets three personal training sessions a week @ $40/session.
(He pays $75 at Equinox!)
Besides the walking, Albert gets “floor exercises” for flexibility,
balance, and pool sessions, and sessions on how to use the weights.
Albert doesn’t do running because he’s afraid it will aggravate his
osteoarthritis.
When he first started the bicycle he was at Level 1 (pulse rate be-
tween 10 and 20). Then he graduated to Level 3 (110). He says he
won’t sweat until he reaches 120. He hasn’t gotten there yet.
(He used to own an exercise bicycle but got rid of it.)
He goes three times per week to Equinox (Tuesday, Wednesday,
and Thursday). He finds it distasteful; but he hires a personal trainer
who keeps him coming back. Without the personal trainer, he says
he’d drop out.
A personal trainer once treated his osteoarthritis by “pushing
back” his legs (“overstretching his muscles”), pushing on his legs un-
til the pain level reached around 8.5 on a 10-point scale. After three
sessions, the pain was gone! His gait is now normal.
Albert feels that when he stopped drinking for a medical problem
he lost the taste for it and may not resume. Drinking made it hard not
to gain back the weight he lost at the Center.
Albert should weigh 150-160 but normally weighs 185. He will
lose about 12 pounds at the Center. He expects to gain it back. I be-
lieve the reason he gains back the weight is that his wife is his cook.
She serves family style and he can’t resist seconds and thirds. She ap-
parently pays no attention to his special needs.

—April 2000

156
 Acting Well (The Book Proposal)
One can only marvel at the phenomenal number of diet and exer-
cise “breakthroughs” and “self-improvement” programs sold in
bookstores and via informercials.
Everywhere one sees another “Guide for the Perplexed” that tells
people how to live. All these books promise The Answer. Yet, despite
thousands of diet books available, 150-million Americans continue to
carry around an extra 20 pounds they don’t need. 37-million Ameri-
cans suffer from eating disorders. 61-million Americans smoke ciga-
rettes. The members of every fourth American family, involving 88-
million people, have to cope with someone affected by alcohol or
drug-related problems that cost insurers, governments, and busi-
nesses over $220 billion annually.
Acting Well takes a novel approach to self-help books. Based on
the idea that the only self-help books that can permanently change
someone’s life are the ones that people write themselves, Acting Well
shows how to spend a small part of every day composing compulsory
notes and optional essays for one’s own book. The work may never be
completed, but the lifelong project will continually sustain the will-
power to live a more disciplined, creative, self-assured, and healthy
life.
Acting Well is a simple but precise application of acting tech-
niques promulgated by Konstantin Stanislavski a century ago. These
techniques can focus the psyche through conscious observation and
choices that become automatic, healthy responses—as opposed to re-
peating unhealthy or inappropriate behavior patterns day after day.
Anyone can become psychologically addicted to habitual choices.
Although unhealthy patterns (a tendency to binge, for example) may
not involve the physiological addiction problems that heroin presents,
the compulsion to “revert” may be overwhelming after only a three to
six week starvation diet (which is any diet that limits a person to less
than 1,200-1,500 calories per day) that seemed to work well at the be-
ginning. That’s why, although many self-help books can alert readers
to the problems and techniques of behavior modification, at the end
of the day the effects of all their good advice usually die along with
the reader’s initial good intentions.
The power of Acting Well isn’t in its advice (although there’s lots
of it!) but in its ability to motivate healthy actions in a way that’s simi-
lar to how Stanislavski techniques make actors’ performances possi-
ble onstage. The book can appeal to everyone’s taste, since almost
everyone has acted, if not professionally, then at least in school or
amateur theatricals. Therefore, practically anyone will intuitively un-
derstand how Hamlet’s observation that “All the world’s a stage, and
all the men and women merely players” applies to developing effec-
tive new techniques for behavioral change.
Many self-help manuals teach their readers little more than how

157
to hypnotize themselves in order to achieve certain temporary objec-
tives. Acting Well, on the other hand, helps people achieve a greater
degree of “wellness,” not by fooling themselves, but by exercising
self-control through habitual practice.
In other words, all the “willpower” in the world won’t help an ac-
tor cry onstage or tighten his belt three notches. However, by using
various simple techniques well known to actors, tears can flow and
pounds can melt.
Readers who will want to buy the book will include, first of all,
people who are creative but have self-disciplinary problems, such as
“writer’s block,” problems getting started, or “day-after” problems
when doubts overwhelm talent. The techniques in Acting Well were
invented long ago to overcome precisely these problems. As incredi-
ble as it sounds, when practiced properly, these techniques are 100%
effective. They have never failed in more than 30 years.
One of the techniques featured in Acting Well is similar to the
“Morning Pages” of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. This popular
book, which concentrates on creative issues (not health problems),
suffers from the same weakness that plagues most diet books: people
start doing the “exercises,” but they don’t continue them for long. For
example, Amazon.com has published a number of positive readers’
responses to Cameron’s best-selling book; but when some of the read-
ers who appended their E-mail addresses to their reviews were asked
how long they continued to practice “Morning Pages,” they admitted
to stopping after two to three months.
Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer to the problem of “will-
power.” For example, the typical advice (published recently in the
New York Times) that comes out of one study of people who had lost
weight and kept it off was “You’ve got to find it for yourself. And
don’t spend money on it. Slimfast, Optifast, you can’t live like that
forever.”
In other words, no one gains willpower by buying products (in-
cluding books) that supposedly make self-discipline clear and easy.
But if you write your own self-help book—even publishing for like-
minded readers as you go along (which is a technique now possible
on the Internet)—you can create an extraordinary amount of self-
discipline to achieve just about anything that takes time, talent, or just
plain perseverance.
If you compare your life to a movie, Cameron’s method confronts
only one half of the “willpower problem”: namely the “script.” There-
fore, her book has apparently been able to help creative writers facing
blockages. Acting Well confronts both parts of a “movie”: the “script”
as well as the “acting,” by alternating techniques. Together, these
techniques present a powerful tool to confront all problems requiring
self-discipline, whether artistic and creative, or involving the four life-
style changes (which are diet, exercise, smoking cessation, and stress-
reduction) that cardiologists recommend to heart attack patients.
The applications to behavioral problems should be obvious,
whether for recovering coronary patients, people suffering from prob-

158
lems of being overweight or having high blood pressure, or people
who use alcohol, tobacco, pills, drugs, and so on, inappropriately.

—June 1999

Willpower
The words “willpower” are redundant, actually. When you exer-
cise your will, you exercise your power. There is no more power in you
than what your will can exercise. “Will” and “power” are the same
thing.
Your power doesn’t come from within you. If it seems like it does,
you’re merely responding to an illusion. Actually, your power comes
from the world outside that will either grant you your powers (pro-
viding you attempt to exercise them) or take them away.
It seems like special cases when you talk about diet, exercise, and
stress reduction, because those concepts depend on whether or not
you do them. They don’t seem to have anything to do with the world
beyond. Nobody else can diet, exercise, or relax for you except you.
How, then, can you say that the power to help yourself resides in the
world beyond you, and not in you?
The following example illustrates the answer:
It’s a common tale for drug addicts to recall the many times they
had vowed never again to take drugs, then unexpectedly found
themselves in a social situation where others were taking drugs, at
which point they found themselves shooting up—“just like that.”
They will always tell you that they didn’t think about it, they
didn’t decide to do it, it happened automatically. Their will never en-
tered the picture.
In that sense, when you adhere to your chosen menu (in a super-
market or restaurant), or select foods based on your menu, you may
think it’s your willpower that’s doing it. In fact, your willpower is
only your explanation for your action. The feeling of exercising your
willpower always comes after the fact of your making a choice. It’s not
the “cause” of your choice—any more than the drug addict’s will-
power makes a “choice.”
Thus, whatever willpower you appear to manifest while control-
ling your menu does not appear while eating, but while shopping in a
supermarket. In that sense, all eating plans begin and end in the su-
permarket—nothing important happens at the table!
The main point is that all your powers, including your “will-
power,” come from beyond you. That’s why Acting Well (during
Morning Preparation, for example) concentrates so keenly on the
sounds and lights that come from the outside—that is, the sounds and
lights that are not caused by you and that represent nature and the
work of other human beings.
It’s from those invisible strangers that you derive all your powers.
A King derives his powers, he says, from God; but in reality, he

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derives them from the people who accept his sovereignty. It was this
issue that the Declaration of Independence addressed when it said
that all power derives from the people; therefore the people are sov-
ereign, not a member of a royal family reputedly chosen by God.
The fiction that used to prop up monarchies (that God established
their rule) is like the fiction that your “real self” (or the “god” within
you) is the source of your personal power. These ideas express the
same basic concept: that power derives from within.
It may seem that way, but it’s only a fiction. That concept is cru-
cial when it comes to issues of empowerment, which arise when you
feel powerless and want to change your situation. How do you do it?
Another example illustrates the answer:
When two people who have lived together many years have con-
stantly given each other affection, you can say that it is their common
practice to raise their personal self-esteem by feeling the love that
comes from the other. They don’t create good feelings about them-
selves by expressing love; their feelings of self-worth arise because
they get love.
In other words, a transaction takes place in such relationships: You
give me love, I give love back to you, and we both feel better about
ourselves.
You can’t arrange such transactions without at least two parties.
In a sense, both parties fool the other and allow themselves to be
fooled.
(You can recognize this wily phenomenon more clearly in rela-
tionships between dogs and masters, as well as charitable philanthro-
pists and charitable organizations.)
It isn’t that anyone is lying to anyone else or to himself or herself;
it’s that a transaction is taking place, the true nature of which neither
party needs to understand or generally wants to understand. It’s just
supposed to feel good.
The good feelings come from beyond each of the individuals from
the other (as is the case between dogs and masters). The good feelings
aren’t created from within either individual. In fact, nothing would
happen if the affection of a relationship depended on one individual
expressing or receiving it while the other does nothing. Such relation-
ships usually dissolve.
To sum up this argument: Your willpower doesn’t come from
within you, although it seems to. Ultimately, all of your power (and
all your knowledge and all your love!) come from outside your “self,”
from the world in general, or from your friends, lovers, or parents—
now or years ago.
If you don’t feel like you’re powerful, you won’t be able to exer-
cise your true powers. To get yourself to feel your true powers is one
of the principle aims of Acting Well. That process—of getting you to
feel your powers—involves transactions with the world (including
how you look and walk and what clothes you wear) that lead to true
empowerment.
Don’t misunderstand: To empower yourself doesn’t require you

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to fool yourself, merely to concentrate on the source of all power,
which, although it may appear otherwise, resides exclusively in the
world beyond your Self.

Take More!
“If you love me, love my food. TAKE MORE!”
These sentences aren’t usually uttered, but they’re implied with
every heaping serving bowl or plate served family style, that begs to
be finished by anyone not yet groaning in pain from having eaten too
much.
The real implication behind “TAKE MORE!” is: “If you don’t take
more, it’s because you don’t love my food!” (By extension, “If you
don’t love my food, you don’t love me!”)
In other words, if you overeat, you compliment the chef. Con-
versely, if you stick to normal portion sizes, you insult the chef.
The only acceptable defense against such demented logic is, “I’m
so stuffed, I couldn’t eat another bite!”
Think about it! Overeating is the only acceptable excuse for refus-
ing to overeat!
Who made up these crazy rules? Can’t we eat a normal size por-
tion of an afternoon or evening meal without having to feign being
victims of out-of-control appetites?
How can anyone stay thin given these lunatic table manners? If
there’s a smoking gun behind the Fat Epidemic, the “TAKE MORE!”
command, together with the “exercise most days of the week” idea,
are lethal. If we could rid the nation of these two ideas, half of us
could slim down fast!
What makes you eat, ultimately, are the organic chemical “highs”
you get from serotonin and dopamine. These two neurotransmitters,
working together, tell you (1) that you’ve eaten enough and (2) that
you got pleasure out of it.
Without pleasure, you might never eat at all, unless forced. With-
out a sense of fulfillment, on the other hand, you’d never stop eating.
These two “innate” systems evolved together with exquisite pre-
cision. They worked just fine for Homo sapiens sapiensis until our spe-
cies became too affluent and skilled in preparing fast meals. Then the
trouble began.
What makes people overeat, more than any other cause, is the fact
that it takes most people longer for their “reward” neurotransmitter
to “kick in” than it does for them to eat a normal meal. Therefore, if
your whole meal is twice the normal size it should be (which it is in
many restaurants, for example); and if it’s only fifteen minutes since
you started eating, then you’ll tend to continue on for another five
minutes at least, no matter how stuffed you’ve gotten. The reason is
that the only reliable clue about when to stop isn’t in your stomach
(or brain, just yet), but on your plate.
That is, until your “fulfillment” neurotransmitter kicks in that fi-

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nally forces you to stop, you haven’t any other clue to go on, other
than habit. The problem here is the timing of the fulfillment neuro-
transmitter. It simply takes too long to overrule the incredibly rude
and juvenile behavior of an overzealous and insecure chef.
Behavior modification psychologists sometimes recommend
chewing food more slowly in order to counteract the delayed neuro-
transmitter effect. This concept will do nothing, of course, to protect
people against the “TAKE MORE!” syndrome. In fact, it’s an idiotic
strategy no sensible person would find acceptable for very long, or
should even consider.
However, there’s an even more insidious factor behind the
“TAKE MORE!” syndrome than the neurotransmitter effect.
If someone else has prepared your food, you have to satisfy not
only your own “reward” system, but also the reward system of the
person who prepared the food! Thus, when you take seconds and
thirds, you reward not only yourself but also the chef. Conversely,
when you fail to take a second helping, you’re punishing the chef—
not for preparing too much food (which is unthinkable to her, but
nevertheless the true offense)—but for having prepared food that
wasn’t tempting enough to get you to overeat.
When you’re up against two people’s reward systems (for exam-
ple, your own and your mother’s) that have been working according
to this system almost since you were born, is it any wonder you gain
weight too easily, and that you can’t take it off without offending
someone?
The good news is that this problem will usually affect you only
once per day, namely during the evening meal. Breakfast and lunch
are usually no problem except for the morbidly obese. Many over-
weight people even skip breakfast in the peculiar belief that they
somehow “earn points” toward a larger dinner if they trim back
breakfast and lunch.
Many overeaters consume exactly the same foods for breakfast
and lunch every day for years. In fact, almost no one objects to a lack
of variety 2/3 of the time. It’s only the dinner hour at which most
Americans insist they must have variety. The people who scream
loudest about this subject aren’t the customers, but the preparers—
usually the wives and mothers who cook for their families. They can’t
conceive of cooking the same dinner day after day. How would they
deal with all the complaints?
The fact is that most of these cooks don’t take the time, and don’t
practice cooking any dish sufficiently well and sufficiently often, to
make something their families would want to eat day after day.
These women’s insistence on variety gives them an excellent ex-
cuse to be mediocre. On the other hand, if they started practicing pre-
paring one or two specialties for six months, their level of competence
would rise to that of a professional. Then they would make such a
good dinner, of ideally apportioned sizes for each family member,
and with such quick efficiency, that their families would be satisfied
to forego variety in favor of (for example) “Mama’s Excellent Pasta

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with Tomato Sauce.”
No seconds would offered (none would be available), and no one
would get fat!

Crosshairs
One of the factors that led Darwin to recognize the theory of the
origin of species was to discover, on a voyage to the Galapagos Is-
lands, that slightly different species of finches inhabited different is-
lands within the same geographical area. According to the theory of
“Special Creation,” which he learned at Cambridge, he expected that
his trip aboard the Beagle would confirm the theory that every spe-
cies had been created (presumably by God) to conform to its particu-
lar climate.
The theory of Special Creation is a sensible inference to draw
from a belief in a God that was responsible for creating the Universe
and everything in it. Nowadays, amongst the more enlightened
classes, that theory seems absurd. Therefore, it’s easy to understand
how painful it must have been for Darwin to defy his teachers in or-
der to share his scientific discoveries with the world.
One can think of the “prevailing theory of the mind” as being like
the theory of Special Creation by imagining the human brain as a
multi-dimensional geographical unit, and perceptions or memories as
various species of birds that fly about within a particular climate.
Thus, for example, various neuroscientists have mapped out “hyper-
columns” of neurons in one of the visual areas of the brain where
each hypercolumn represents a line tilted at a slightly different angle
from its neighbor’s. Looking at these diagrams, one would suppose
that all thoughts are referenced similarly, with each hypercolumn act-
ing as a kind of special mailbox tilted slightly differently from the one
adjacent to it. When a “bird” sees a line corresponding to the particu-
lar tilt of a particular mailbox, the “bird” flies into it (that is, the
thinker perceives or remembers the line).
One problem with this theory is that there has to be a perceiver to
perceive the line. Just as the theory of Special Creation would only be
useful if there is a “Special Creator,” so the prevailing theory of the
mind can only assign a “bird” to a mailbox if there is someone to
open the mailbox; and there isn’t anyone.
The solution to the problem is Darwinian. When neuroscientists
observe the hypercolumns stacked in what appears to be a regular
design, they assume that the design (the mailbox) came first, so that
the assignment (that is, the “bird,” or the impressions that will match
the mailbox’s tilt) came later (like climate coming first so that finches
could be custom-created later). The truth is more subtle in that the
“world” (not the brain) selects where the mailbox ought to be. If new
mailboxes are continuously being created (as they are in a Darwinian
world, but are not according to the prevailing theory of the mind),
and unused—or unusable—mailboxes are continuously being

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 scrapped, there’s more likely to be a proper mailbox to receive new
mail when the world mails it in than not.
Thus, whether a perception, recognition, or memory is created
anew or referenced again, the manner in which it is located (as the
manner in which a finch evolves—but not necessarily the manner in
which it flies about) is similar to the system in which a ray of light
falls on a portion of the retina. One can think of that process as some-
thing that functions similarly to a pair of crosshairs (that is, an “X-Y
axis”). In other words, the point at which the ray of light falls can be
located on a two-dimensional retina by determining where an X-axis
crosses a Y-axis. At that point (and only at that point), a specific per-
ception or memory can be “located.” If, in a visual area of the brain,
there is no hypercolumn (or, more accurately, no proper combination
of columns) ready to “catch” the data, that particular point cannot be
perceived or remembered.
“Thoughts” and “memories” are more complicated than retinal
images. In fact, even retinal image-points can be thought of as having
axes or dimensions that correspond to the hypercolumns. Thus, it
isn’t the hypercolumn that “remembers” the tilt of the line. The “I”
that perceives the “tilt” is nothing more than the hypercolumn itself,
pulling “referents” together (in a manner similar to an envelope with
a zip code on it locating an address) from different parts of the brain,
all of which are “found,” one after the other, through a kind of multi-
dimensional crosshair system, in a specific sequence that corresponds
to the position of each hypercolumn. Thus, the entire system is me-
chanical (not “mental” or “spiritual”), and corresponds approxi-
mately to the Darwinian antibody immunity system.
Only a mechanical system can be the basis of such a Darwinian
“crosshairs system.” If such a system could regulate medical practice,
it would affect how people live, eat, and exercise, for example. No
longer would specific instructions be given that issue, by implication
or example, from a benevolent God or His representatives on Earth.
We are all responsible for our own bodies and brains, and all have ex-
ceptional powers to maintain and improve them. The penalties for ig-
noring our responsibilities lead to considerable suffering—which we
can all avoid by locating—using our evolved crosshairs system—the
truth of where we need to go, what we need to do, and how we need
to change.

FAQ: Diet Menu Boredom

“Won't I get bored eating the same thing every day while I’m losing
weight?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 Buy our diet books so you can test a different menu every day

164
 of the year! You’ll never get bored with our plan! Everything’s
regulated, all the calories and fat grams are counted, and all the
portion sizes are guaranteed to let you lose weight for as long
as you like. (We have incredible computer programs that per-
mit us to mix and match your daily recipes to your specific
needs!)

 In other words, we’ve done all the work! All you have to do is
purchase, prepare, serve, and eat!

 Therefore, you’ll be so busy figuring out how to prepare all

these different dishes, and finding the best places to buy all the
new ingredients cheap, that you won’t have time to get bored
with what otherwise would be pretty dreary fare.
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

“Diet food” is inherently uninteresting because, when the calorie
count has to be low enough to lose a pound or two a week, the
choices of nutritious foods are too limited to be really tasty and inter-
esting. (How much celery or soy can you eat?) Maybe one reason why
diet specialists claim that losing a pound or more a week is both
healthy and practical is that if they were to publish diet books with
menus on which people would lose only four to five ounces per week,
their recipes wouldn’t be different from anybody else’s cookbooks.
How, then, could they market their books?
In other words, a variety of recipes doesn’t solve the inherent
problem of eating diet food. It does, however, cause other problems,
such as risking not getting enough nutrients every day, and motivat-
ing yourself to prepare new, complicated, and not very interesting
recipes that only you, yourself, may wind up eating once or twice.
Therefore, although variety is important, you can program it in
on a daily basis if you increase the number of different kind of foods
you eat, and make absolutely sure that you decrease (to normal) the
size of each portion.
_______________________________________________________

How Acting Well does it:

Acting Well does nothing. You do it all.
Over a period of several weeks, you’ll create your own regular-
ized three-meal menu of foods that you’ll eat from now on. This
menu will be only for you, not (necessarily) for anyone else in your
family. You (or a servant or family member, if someone cooks for
you) will be responsible for purchasing, preparing, and carefully meas-
uring the weight (not the calories!) of all the food on your menu—
with absolutely no solid-food snacks available in the kitchen. You’ll
also be solely responsible for eating all of the food, allowing no lefto-
vers to hang over from meal to meal (to remove all temptations to
nibble between meals). After you’ve been on the menu for a while,
you’ll know exactly where to get each of the ingredients and how to

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prepare the food so that it’s always tasty, interesting, and exactly
right.
In other words, you can stop thinking about food except while
you’re actually eating it.
You start your list of foods with the ones you love most. If there
are foods you should eat (like fish) that you don’t like, search for
sauces or other condiments that will help make your eating experi-
ences always pleasurable. They can make a huge difference in your
life.
You must include healthy portions of fruit and vegetables in your
daily menu (the same ones every day) to make sure you have enough
nutrients. You may have to experiment (and “negotiate” between
food groups) until you find the right combination of foods that you
want to eat on a daily basis.
(When making these choices, you’ll discover that there’s a big dif-
ference between a food you “love” occasionally, and one you can
“love” eating every day. Making the choice isn’t difficult—but it’ll
probably surprise you.)
Most Americans eat about ten different food portions per day,
some of them double and triple size. You may consider eating twice
as many portions as that, but all of them small or normal size. Eating
a large proliferation of food is how you prevent “boredom.”
How you “finalize” your list is by answering the following ques-
tion:
“Last week, did you gain weight, lose weight, or stay the same?”
Depending on whether you want to gain, lose, or stay the same
(some people need to put weight on, you know!), you’ll take some
portions of food away from your menu, add new ones, or leave the
menu as it is.
If you’re watching your weight, you may have to eliminate cer-
tain “discretionary foods” you may have begun with (for instance,
chocolate cake every day). Quite soon, however, your period of ex-
perimentation (and “negotiations” between apples and chocolate
cake, for example) will end, and you’ll be left with a healthy menu on
which you can thrive.
You may change your menus from time to time. However, none
of the people who have stuck to an Acting Well menu for months or
years have gotten tired of the system or bored with their menus. In
fact, they love what they eat!

Memory and Consciousness

The manner in which the brain works is through mechanical
means, not through supernatural methods that give rise to spiritual or
immortal processes.
Science has failed to recognize the actual process of how the brain
works because of two factors: (1) For many years, it was thought that

166
there was no adult human neurogenesis, which made simple, me-
chanical explanations of how the brain worked based on the neurons
seem impractical; and (2), as a result, the patterns of connective proc-
esses (that is, the system of pathways formed by axons and dendrites
connecting the neurons) was assumed to be analogous to the unique
patterns made by electromagnetic waves by which we recognize
stars, voices, and music long distance via light and radio waves.
The fallacy contained in the above analogy is that electromagnetic
waves involve actual traveling particles (albeit without mass);
whereas the “waves” that occur in the brain are more like the waves
that occur when a stone is dropped into a pool of water. The water
molecules that cause the waves to ripple don’t move forward with the
rippling waves; rather, they move around in circles, each molecule af-
fecting the next. Only the crests of the ripples move outward in
shapes that resemble widening circles. This rippling effect creates an
illusion of forward movement—unlike the ripples of an electromag-
netic wave, which are composed of real particles that really move
forward. (One sign of this illusion is that a watery rippling illusion
occurs only in two dimensions—such as on the surface of water, not
within the watery mass itself; whereas electromagnetic waves spread
in all three dimensions of a particular volume of gas, liquid, solid, or
empty space.)
Therefore, you can’t draw an analogy between the way electro-
magnetic waves carry information through the Universe and the way
information is propagated within the brain without raising unan-
swerable questions and creating unresolvable paradoxes—which is
what happened in neuroscience. On the other hand, if there are real
“particles” in the brain (that is, the neurons repeatedly firing, which
are analogous to molecules of water repeatedly circling within their
own neighborhoods), then you can hypothesize a mechanical expla-
nation of how the brain and its various functions, such as memory
and consciousness, work.
To refine the analogy between the rippling surface of a pond and
what happens in the brain, imagine a particle of blue light impinging
on a cone within the retina. A “message” (like a single “ripple”) trav-
els from the retina to a receiving area in the back of the brain (namely,
the occipital lobe). The first ripple travels on through the mid-brain to
the outer cortex, where it’s matched against an appropriate “index”
that contains abbreviated descriptions of phenomena that include
“blue light.” From the “index,” the ripple travels back to the occipital
lobe, where it continues to ripple back again to the index, but at a
slightly diminished level—unless more blue light comes forth from
the retina, in which case the ripple will be augmented.
This “mechanical” process (of being diminished or augmented) is
a “checking process” that can tell us whether the original blue light
registering in the occipital lobe was a “real” event, analogous to a real
stone being dropped in the pool, or a dream (for example, if the envi-
ronment doesn’t continue to cause the original light to be repeated at
all).

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 In other words, the checking process continually asks: was it our
imagination that made the water seem to ripple, or a real stone?
Moreover, if it was a real stone, what kind of stone was it, and where
did it drop? Knowing the location of the dropped “stone” will usually
tell us—with a high probability of being correct, based on past experi-
ence—what the stone actually was: that is, was it a stone, a bird, a
plane, or a dream?
This checking process is what makes up “consciousness,” or the
kind of “awareness” that’s available to any mammal. A human be-
ing’s “awareness of consciousness,” on the other hand, is an emotion,
like any other, perceived exactly like any other emotion.
Contemporary neuroscience’s “prevailing theory of the mind”
has decreed that the checking process should be called “working
memory” (or, earlier, “short-term memory”), and that the (“check-
ing”) indexes that process information should be called “long term
memories.”
In fact, the checking process isn’t “memory” at all. (It’s more like
a form of “eidetic imagery.”) Therefore, there’s no such thing as
“working memory.”
“Long-term memory” is the system of “indexes” made up of neu-
ral column combinations. It’s the only “memory” we have.
If memory and consciousness can be explained by an analogy to a
mechanical process, then controlling our own behavior can be abso-
lutely regulated through mechanical means (usually simple repeti-
tion). On the other hand, if memory and consciousness have to be lo-
cated (and controlled) in a structure analogous to a maze of water
sluices, the complexity of such a system would be forever beyond
comprehension. Behavior could then be subject to supernatural forces
beyond our control, such as Divine intervention, prayer, morality, or
willpower.

Envelopes of Knowledge
Neural column combinations constitute “envelopes of knowl-
edge.”
They’re “envelopes” in the sense of bearing the “addresses” of the
actual referents of which we can become conscious.
“Knowledge” is the ability to sort into and call up the right refer-
ents in their proper sequences in order to cope with the world. Neural
column combinations give us that ability.
For at least one-half of a century, however, neuroscientists have
assumed that the “world” created these “envelopes of knowledge.”
Therefore, with the exception of explainable “mistakes,” a single en-
velope of knowledge would be likely to be “true”—meaning that if an
“envelope of knowledge” exists, in almost every case it corresponds
to a “world reality.”
This assumption is close enough to the truth in cases where world
events or situations can be checked against an “envelope of knowl-

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edge” in a human brain. However, the assumption leads to false con-
clusions in certain ambiguous cases, such as a belief in God.
More than 90% of Americans “believe in God.” Not even one of
them, however, can produce a shred of credible evidence to support
such a belief. How, then, could something in “the world” (or in
Heaven) have created an “envelope of knowledge” that points to the
images and associations that support a believer’s assertions every
time the question comes up, “Does God exist?” The only answer can
be, “God must have created this particular ‘envelope of knowledge.’”
If the world creates all our “envelopes of knowledge,” then it’s
easy to understand why neuroscientists have had such problems ex-
plaining the “forces” responsible for “programming” them. Obvi-
ously, if I observe a candle burning for the first time, the candle
doesn’t rearrange my brain circuitry to account for this new phe-
nomenon. I do! But how does my brain do it?
Therein lies the “problem of consciousness,” as well as all the
other “problems of the mind” that scientists currently consider the
most difficult.
By throwing up their hands when it comes to trying to explain
“mental phenomena,” scientists implicitly posit a “mysterious force”
to account for consciousness and similar phenomena. (Sometimes
they simply call it “consciousness.”) They as much as say, “There is a
God, and He makes the connections in the brain that make us aware.”
Of course, no self-respecting scientist would ever make such a
statement! Nevertheless, the implication is clear: it might as well be
God as any other unfathomable phenomenon.
On the other hand, if I don’t create my “envelopes of knowledge,”
but they simply form on their own, waiting for experiences to confirm
and hook them up, then it becomes much easier to explain how I
make the connection between the world and my brain. (It isn’t I who
makes the connection, but a random system preprogrammed by evo-
lution.) In other words, if I believe in God, it’s because my parents,
teachers, spiritual advisors, and peers activated a preexisting, God-
believing “envelope of knowledge” early in my youth and constantly
reinforced it. It’s no wonder, then, that I believe in God with all my
heart! How could I not?
The progression toward atheism, which happens to many college
students in their undergraduate years, is therefore painful and uncer-
tain; and it feels like a betrayal mixed with an intellectual triumph
when it succeeds.
Perception is actually evolution in action, because, when we per-
ceive, the “world” (or the environment) selects useful “envelopes of
knowledge,” and the brain eventually reabsorbs the useless ones.
Under these circumstances, it’s easy to see how the “world” (exclu-
sively!) selects our “envelopes of knowledge.” We have nothing to do
with it!
In other words, the world doesn’t “form” or “shape” our “enve-
lopes of knowledge”; it selects them. This process of selection is com-
pletely Darwinian.

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 The fact that neuroscientists today ignore (or deny) this Darwin-
ian process has created a situation that would be analogous to com-
munications scientists (or teachers) avoiding dealing with the conver-
sations on a telephone system, concentrating instead on its wires,
networks, storage areas, and telephone instruments—only because
these material elements can be measured and diagrammed (and
“fixed!”), while you can’t do anything about the “conversations.”
Conversations over telephone lines can be recorded, of course
(and thereby “proven real”); but they can’t be diagrammed because
they’re made up of elements completely different from the telephone
network system itself.
However, the difference in materials doesn’t make the conversa-
tions irrelevant! In fact, there’s no point to having a telephone system
if you can’t converse over it!
Therefore, if you really want to know how the brain works, ob-
serve the world as everyone agrees and understands it operates. This
knowledge constitutes the “conversations” that go on in the tele-
phone network system that constitutes the brain. In fact, every human
brain is connected to every other human brain through this system of
“conversations” with “the world.”
Thus, we’re all part of a collective system of knowledge—like a
“collective brain”—which is “the real world” itself.
Therefore, when Acting Well, concentrate on the world, not on
your “inner life.”
Stop trying to improve your inner self. Struggle to become part of
the world.

Fad Diets
High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets have been sweeping the
country for at least a century and a half. Following these regimens,
you eat as much meat as you can, but eliminate all the sweet desserts
you love and all the breads and pastas you usually can’t resist.
A typical testimonial of a man who says he lost 100 pounds might
have him rave over a diet of eggs and bacon for breakfast, ribs and
pork rinds for lunch, and a half a pound of cheeseburgers (without
the buns) and more pork rinds for dinner.
How long can you eat this way? What about all the cholesterol
and fat that can produce irreversible cardiovascular damage, not to
mention cancers associated with fatty diets?
If all these diets are the way to go, why are half of all Americans
still fat? Have fat Americans never gotten around to trying these di-
ets? Have you? (I have!)
Dr. Barry Sears created a concept called “The Zone” that sold an
awful lot of books and made an awful lot of money. According to
him, “too much carbohydrate means too much insulin; and too much
insulin takes you out of the Zone. Out of the Zone, you put on excess
body fat and you can’t get rid of it.”

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 Sounds good. It simply happens to be utter rubbish.
Proof that it’s just as easy to get too fat from eating too much pro-
tein as it is from eating too many carbohydrates (all that matters is the
volume of food, not its chemical composition) came out in 1992 in a
paper published by some doctors at The Rockefeller University (in-
cluding Dr. Jules Hirsch, who takes a dim view of all these diets) who
measured the precise number of calories consumed by test subjects
who were on all kind of diets. What mattered, when it came to losing
weight, were how many calories the subjects consumed. Whether
those calories came from protein or carbohydrates didn’t matter in the
slightest.
Nevertheless, Dr. Robert C. Atkins continues to claim that high
protein diets work because they lessen your cravings for food. “Blood
sugar fluctuations...are aggravated by carbohydrate consumption,” he
says. It is these fluctuations that cause people’s “constant obsession
with food” which is the “biggest battle most people have with weight
loss.”
Yet, in 1985, several doctors from the University of Vermont con-
ducted a study in which one group of dieters started on a low-
carbohydrate diet and then switched to a low-protein diet, and an-
other group did the reverse. The results were the same for both
groups.
“The initial two weeks of dieting was associated with a decrease
in appetite and elevation of psychological well-being, regardless of
the composition of the diet.... Thereafter, appetite and mood ap-
proached basal levels. Further changes in these psychological reac-
tions to dieting did not vary with the type of diet.”
In other words, the proof is irrefutable that the unproven theories
about the psychological bad effects of refined sugars and carbohydrates
that underlie the Atkins diet are bad science and outright lies.
One doctor, cited above, who is tired of seeing the same useless
diets emerge every few decades only to disappear until the next fad
pops up is Dr. Hirsch of The Rockefeller University. Gina Kolata
quoted him in The New York Times Health & Fitness section on Janu-
ary 18, 2000 (“True Secret Of Fad Diets: It’s Calories”). He called these
practices “Alchemy. It’s making gold out of ignorance,” he said.
That characterization shows how these fad diets are classic exam-
ples of how medical practitioners can usurp actual sections of our
brains that have to do with our dietary choices. They’ve figured out
how to make people believe their theories so that the rest of us will
buy their books. The effect of this kind of brain usurpation is a large
accumulation of anecdotal evidence (that is, “testimonials”), which
they elicit from their patients and readers to back up their bad sci-
ence. They create “true believers” out of people who pass along their
“truths” by word of mouth. For example, months or years ago, you
may have heard someone claiming to be a “carbohydrate addict.”
Chances are that person tried—then went off—a high-protein diet
long ago.
These “true beliefs” concerning restrictive diets are like computer

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viruses. (Some scientists have actually named them “memes.”)
They’re designed by self-serving people to sell books. They replicate
wildly. They fade out from time to time, but they’re sure to pop up
again. Like the flu, they reappear in slightly different forms. They
seem impossible to eradicate completely.
The only sure remedy for malnourishment (which includes being
overweight) is to take charge of those sections of your brain that gov-
ern behavioral choices (such as diet and exercise) that affect your
weight. In other words, you don’t get “willpower” from authors’
books (including this one!). You get it from your own behavioral
choices: for example, making food and exercise “habits” instead of
“food selections” and “exercise appointments”—both of which are fa-
tal to any sensible health routine.

“I’m starting my diet on Monday!”

Sure! And every Monday thereafter!
What’s wrong with these people who’re always going on diets?
What losers! They say the same thing every week! Don’t they have
any moral fiber? No willpower? Why don’t they just accept being fat
and stop making promises they can’t keep?
If you’re under 50 and still slender, you may feel that way; but
entering middle age may tell you a different story. It’s a sad one, too,
for many people, of dashed intentions and miserable failures.
Acting Well addresses these failures by synthesizing, for the first
time, several “paradigm shifting” developments from such varied
fields as anthropology, chemistry, medicine, and neuroscience.
These developments belie many current beliefs about weight loss.
For example, it’s often said that in order to lose weight you need to
exercise. The inference most people draw from this assertion is that
the more calories you “burn” during exercise, the more weight you’ll
lose.
The fact is there’s no relationship between the number of calories
you “burn” on a particular day and how much weight you lose over
the long run. Burning calories is not what makes exercise the most po-
tent form of weight control. In fact, if you exercise too much you may
ruin the positive effects (such as increased testosterone) that exercise
can have on weight control!
Here’s the new, real science behind the “Monday Morning Diet
Problem”:
• Evolution produced animal species (such as human
beings) in which creatures are programmed to defend
themselves when the need arises.
• If evolution had programmed the dominant creatures
in a group (the “winners”) never to fight any battle to
the death, the strength of the gene pool would de-

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 cline, and the species would perish. On the other
hand, if every weaker creature (the “losers”) were
programmed always to fight to the death, practically
everyone would die too soon; and the same result
would happen: the group would perish.
• Evolution’s solution to this problem was to program
animals through a system of hormonal balance.
Thus, when a creature is winning, “winner” hor-
mones are released in the creature which program
the creature to persist in defending itself until it wins
or loses. However, when a creature is losing, “loser”
hormones are released, at which time the creature
feels the need to escape so that, at a more propitious
time, the creature can return, refreshed, fight anew,
and possibly win.
• If someone on a diet (or exercise routine or any other
programmed behavior) experiences a “winner’s”
hormonal balance on a daily basis, that person will
persist in the diet. (Doctors call this behavior “com-
pliance.”) On the other hand, if someone on a diet
experiences a “loser’s” hormonal balance regularly
(even if on only certain days of the week), the oppo-
site will happen: the person will “escape” from the
diet in order to return at a more propitious time. That
tendency is behind the statement: “I’m starting my
diet on Monday!” The declaration only makes sense
if you understand that it’s the “loser” hormones talk-
ing, not the person.

If these theories are correct, then the obvious answer to weight

control is regularly to shift the hormonal balance of a person trying to
regulate a diet from “loser” to “winner.”
Hormonal shifts may be possible through various drug injections
(for example, shifting from a predominance of adrenaline in the body
and cortisol in the brain compared to the amount of testosterone in
the body and serotonin in the brain). Acting Well, however, is a natu-
ral way to shift hormonal balance. Furthermore, it turns out to be ex-
quisitely specific, which drugs cannot be.
The key to producing optimum levels of testosterone in the body
is to exercise no more and no less than 30 minutes daily.
If you practice too much in a day, you eventually lower the level
of testosterone. (Thus, too much of a good thing—such as a three-
hour session at the gym or a five-hour bicycle race—can be counter-
productive. Some professional athletes, who endure many hours of

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practice, require periodic injections of testosterone for this reason!)
If you regularly skip days (for example, if you run “most days of
the week”—meaning you fail to exercise as many as three days a
week), you won’t keep your level of testosterone on an even keel from
day to day. Thus, you won’t get the benefit of a steady level of “win-
ners’ hormones.”
Although some days may be good, others will be bad. It will be
on the bad days that you abandon good intentions, for evolution has
programmed you to escape from the danger of failure.
Therefore, remaining on a steady weight-loss or weight-
maintenance regimen isn’t about selecting the right foods; nor is it
about how much or how little you exercise. It’s about the steadiness
of your daily choices.
The one sure thing to keep in mind is that persistence and pa-
tience usually pay off.

Love
One of the worst afflictions of the “me generation” has resulted
from authors who urge their readers to avoid “co-dependencies” that
drain away the “human potential” from a self-centered relationship.
How many divorces and break-ups have been excused by one
partner claiming that “She didn’t grow at the same rate I did,” or “He
and I were ‘incompatible’”?
The truth may have been that two people grew tired of each other
sexually and at least one of them was eager to experience non-guilt
adventures outside the relationship.
Eastern spiritual practices sometimes seem to justify long-term re-
lationship breakups when they encourage individuals to find salva-
tion mainly in their feelings and observations about themselves to the
exclusion of everything external to the “Self”—which is typically ele-
vated to the level of a “god within.” This unhealthy enhancement of
self-esteem is not the goal of Acting Well, which seeks, rather, to be-
come more intensely aware of the feelings of others—and particularly
to share the feelings of a long-term spouse or lover for those who
have had the great good fortune to be able to have nurtured such a re-
lationship.
An old romantic movie called The Enchanted Cottage, with Robert
Young and Dorothy McGuire (1945), illustrates the idea that physical
attraction and delight in intimacy do not have to diminish over time
between two lovers who grow old together.
A soldier returns from the war horribly disfigured and inconsolable,
to live out his days hiding from his neighbors in a cottage attended
to solely by a homely domestic.
Through a miracle that neither understands, the two fall in love
with each other. Suddenly his scars and her plainness vanish. He
becomes handsome and she beautiful.

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 A visitor blurts out the truth (that the lovers have never actually
changed in the eyes of other people) and shatters the miracle. Sud-
denly the actors return to the original ugliness that they bore before
the enchanted cottage created their folie à deux.

The movie is true to life in the sense that two people for whom
love remains everlasting never detach the youth, beauty, and attrac-
tiveness from their beloved that time diminishes in the eyes of strang-
ers. How it happens that this wondrous illusion comes about is a
mystery. However, it happens often enough to belie the idea that men
and women should use cosmetic subterfuges to keep their partners
“interested.” Such losing battles are self-defeating efforts that produce
artificial-looking creatures who look more monstrous than lovable—
at least in the eyes of strangers.
All that is required for two people to maintain their physical at-
traction and comfortable intimacy as they grow older is for each of
them to work continuously at realizing and expressing love.
Any practice that regularly stimulates greater sensitivity to the
outside world tends to make the practitioner a more loving person.
Thus, the practices of Closure, Listening, Seeing, and the Oculus are all
useful sensitization techniques that can lead directly to the experience
of realizing how much you love the person you may have lived with
for 15 years or more.
More than that, the way you feel when you practice intimacy with
your loved one is as good an exercise of Acting Well as any that any-
one could invent. It’s a perfect way to tend to your consciousness.
If you practice Acting Well every day, your love will seem to
grow with the years. This feeling may result from an illusion, but it’s
a welcome illusion that shouldn’t be questioned.
That concept is the message behind The Enchanted Cottage.
Eastern meditation practices that regularly encase their practitio-
ners in self-examination as if in separate bell jars, cutting them off
from other practitioners in an ashram, for example, or from the world
at large; or preventing them from Listening by playing “white noise”
or “New Age” music, do not encourage love. On the contrary, by con-
centrating on elevating self-esteem these meditative practices can cut
lovers off from one another.
If you’re dirt poor, powerless, and inconsolable, how can you
have a loving relationship? There’s nothing romantic about poverty!
Thus, no effort was made when yoga was invented to encourage lov-
ing relationships, except in the abstract, “with the god within,” or
with the cosmos in general. Such strategies make perfect sense for the
downtrodden in a brutally stratified society; but they are harmful in a
country of unbounded privilege.
Part of the responsibility that Acting Well fosters is responsibility
for one’s partner in life. That responsibility, which is merely an exten-
sion of one’s responsibility to the world at large, is as important as the
responsibility one has to one’s own self.
If you love your partner fiercely, you will love yourself and the

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world as well. You will experience the joy of living in the world, and
be pleasured by the measureless bounty the Earth brings forth.
You will have shared the ultimate experience you can have Act-
ing Well.

Testosterone
Dear Dr. Masden:

I just read an article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine by

Andrew Sullivan about testosterone. Sullivan injects himself with tes-
tosterone periodically to raise his levels (he has HIV), and his report
of the resulting effects sounded disconcertingly like the effects I feel
from practicing the “program” I created for myself (which Richard
now also follows—increasingly). Sullivan describes the following ef-
fects:
• His lost appetite resumed.
• He went from napping two hours a day to now rarely
sleeping in the daytime, and has enough energy for
daily workouts and a hefty work schedule.
• Depression was a regular feature of his life and is
now “a distant memory.”
• He feels “better able to recover from life’s curve-
balls, more persistent, more alive.”
• Within hours of injection, he feels a “deep surge of
energy, less edgy than a double espresso but just as
powerful.”
• His wit is quicker, his mind faster, and his judgment
is more impulsive. In other words, he feels “braced.”
• He reports that in other men testosterone often corre-
lates with energy, self-confidence, competitiveness,
tenacity, strength, and sexual drive.
• One man told him “It makes me think more clearly.
It makes me think more positively. It’s my Saint
Johns Wort.”
• Another man told him: “Usually I cycle up the hill to
my apartment in 12th gear. In the days after my shot
I ride it easily in 16th.”

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 • Another executive said “I walk into a business meet-
ing now and I just exude self-confidence. I’m on a
roll. I feel capable of almost anything.”
• Another man said, “It turned my life around. I felt
stronger and not just in a physical sense. It was a
deep sense of being strong, almost spiritually
strong.”
• Sullivan claims it combats depression differently
from antidepressants: it alleviates gloominess pri-
marily by propelling people into greater activity and
restlessness, giving them less time to think and re-
flect.
All these descriptions sound very familiar to me! They cover the
difference in my life that Acting Well, which I undergo daily, has
brought to me. As I think Richard mentioned, I used to appear to him
to be depressed all the time; and for the past few years, he’s seen none
of that.
I’ve noticed these changes of course, but I associated them pri-
marily with exercise. For example, people claim that jogging releases
“endorphins.” That’s what I thought I was feeling. However, after
reading Sullivan’s article, I’m beginning to think that it may not be
“endorphins” that joggers feel, but testosterone. I think that hormone
may be the “magic ingredient” that sets me up to practice good health
habits. Without it I might easily revert to bad habits, bad food,
stressed out living, and so forth.
I still need the morning “psychic workout” to motivate the exer-
cise. However, I think there’s also a reciprocal effect from the exercise
that motivates the next day’s morning “psychic workout” as well as
healthful dietary habits.
I bring all this up because I think it would be interesting, some-
day, to measure the “T” levels in my saliva before and after I ride my
bike each day. One could probably determine if there’s anything to
this theory or not—at least in me.
A lot of what Sullivan and I wrote above could be accounted for
by the placebo effect. Some of it seems awfully anecdotal. For exam-
ple, if testosterone has increased my sexual drive, which it theoreti-
cally should, it’s news to me!

Just thought I would share.

P.S.:

I almost forgot the most interesting part of Sullivan’s report on

testosterone:
Concerning competitive sports: “The winner of any single game
sees his T production rise; the loser sees it fall. The ultimate winner

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experiences a post-game testosterone surge, while the loser sees a col-
lapse. This is true even for people watching sports matches.”
Sullivan presents an evolutionary argument to explain these phe-
nomena, which I won’t go into here. However, concerning health-
driven exercise, in my opinion, I’ve always felt that competition was
inimical to the practice.
When I exercise I do it alone and I never race other bikers (except
sometimes, rudely, with strangers, when I’m sure I can win!). The
reason I now believe is that I feel “intuitively” that if you race, you
risk losing, in which case you don’t keep the testosterone levels up to
where they need to be to ensure your compliance to health measures
that require constant motivation.
In other words, I equate “willpower” to T-levels. When the T-
levels are down, there’s very little you can do about activating your
willpower. When they’re up, there’s very little you can do to stop
yourself from doing what you’ve intended.
Thus, “willpower” isn’t a “moral” or a “good character” thing.
It’s probably all chemical.
Therefore, people can do something about it!

Regards,

Marshall

—April 2000

Morning Pages
Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way instructs creative writers facing
writer’s block to practice a form of “automatic writing” every morn-
ing. She calls it “Morning Pages.” Morning Preparation, on the other
hand, is more like the breathing process, or—more graphically—like
digging a hole with a shovel. There’s an “in” and an “out.”
“Morning Pages” are all “out.” There’s no toggling back and
forth; there’s only a “sticking the shovel in.” The problem is, you need
to do something about the dirt you’ve just shoveled before you can
make a hole deeper.
For example, before writing anything in the Acting Well log, you
need to stimulate your memory and senses. Then, if you do it right,
you’re bound to get an idea about something you feel you must write
down—because it’s too good to forget!
That writing down of the idea (including your fingers writing it,
drawing a line below the entry, and writing the number for the next
idea) is like creating a “layer of thought” (or shoveling another layer
of dirt on a pile).
You may suddenly get an urge to dig (which results from Morn-
ing Preparation). That process leads to “swinging down the shovel,” as
it were. Then you put your foot on the shovel, bring up the dirt, and
fling it to the side—which is what happens during Steps & Landings.

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 One metaphor for this idea is that all you’ve “created” is a
“hole”—it’s ethereal. There’s not really anything there; just electrons
spinning through your brain.
The dirt is the pen or pencil marks you make in the log. It makes
the ethereal permanent. Although it’s only symbolic, it’s nevertheless
ready to communicate to another brain.
Cameron’s “Morning Pages” are supposed to be, as she puts it,
“apparently pointless” and “strictly stream of consciousness.” In the
case of Morning Preparation, Acting Well instructs you not to write
anything until you absolutely must write something down (and that
“something” can only be a short note to remind you later of an idea
you may extend in a longer essay). Then you draw a line and wait for
the next moment of inspiration.
You repeat this process until you fill the log page, writing down
only those thoughts that are “too great to forget.” By the end of the
page, you’ll always feel quite comfortable and ready to write an essay
(or longer piece) that will have a theme, a point, a structure, a begin-
ning, middle, end, and so forth. (You should write an essay at the
conclusion of Morning Preparation at least for the first six months. Af-
ter that, you’re on your own.)
By the time you’re ready to begin writing the essay, it’ll be like
writing a letter to an intelligent friend. It won’t be art, but it’ll be inter-
esting!
In other words, you should avoid using Morning Preparation to
keep a “diary” of what happened to you yesterday. Rather, you
should always dig a hole that’s deeper than your shallow memories.
Otherwise, all you’ll do is to shift around some piles of dirt.
There may be some value to keeping a diary; but there’s no
“score” at the end of it. You may feel you’ve accomplished some-
thing; but there’s nothing of value to show for your efforts: no tro-
phies and no applause.
During Morning Preparation, on the other hand, you never know,
when you start, where you’ll end up. However, at the end, you’ll feel
that you’ve written something worth saving. You’ve paid attention to
specific sensual moments in the past. You’ve concentrated on the pre-
sent moment thinking about what you’re doing, not what you did. You
dig a hole into the moment, not an aimless tunnel to the past.
When you dig a hole, although you don’t know what you’ll find,
the one thing you do know is that the direction is always deeper.
The best way to get deeper is to bring yourself forward entirely
into the now, experiencing the sensations of the present, and using
the past only to re-experience sensual memories that will create the
right mood in you because they squeeze out the right neurotransmit-
ters.
Thus, in Morning Preparation, you have to do two things: (1) you
must conjure sensuality through memory (or directly from the world)
and then (2) you must give what you sense new form through a sym-
bolic act (such as writing, drawing, composing music, noting a
mathematical formula, etc.).

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 This back-and-forth process (conjuring and giving form) is like
laying down the layers of a battery with insulators in between each
layer. The layering process creates a battery’s potential energy. It’s the
same with Morning Preparation.
With “Morning Pages,” “meditation,” or yoga, on the other hand,
it’s all a single process that stores no latent, potential energy.

Addressing Childhood Obesity

The principles underlying Acting Well are necessary guidelines
to apply to behavioral modification in obese children.
It’s helpful at first to clarify a number of misapprehensions and
false assumptions that cause obesity in general. For example, just as
“diets don’t work” for adults, they don’t work for children, and for
the same reasons. The main necessary component diets always leave
out is discipline.
Similarly, for children, the hoary old idea that exercise can act as a
kind of “neutralizer” to calories (that is, the more one eats, the more
exercise one needs to do—as if calories were a kind of poison, and ex-
ercise its antidote) needs to be destroyed. The reason why exercise is
necessary for weight control has nothing to do with calories, for the
number of calories the body metabolizes during exercise is indeter-
minable. There are too many variables involved (for example: age,
sex, metabolism, general fitness, how used to exercising one is, and
whether one measures the number of calories burned at the start of a
session or at the end of it). One would particularly need to take into
account all the physical (“fat-burning”) activities other than exercise
that one does on a particular day to determine how much exercise can
influence weight control on that particular day, but not necessarily on
any other.
It’s well known that the probability of a child becoming obese is
far higher in families where one or both parents are obese. Although
this fact may seem to suggest a genetic factor governing obesity in
children, the increase in the proportion of obese children in the gen-
eral population over the past decades argues against genetics as a
significant factor in the vast majority of cases.
(The National Foundation for the Centers for Disease and Preven-
tion reported in the year 2000 that 22 percent of girls and 20 percent of
boys ages 6 to 17 were obese, up from 15 percent of both sexes in the
1970s.)
There’s no reason to suspect that the influences that are causing a
majority of Americans to be overweight are different for children. The
fact that no one has yet found a cure for this deplorable situation
doesn’t mean that a cure isn’t at hand; or that a cure, if found, would
be different for children than for adults.
In a society where new technologies have given people ever
newer ways to avoid exerting themselves, children are especially
prone to taking advantage of various labor saving devices that re-

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quire less effort for themselves and their parents (for example, getting
car or bus rides to school and back). Safety precautions that protect
children tend to shelter them from playing in unsupervised parks,
taking walks in natural surroundings by themselves (or with their
busy parents), or even exploring city neighborhoods on foot.
Thus, telling children to “get more exercise” is no answer. What
are they supposed to do? Planning occasional physical activities for
them (such as taking them to a dance class on Tuesdays) does no
good. What are they supposed to do the other six days of the week?
Unless physical activity is increased for a sustained period every single
day, the good it may do to keep a child’s weight down is utterly in-
consequential.
Schools do a poor job in this regard as well (although the right
self-supervised, non-competitive program, practiced only a half-hour
a day, would go a long way in solving the problem of childhood obe-
sity!). Few schools offer daily exercise regimens. Gym teachers try to
interest students in physical education through occasional competi-
tive sports, which is quite the wrong way to go if one wants to create
lifelong fitness habits in the majority of students.
So what should children do?
The answer is: the same thing adults should do, namely, to prac-
tice a daily form of fitness exercise that is consistent, non-competitive,
and that encourages the perfecting of a skill. Only with a regular form
of exercise can children form automatic, habitual behavior. It’s the
only way to build a “discipline.”
Occasional activities, even ones a child loves to do, can do more
harm than good. A variety of seven activities spread out over a week
also doesn’t address the problem because no human being can build a
skill in any physical activity by practicing only one day a week for
half an hour.
Acting Well is an ideal discipline for children to learn because
they don’t bring the “baggage” to the table that adults tend to do.
They love being told exactly what’s expected of them; and so they of-
ten follow directions better than adults do who have strong opinions,
especially about subjects like weight control.

The American Heart Association

Dear Dr. Masden:

I’ve done some research on the Internet and found a rather shock-
ing list of “tips” from the American Heart Association for complying
with an exercise program.
This list has obviously been compiled by people who don’t exer-
cise regularly. I’ve heard these foolish bits of advice for years from
various sources but never found so many of them gathered in one
place before.
I feel rather passionately about how people should exercise for

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health compliance purposes, and I think one of the services your
foundation might provide is to let people know what exercising will
be like after they’ve been doing it for quite a while.
The rules for the AHA’s “Exercise Success” that are listed below
(with my impertinent comments added) are intended for someone
who hasn’t started exercising yet. I think reading these “tips” would
encourage anyone not to begin exercising!

 “Choose activities that are fun....”

For steady compliance, you should be looking forward to per-

forming only one exercise, not having to choose each time between
several “activities.”

 “...Add variety....”

Choose only one activity and stick to it. You’ll never get seriously
better at it otherwise working out only a half-hour a day.

 “...That way, exercise will never seem boring or routine.”

Variety is not the way to avoid a boring routine! Proficiency is.

 “If you miss an exercise opportunity, work activity into your

day another way.”

As if some other activity were an exact equivalent to exercise. Not

if you’re serious. A pointless suggestion.

 “Use music to keep you entertained.”

When you try to add musical pleasure to physical activity, it de-

prives you of the potential pleasure of both the music and the exer-
cise. Although I realize that CD players do raise compliance levels for
people who use exercise bicycles, I personally think that getting better
and better at what you do is the best form of entertainment.

 “Surround yourself with supportive people.”

You should remain private while you exercise, although other

people may be all around you. Socializing while doing a daily exer-
cise can diminish its effectiveness to the point where you might as
well not do it on that particular day. I see this phenomenon all the
time in Central Park between male and female bicycle riding partners
who meander down the park roads, talking, and never even working
up a sweat. Not only are they often rude and dangerous (caught up
with each other, they become impervious to other riders), they sacri-
fice their opportunities to exercise that day in order to “date.”

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 “Find a companion to exercise with you if it will help you stay
on a regular schedule and add to your enjoyment.”

A terrible idea! (1) No companion can or should be depended on

to show up every single day for the next ten years. (2) If a companion
can’t make it (which will inevitably happen—often!) it will provide
too easy an excuse to miss exercising yourself. Your compliance will
be shot to hell. (3) Daily exercise is a private affair; social interactions
diminish its effectiveness. (4) Companions are best used for competi-
tive sports like tennis, which are unsuitable for daily exercise—
mainly because partners aren’t reliably available, and their respective
skills will rarely match yours over the years. (I don’t mean that people
shouldn’t play tennis! However, everyone needs to be clear about
which sports are for recreation—such as tennis, which are for van-
ity—such as weight lifting, and which are for fitness. Recreation is for
weekends and with families. Vanity is for the vain—whenever. Fit-
ness must be pursued every day.

 “Exercise three or four times per week for 30-60 minutes.”

No! You can’t create a habit “most” days of the week. (Try teach-
ing children to brush their teeth “most” days of the week!) In addi-
tion, for maximum testosterone benefit, you should not exercise more
than 30 minutes daily. Furthermore, 60 minutes exercise (plus show-
ering, dressing, etc.) is usually not possible for a working person dur-
ing the week.

 “Reward yourself at special milestones. Nothing motivates like

success.”

This pitiful salute to behavioral therapy won’t signify at all after

you’ve been exercising for five years—or even one.

 “...walking is a great activity for you....”

A horrible lie!—unless you’re over 90 or grotesquely obese.

 “Take more time to warm up and cool down while exercising.”

You don’t have to waste any time at all when you’re working out
for only 30 minutes a day. Nature warms and cools you off suffi-
ciently—which is another reason not to spend too long on fitness ex-
ercises.

—April 2000

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 Behavior Modification
The main difference between Acting Well and behavior modifica-
tion programs (to help people lose weight, for example) is that behav-
ioral modification aims for permanent behavioral change. Acting
Well, on the other hand, although it may produce permanent change,
aims only for temporary change—every day from now on.
If you’re used to eating snacks throughout the day from candy
dishes in the living room, cookie jars in the dining room, cake platters
in the kitchen, etc., then a behavioral modification program will ad-
vise you to remove these temptations and get used to eating at spe-
cific times during the day, in one specific place, chewing each mouth-
ful 20 times, putting your fork down between bites, and so forth.
These behavioral techniques are supposed to help you go from
one set of (bad) habits to a different set of (good) habits. The implica-
tion is that once you’ve abandoned your bad habits it’s smooth sailing
from then on. You’ll never be tempted to return to your bad ways of
eating again.
The method behind Acting Well is more like how an actor por-
trays Hamlet.
The actor would never look on his normal life as a series of “bad
habits” and try to modify his behavior to take on Hamlet’s “good
habits.” Nor would he seek to change anything permanently. He
changes his behavior (that is, his actions) only temporarily. When the
show’s over the actor goes back to his normal life.
In the same way, when you practice Acting Well you only alter
your actions (you “create your character”) beginning with Morning
Preparation and developing further on your World Walk. In other
words, you only need to “perform” twice a day for a few minutes at a
time, sometimes before an audience of strangers, just as an actor only
needs to rehearse or perform for two hours eight or nine times a
week. He’s never expected to permanently change his character.
However, an actor may depend on certain behavior modification
techniques to portray Hamlet “honestly.” For example, he may wear a
certain costume made out of a fabric that provokes certain sensations
and emotions in him. He may surround himself with personal items
that recall incidents that help set the scene for him. The set and light-
ing design may trigger appropriate feelings in him, and so forth. In
the same way, you may select various items to set the Acting Well
scene for you.
However, the actor will never “become” Hamlet—unless he has a
serious nervous breakdown! Nor will you ever “become” a different
person permanently. Every morning and afternoon your play will be-
gin again (and it should be play, not work!). You’ll need to set yourself
in a specific place, take more care in choosing your costume, and so
on. Your life may change, but your goal shouldn’t be to change your-
self permanently—although you may find yourself developing cer-

184
tain habits that change your life for the better. However, if that hap-
pens it will happen on the edge of your consciousness, not at the cen-
ter. You can’t aim for results. You have to trick yourself into them,
just as an actor produces real emotions through tricks and techniques.
If you think of Acting Well as a behavior modification program
where bad habits turn into good ones, then it won’t work for you.
There will never come a time when it will all come naturally to you
(that is, when you can just “coast” on your achievements). Acting
Well doesn’t work that way.
You must play the game every day, returning to the same tech-
niques, and improve them constantly. The task is as challenging and
satisfying as it is for an actor who returns each time to the job of por-
traying Hamlet; and for similar reasons.
Living fully in the moment (that is, becoming as conscious as you
can be), which can happen during Acting Well in the morning, or on
the World Walk, doesn’t happen because you’ve developed a new
“good habit.” On the contrary, the idea that you can always be in a
state of perfection is contrary not only to Acting Well, but to logic
and human nature. Such expectations demand too much of you—
which is the main reason why behavior modification programs that
promise permanent change rarely last.
Your arousal to consciousness may happen only rarely. Make the
most of it when it does!

Why I Can’t Change

In order to practice Acting Well, you must change.
Change doesn’t mean gritting your teeth, taking whatever is in
your brain, and making it different (according to the “prevailing the-
ory of the mind”). On the contrary, parts of your old self must dis-
connect and dissolve, while new, currently unimaginable parts, which
have never existed, must be created. Until these new parts come into
existence (or, if they already exist, until you activate them), you can’t
change.
Power relationships in the world have evolved over millennia so
that political forces, in order to maintain power, resist change. People
who want to change and can’t are victims of these political forces—
which create, support, or follow religions that believe in immutable
and immortal powers (such as gods). These immutable forces set cul-
tural examples that must be followed, often on pain of excommunica-
tion—or worse.
“God always was and always will be,” these politicians proclaim.
“Divine” forces can’t be changed. “Natural Law” has always known
what’s right and wrong. Even death can’t change the “soul.”
Thus was born the doctrine of predestination; and thus was born
the belief that, “deep down, everyone is good”—or, alternatively,
“deep down, everyone’s a sinner,” damned to Hell, unless saved.
The inference drawn by any patient that believes in these immu-

185
table powers, and whose doctor prescribes a lifestyle change, is: “I can
never change!”
For 50 years, neuroscientists have followed this (socio-political)
party line in believing that the basis of human knowledge and behav-
ior is genetically inborn—or at least permanently established in in-
fancy. It can neither grow nor change. It can only improvise and die—
with the body.
Since legitimate scientists universally favor the idea of evolution,
however, neuroscientists have lately tended to support the idea that
the brain must work according to Darwinian principles. On the other
hand, most neuroscientists, still regarding the principle of neurogene-
sis irrelevant, cling to the idea that old or new neurons are tabulae
rasae upon which new connections inscribe novel thoughts and
memories.
What these neuroscientists fail to realize is that in order to have a
Darwinian selection process in the brain, the selection must choose
between existing “set” possibilities. A neuron, therefore, cannot be a
tabula rasa. It must, somehow, be “set,” just as you must unfold and
set up a real card table before you can sit down and play cards—or
eat.
It’s not true that the environment “sets” our tables. The neuron it-
self (actually a column of neurons) is born with its own unique place
setting that is suitable for only certain kinds of menus. Various foods
may match these menus; but the choices (which are Darwinian) must
match a certain degree of precision that will ultimately select a few
possibilities in order to discard many.
In other words, if the brain were a tabula rasa on which the envi-
ronment inscribes new memories as novel events occur, how could
Darwinian selection take place? A Darwinian process is only possible
in cases where many memories wait for an environmental event to se-
lect (or activate) one possibility. The result is that many other possi-
bilities fade and disappear.
Thus, for a patient who is told: “From now on, you must eat oat-
meal (or an equivalent food) for breakfast every morning for the rest
of your life,” there is bound to be a negative reaction.
“I don’t see my future that way,” the patient may say. “I can’t
even imagine it!”
What must happen is that new brain cells “set” for oatmeal can
only be activated by environmental events (such as one’s own prepa-
ration and eating of oatmeal) before a life-long habit can begin to es-
tablish itself. Reading a book (even this one!) isn’t enough. “Motiva-
tion” isn’t enough. Attending lectures isn’t enough. Following a doc-
tor’s orders isn’t enough. Arguing with a friend, no matter how per-
suasive the friend, isn’t enough. Contemplation isn’t enough. Prayer
isn’t enough. Starting a new diet on Monday isn’t enough.
Simple action is enough.
Once you take action a few times, it will amaze you how you
suddenly feel, with complete certainty, “I could have been doing this
all along! I love it! It’s ‘me’!”

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 You’ve sat down at the right table that someone (or something)
else has set for you. The servants have arrived and spooned out the
food. The smell delights you. The taste satisfies.
You’ve changed.

German Spanish
Let’s say you have weak lungs, and your doctor orders you to
move permanently to a warm, dry climate. You settle on Mexico. You
can afford to move and live there, and the climate is agreeable. The
problem is, you don’t speak Spanish.
Therefore, you seek out the best and most convenient language
teacher with whom you can study intensively for the next six weeks.
At the end of the period, you’ll be able to speak fluent German.
...Wait!
Why study German if you’re going to live in Mexico?
The reason, you point out (with perfect logic), is that the Spanish
teacher requires a year of study to learn the language properly;
whereas the German teacher makes you work longer, harder hours so
that you can make a year’s progress in one-eighth of the time.
You want to get your foreign language “out of the way” before
you move down there, so you can settle in right away instead of de-
laying your enjoyment of Mexico a whole year while you learn the
language.
It makes perfect sense, right?
Obviously, if you follow this crazy logic, you’d be better off stay-
ing home!
The parable illustrates what happens when otherwise intelligent
people decide that they’re willing to lose weight if (and only if) they
can lose it quickly. They figure that if they have to struggle with ad-
hering to a diet, they might as well “get it out of the way” as fast as
possible.
The truth is, these people are practicing German to live perma-
nently in Mexico.
It won’t work! Their plan, however logical it is, is doomed to fail
because it’s inappropriate.
If you want to move to Mexico, it behooves you to take as long as
you need in order to learn the language. The best way to learn it is to
move there and pick it up naturally. Furthermore, there are many
more things to learn about Mexico in order to live more comfortably
than the language!
Likewise, when an overweight person decides to become a slim
person, it’s like moving to a foreign country (let’s call it “the Republic
of Thin”). The people in Thin tend to think a certain way, speak a cer-
tain way, eat certain indigenous foods at certain times of the day, and
so on. It’s not just their language that’s different, it’s everything.
Therefore, if you want to move to Thin, you have to develop an en-
tirely new set of habits.

187
 The people in Thin don’t starve themselves regularly to lose
weight. They don’t have to, because they’re already thin! They main-
tain their thinness by eating regularly in a more controlled manner.
Thus, they never get fat.
In order to live comfortably among the people of Thin, you need
to learn their customs. As Mexicans don’t normally speak German,
the people of Thin don’t normally stay on starvation diets.
Unfortunately, when most people try to lose weight, they pick a
starvation diet (which is any diet that permits no more than 1,500
calories per day) from hundreds of diets that are available. Most peo-
ple consider a diet “meaningful” only if someone can lose at least a
pound or two a week by following it.
Many people enjoy going on these starvation diets—for a while.
These people like challenges. When learning a new language, they en-
joy the extra thrill of being able to travel in a foreign country and read
shop signs and converse more easily. Similarly, many people on star-
vation diets enjoy the camaraderie of support groups. They enjoy the
moral victory of shedding 20 or 30 pounds.
However, like the American tourist who feels a special patriotic
glee when coming home to American soil, there comes a time at the
end of every diet when the challenge is over, the pounds are lost, and
the “reward time” brings the erstwhile dieter back to the cakes, the
pies, the second helpings, and the two martinis before dinner.
“I proved I can do it,” means, “I can do it again and again, as
needed.”
Welcome to yo-yo diet-land!
If you want to lose weight permanently, don’t learn German to go
to Mexico! Don’t go on a starvation diet that will inevitably lead to
your gaining back the weight you lost! Develop a new way of life that
will make you more conscious and healthier, not just thinner.

Imagination
Modern acting technique is mostly based on techniques devel-
oped by Konstantin Stanislavski about a century ago in Russia. These
techniques were brought to the United States and used in the 1930s by
the Group Theatre.
Lee Strasberg was probably the most prominent proponent of
some of these techniques (which he called “the Method”). Stella
Adler, however, was the only member of the Group Theatre actually
to study with Stanislavski. When she brought back her knowledge of
Stanislavski’s “System,” it was slightly different from Strasberg’s.
When she protested that her technique conformed more closely to
Stanislavski’s than Strasberg’s, Strasberg argued that “Stanislavski is
wrong!” Thus, a rift developed between the two acting teachers.
Adler eventually left the Group Theatre to run her own acting
school until her death in 1992. The Group Theatre ended operations
in 1941, and Lee Strasberg went on to form the Actors Studio (and

188
later the Lee Strasberg Institute) where he continued to promulgate
his acting method.
Stella Adler claimed that the main difference between the Stras-
berg method and the Adler technique had to do with the role of the
“imagination.” Strasberg taught actors to use “sense memories” and
other technical means to recall actual incidents and the specific details
surrounding them in order to reawaken emotions that would make
an actor’s character more credible. Adler insisted that techniques
based on “emotional recall” were too confining, not always reliable,
and less rich as sources of inspiration than what she called “imagina-
tion.”
People often referred to Strasberg as a “guru”; for his relation-
ships with his students tended to be strongly hierarchical and directo-
rial. Adler, on the other hand, says in her book, The Art of Acting,
“Write this down: ‘My aim is to be independent from Miss Adler or
anybody else....’ I will help you to achieve this independence.”
Strasberg’s technique, of course, was based on the “prevailing
theory of the mind,” in which thoughts and memories are supposedly
formed out of new connections between neuronal groups. These con-
nections (according to the theory) are created fresh and become per-
manent because of actual, real events in the outside world (except for
aberrant cases of hallucinations, etc.). The “teacher” (or parent or
guru) who “got there first” must, therefore, be obeyed. An actor’s
“imagination” is too wild and unreliable to guide anyone’s perform-
ance.
Adler’s technique was more tolerant of an actor’s “imagination.”
Her point of view, therefore, was more in line (although she didn’t
know it) with the hypothesis that all memories (especially emotional
memories) are combinations of pre-formed referents, and may there-
fore be activated not only by events in the real world and aberrations
in the brain, but through what she called “imagination.”
If a dream can activate a combination of preexisting columns (that
is, a “memory”), which, because it reverberates for some time, seems
to have as much “reality” to it as “the real thing,” then “imagination”
can probably do the same—at least according to Adler.
The debate between proponents of the Actors Studio and the
Stella Adler Studio of Acting continues. (On occasions, it becomes
heated!) One problem the Adler proponents have is that the word
“imagination” is always so poorly defined. If you understand the
word in terms of the neural hypothesis above, it becomes clear that
there’s no real difference between “imagination” and “perception.”
That idea, of course, is the point of the hypothesis and its relationship
to Acting Well.
In a sense, we can make our own reality without listening to well-
meaning experts (like Lee Strasberg) to become exceptional actors in
life. In that sense, teachers like Stella Adler are more to be trusted be-
cause they want to liberate us (as does Acting Well) from false as-
sumptions and information. These methods can therefore teach us to
trust our “intuition”—meaning to become more aware of our own

189
impressions, which is one of the goals of Morning Preparation, for ex-
ample.
Full disclosure: although I never met Stella Adler, I’m currently a
consultant to her acting studio and good friends of her surviving
family. However, I was a member of the Actors Studio Playwrights
Unit for two years, occasionally driving Lee Strasberg home. Al-
though I knew him only slightly, I respected his directorial and ana-
lytic brilliance above anyone else’s. Nevertheless, I think he was
dead wrong on the issues with which he differed with Stella Adler.

FAQ: How much weight can I lose on

your system?
What “They” say:

 Choose any objective you like! Lose five, ten, fifteen, even a
hundred pounds almost instantly and without stapling, lipo-
suction, organ removal, or amputation! Our “scientific system”
has you figure out how many pounds you want to lose, then
divides that number by ten, and that’s how many weeks it will
take you—if you lose ten pounds a week!

 In other words, we promise you the Moon. But if you can’t get
to the Moon on your own steam, that’s your fault.

 Therefore, since every case is different, you may just be that one
in a trillion lucky people for whom our system works. (Not that
it ever has.)
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

One of the things “method acting” teachers tell their students is:
“Don’t go for results!” If an actor goes for results, the audience won't
believe the performance (precisely because no believable character
would ever “go for results”). Therefore, if you learn technique (that is,
some “tricks of the trade”), the results will take care of themselves.
That’s the magic of the Stanislavski system.
In other words, creating a goal for yourself (for example, “to lose
20 pounds by December”) is a bad, bad idea! For example, for most
adults, becoming overweight is only one of the most obvious symp-
toms of the general deterioration of the body as people disengage
from their youth to enter middle age. Other effects of age-related de-
terioration include more serious ailments, such as heart disease, dia-
betes, arthritis, and the kind of cancers that show up when people get
older. Thus, there are far more important issues at stake for those who
practice Acting Well than vanity or pride in appearance.
A person who stays in tip-top condition can avoid most, if not all,

190
age-related systemic ailments for a long time. Therefore, the overall
objective of Acting Well is to address every major area of health that
can help you be in top condition. The program won’t work unless all
these areas are addressed. (An actor, after all, has to be concerned
about more than lines: there are proper costumes, makeup, sound,
lighting, and stage directions that go into perfecting a performance.
You need to think about these things, too.)
Thus, the program should not be used merely to lose a specific
number of pounds. That’s like an actor’s objective playing a particular
role being “to get good reviews.” Critical notices or applause have
nothing to do with a fictional character’s life! Nor does losing weight
according to a particular schedule have anything to do with creating
yourself as a “thin person.” It can take a long time to learn to be thin.
If you try to speed things up, all you may do is create a fat person
who suddenly gets thin by means of a temporary starvation diet. You
won’t have trained that thin person to feel comfortable staying thin
by continuing to stay on a thin person’s diet. Therefore, when reach-
ing a “goal weight,” the first thing such a person may do is revert as
soon as possible to his or her original diet—which rewards hunger in-
stead of eliminating it, which is one reason why people get fat in the
first place.
Therefore, don’t choose a certain number of pounds to lose by the
end of a particular period. It won’t help you, it will only hinder; when
you reach your goal you’ll simply reward your hard-won success by
getting fat again.
The proper answer to the question about how much weight you
can lose while Acting Well is that Acting Well will help you reach
the ideal weight for your body type if you improve your life in all ma-
jor health areas, especially in the area of fitness. There are no limita-
tions as long as you don’t go for results. The best schedule for weight
loss, however (and the answer to the question), is that you can expect
to lose about two pounds per month without making extraordinary
efforts. Don’t try for more heroic measures. They’ll defeat you in the
end.

Contradictory Science
Science offers considerable health advice that sometimes isn’t
good, isn’t true, changes quickly, is contradictory, or is out of date.
Consequently, many people don’t know what to do or what to be-
lieve.
For example, within a single article by Jane Brody in the New York
Times about macular degeneration, the reader fearful of the disease is
advised to avoid cholesterol (a suspected cause) by cutting out meat
and fatty foods. A few paragraphs later the same reader is advised
that zinc may protect against the disease; and that “food sources of
zinc include meat, liver, [and] eggs”—in other words, foods infamous
for containing the highest concentrations of cholesterol!

191
 Ms. Brody doesn’t mention the ludicrous inconsistency. Such con-
tradictions are typical of many studies—although rarely so blatant
within a single article.
Here’s another example from Ms. Brody (who, for my money, is
one of the best medical science writers in the business, by the way):
The very wide leather belts worn to protect the backs of men who lift
heavy objects apparently give more support to the image and ego
than to vulnerable body parts.... Dr. William Marraas and his col-
leagues at Ohio State University...said... “If back belts offer any
help at all under realistic circumstances, it’s a very small effect.”
Yet shortly thereafter, Dr. Simeon Margolis, in a Johns Hopkins
“White Paper,” reported: “Contrary to previous research, back belts
may in fact help prevent low back pain.”
Which report do you believe?
Marcia Angell, M.D., the executive editor of The New England
Journal of Medicine (which is arguably the most authoritative medical
research publication in America), is an intelligent writer who demon-
strated (in the New York Times Magazine) how easily and confusingly
medical statistics can be manipulated.
Take the study that found post-menopausal estrogen is associated
with a 30 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer.... Since only
3 or 4 percent of post-menopausal women will get breast cancer in
the next 10 years..., put in another way...this study shows that your
chances of remaining free of breast cancer for 10 years would de-
crease from over 96 percent to about 95 percent. These ways of ex-
pressing the same finding have very different psychological effects,
even though they are saying the same thing.
On the other hand, breast surgeon Dr. Susan Love (in an Op-Ed
piece in the Times) warns women against post-menopausal hormone
therapy altogether. She believes that the only virtue in treating meno-
pause “as a disease” is to make money for doctors and pharmaceuti-
cal companies. “True,” she writes:
The women on hormones have 50 percent less heart disease—but
they are also better educated, richer, and more likely to see a doctor
and take care of their health than the women not on hormones. Un-
til a study takes these factors into account, we won’t know whether
hormones make women healthy, or whether healthy women take
hormones.
One of the most frightening and ludicrous scientific studies to be
reported by Ms. Brody announced that Dr. Paul T. Williams, a Ber-
keley, California epidemiologist had conducted a survey of nearly
7,000 male runners showing that for each decade, the average six-
foot-tall man put on 3.3 pounds, and his waist grew by about three-
fourths of an inch. From this data, Dr. Williams deduced the idea that
men who run an average of 10 miles a week at age 30 should run 24
miles a week by age 40 and 38 miles a week by age 50. According to
this scenario, by age 100, a normal man should run 108 miles per

192
week, or an average of 15 miles per day, for the main purpose of
keeping his tummy trim!
Such arrogant stupidity is breathtaking!

Metabolizing Calories
Typical advice given people interested in losing weight is: “Calo-
ries in equal calories out.”
Not true!
For example, I often notice on cold days that when I first begin to
ride my bike once around Central Park (which is 6.1 miles), I’m cold.
At least one of my thumbs (and if it’s really cold, both thumbs) may
begin to feel numb around halfway. Then as I go on, I get warmer.
3/4 of the way around I may notice that I want to open my jacket and
let the air cool me off, at which time my numb thumb isn’t numb any
more!
What explains this phenomenon? The heat I feel indicates that po-
tential (that is, stored) energy is being converted or broken down
(“metabolized”) into the kinetic (or “working”) energy that drives my
muscles, and thereby into heat.
Calories are measurements of heat. Therefore, the heat that warms
up my body from numbing cold into not so numbing cold represents
“calories being burned.”
If I start to get cold immediately after I begin my ride around the
park (and remain cold half way around), and then begin to warm up
toward the end of my ride, it follows that energy in my body is being
created at a different rate at the beginning of an exercise than at the
end. In other words, calories burn at different rates, depending on
how long an exercise has been going on.
For example, at a constant rate of increase, you might burn less
than 1/2 of a calorie during the first minute of intense exercise, 3 calo-
ries during the seventh minute, 6 calories during the 13th minute, 7
calories during the 17th minute, 10 calories during the 23rd minute, and
13 calories during the 30th minute. (You will go on burning calories in
diminishing degrees even after finishing your exercise—although you
expend no effort to do so!)
These variations are huge although the total number of calories
burned up in a half an hour at a variable rate would still typically be
around 200. If, on the other hand, the rate of calories burned were
constant during intense exercise, then (1) my fingers wouldn’t go
from warm to numb to warm (they would go from warm to numb to
frostbitten!); and (2) I would burn a constant seven calories during
every moment of exercise and nothing thereafter (as is implied when-
ever anyone says “I just burned off 400 calories at the gym!”).
The upshot is that nothing significant can be learned by trying to
calculate how many calories you burn while exercising.
There are so many other variables involved in “counting calories
burned” that the whole subject is fraught with inaccuracies and ab-

193
surd deductions. How large a portion of food are you eating com-
pared to what the box says one portion should equal? What is your
average metabolic rate? Does that rate change at different times of the
day? Does it change according to how much you weigh? Does it
change according to your age? Have you exercised intensely for ex-
actly 30 minutes? What happens at only 20 minutes? What happens at
45 minutes? Have you taken it easy during part of the intense exer-
cise? (Was there any intense exercise?) How many times did you take
a break?
Over a month or more, if you do only one exercise for a constant
period of time, and eat a constant daily diet, you may begin to be able
to calculate accurately whether your exercising metabolizes your food
sufficiently, or if you need to cut down on food, or speed up on exer-
cise, or both. However, if you begin adding several variable exercises
to one another, or eat a variable diet, then trying to calculate “how
many calories you burned at the gym” is impossible.
Therefore, to claim that “calories in equal calories out” is a mean-
ingless statement. Food and exercise are separate things whose effect
on each other, for all practical purposes, is incalculable and therefore
of no interest.

FAQ: Should I snack between meals?

What “They” say:

 It’s important that you never let yourself get hungry, because if
you do, you might get out of control and go off your diet.

 The best way to control your hunger is by snacking between

meals. Of course, you should only snack on “approved” foods,
like tasteless biscuits, stringy veggies, and sugarless fruit.

 Always leave healthy treats sitting around the kitchen for the
kiddies to munch on. Sure, the little darlings are gonna just love
those carrot and celery sticks! They’re so fresh and crunchy!
(except when you leave them on countertops—so they can be
seen and eaten, but where they become warm and soggy!).

 There are some important health issues involved, as well.

Snacking gets you used to eating smaller lunches and dinners,
and that’s not bad. It also balances your sugar levels better, al-
lowing you to avoid hypoglycemia (and maybe even diabetes!).

 In other words, you shouldn’t eat less than five meals per day:
breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two in-between snacks.

 Therefore, by satisfying your hunger between regular meals,

you’ll be satisfied at lunch and dinner by eating smaller por-
tions.

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_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

This advice is so horrendous as to defy belief!
Snacking is truly terrible for a number of reasons. Among them
are:
• Rather than sating your hunger with snacks, you’re
much more likely both to stimulate and reward your
enhanced desire for the pleasures of eating.
• Snacking is unlikely to decrease your portion sizes at
lunch or dinner. All that will happen is that you’ll eat
more. When “food specialists” (that is, mainly, “pro-
fessional” nutritionists) encourage their clients to
snack, they’re giving people “official permission” to
continue their habit of eating more food every day.
• People who snack tend to move from one snack food
to another depending on what they buy on impulse at
the store. Therefore, rather than being content to
snack on “rabbit food” at the beginning of a diet,
most people move quickly on to cookies, candy, and
worse. By that time, it quickly becomes impossible
to control their eating habits.
• Perhaps the worst snacks of all are the small choco-
late candy bars supposedly filled with nutrients for
people on diets. Who can eat only one of those suck-
ers? Some people have been known to eat a whole
box in a single sitting! Advertisers who appeal to
people’s hunger, in order to sell diet food that will
only make them fatter, are truly contemptible!
• The best way for you to control your sugar levels
and avoid hypoglycemia is to eat the same three bal-
anced meals per day. You will actually have pre-
tested your meals not only for their weight control
virtues, but for how well they control your sugar lev-
els. Thus, a regularized 3-meal menu is the best pre-
caution against hypoglycemic reactions and the
problems that can go with them (such as so-called
“carbohydrate addiction” and adult-onset diabetes).
In fact, it’s quite possible (although this theory
hasn’t been properly tested) that a correctly regular-

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 ized menu can be considered an ideal preventive
measure against sugar problems.

In other words, don’t get into the habit of snacking on a regular

basis. If you’re offered something or see something occasionally, and
you eat it, who’s to know? However, if you start (or continue to)
snack regularly, everyone’s going to know, because you’re going to
get, or continue to be, fat! Also, don’t assume you have any defenses
against the temptation to snack. Nobody does!
Therefore, don’t buy snack food when you go to the market.
Don’t allow it in your house. Get rid of everything you have that can
turn into a snack. (If you have to eat it, do so this once, but don’t re-
place it!) Finally, if someone in your house is too fat, don’t put stum-
bling blocks before the blind! Get rid of all snack foods!

The Numbers Games

In most respects, the preventive medicine game is as speculative
as the stock market.
There’s nothing wrong with playing the stock market as long as
you understand (1) it’s a game and not a serious science, (2) it’s not
always honest, and (3) many of its theorists preach nonsense.
Remember the crash in 1929 that nearly ruined the country? “The
fundamental economy is sound,” President Hoover kept saying. Nev-
ertheless, what goes up can tumble down. Even great racehorses
stumble and are shot.
There’s nothing wrong with playing the preventive medicine
game as long as you don’t take it seriously. Unfortunately, most peo-
ple who play the game believe, despite all evidence to the contrary,
that it’s “immoral” to get sick or die, and if you play your cards right
you can live forever.
Ask them! Science keeps coming up with new things—who
knows? Why not? You don’t win if you don’t play!
You may have nothing better to do with your life than try to pro-
long it. You may think by maximizing your intake of pills, oils, herbs,
and powders you’re maximizing your chances of good health. Like a
serious gambler, you (or your clever doctor) may have developed the
“perfect system.” Nevertheless, all “systems” fail in the end. All
you’re doing is putting all your chips on all the numbers, thinking
that when the wheel spins around again, your chances of a long and
healthy life increase.
Not true! The opposite!
If you drive past Las Vegas or Atlantic City billboards touting this
or that hotel, you’ll soon get the impression that your life’s fortune is
waiting for you in one of those casinos. Millions of dollars are at
stake, but—hey, you can’t win the lottery if you don’t place your bet!
Gambling is a poor way to manage your life, because life is not

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roulette. The odds against living forever are 100% against you. The
more bets you place, the sooner you deplete your base. Eventually the
house wins it all.
The scientific-sounding speculative numbers game in the health
field seems to have magical aspects. Thus, counting survival rates or
triglycerides, like counting face cards or price-to-earnings ratios,
lends prestige to those who count the beans. Longevity, however, like
winning at the stock market or at craps, is a dicey and temporary
business. Success at gambling or at life is a result of elements on
which only fools depend: factors such as inheritance, environment,
and imponderable luck.
Thus, the promise of good health and long years, although some
people are rewarded, is like the promise of disposable income during
retirement that every stockbroker promises. It’s never a sure thing.
Read the fine print. Too long a life can be a curse, and some people’s
wealth is wasted stupidly on intractable pain.
Does a rich fool live a worthwhile life? Do you want to live to be
120 and spend two decades in a nursing home, helpless, uncomfort-
able, impoverished, abandoned, incontinent, and gaga? Is that how all
those push-ups and vitamin pills and broccoli for dinner and monthly
investment plan payments reward you?
There are at least 1,000 good stocks you can buy, and every one of
them may fail. There are at least 1,000 “good for you” supplements
available in the average health food store, and any one of them might
prolong someone’s agony.
People fear death and impoverishment inordinately. They covet
things when they should covet joy, euphoria, pleasure, and happi-
ness—all of which are evanescent, and none of which you’re aware
for more than a few seconds at a time.
The clever gambler loves the game, lives in the moment, and says:
“You can’t take it with you so why not enjoy it?” So go ahead and
play your games. Gamble on good health, if you like! However, if
you’re not enjoying yourself, there’s something’s wrong.
Take note.

Generating Self-Discipline
Believe it or not, the major self-discipline problems you’ll have
motivating your fitness and nutritional routines every day will have
little to do with the discipline required to execute the physical labor of
exercising or restraining yourself from eating improperly.
The problem of self-discipline, when it comes to exercise, has
more to do with getting yourself to the point of committing to do the
exercise. Similarly, you need more self-discipline in a supermarket,
stopping yourself from purchasing tempting snacks you shouldn’t
buy, than you do at home. (If you don’t buy it, you won’t eat it!)
If you go to a health club every day, you’ll probably want to
change into leisure clothes first. Then you’ll have to walk or drive to

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the club. Once inside a health club, your habits naturally take over.
When you don’t have to think about what you’re doing, no discipline
is required. The only real problem you’re likely to have will be getting
there. Thus the major self-discipline you’ll have to exert (at least at
first) will be to change your clothes and travel to the club!
If you ride your bicycle six miles a day, you’ll probably want to
change your clothes and shoes before you go out. Then, if you live
high up in the city, you’ll have to take your bicycle downstairs, which
can be a complicated nuisance. Schlepping a bicycle down a service
elevator in an apartment building is such a bother that it may require
the major part of your self-discipline to permit people to see you
dressed in skimpy clothes and a silly-looking helmet. However, by
the time you’re pedaling down the street as fast as an automobile,
you’ll experience a sense of freedom you can’t possibly get in an ele-
vator. Once on course, you’ll feel no need for discipline at all. You’ll
simply pedal for six miles, cheerfully expending the effort you need
to mount steep hills, and be glad you can do it.
Even if you only practice aerobic dancing in your living room,
you’ll still have to adjust your clothing, clear the area for dancing,
start the CD or the tape, and so on. More importantly, you’ll have to
prepare yourself psychically to get in the mood for dancing. That ef-
fort may continue for several minutes after you start the music. You’ll
find that these preliminary efforts require more self-discipline than
hip-hopping around the living room, once you’ve gotten “into it.”
The major value of Morning Preparation results from the structure
of Steps & Landings. Every time you go from a Step to a Landing and
back again, you’re “beginning” another time, because you have to use
alternate parts of your brain to go from one psychic effort to the other.
It takes self-discipline to alternate these efforts. However, it gets eas-
ier (on a particular day) each time you do it.
In other words, it takes self-discipline to begin a Step; and it takes
self-discipline to give off “thinking” and return to writing. Therefore,
your total of eight items a day will yield 16 “reversals,” each of which
requires less and less self-discipline. By the time you’re ready to eat
properly portioned meals and exercise for fitness, you’ll find it less
difficult to initiate the preliminary tasks that require the self-
discipline you need for Acting Well.
These examples illustrate how Acting Well is an integrated pro-
gram where all elements work together to maintain a general level of
self-discipline (or “motivation”). Once you’ve “rehearsed” the more
difficult preliminary habits of self-discipline often enough that you
don’t have to think about them any more, you’ll maintain the easier
“performance” habits for the rest of your life.
When audiences witness great acting, the “results” appear magi-
cal to those who don’t know how someone can do it time after time.
Enjoy the “rave reviews”!

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 The Eye of God
95% of Americans believe in God, and most of them would be as-
tonished to learn that Hindu practitioners of yoga do not.
Hinduism is a polytheistic religion. It has no “God” with a capital
G. It has many gods that come from times that preceded the Judeo-
Christian concept of monotheism.
Western practitioners of yoga who include notions of “God” in
their literature do so, by their own admission, as an inauthentic
means to attract the American public. (Some of the most highly re-
spected will even frankly admit to a charge of “pandering”!)
Since Acting Well is keenly respectful of, and submissive to, sci-
entific inquiry, you might expect that it would have nothing to do
with religion.
However, there’s nothing incompatible between Acting Well and
the practice of any religion at all. They are simply separate things, for
there is no religious component that is part of Acting Well. As Amer-
ica is a country in which the separation of church and state is an im-
portant part of the nation’s freedom, Acting Well will never make
reference to God or to moral or religious convictions that are not held
by every American.
There’s an experience that results from practicing Acting Well,
however, that might be considered religious. It’s the final step of the
Morning Preparation—called the Oculus—and it comes as close as you
can get to finding God.
When you see the Oculus it won’t be like seeing the “God” you
learned about as a child. It will be obvious that this presence is one
you conjured up yourself—more like the god-idols that emerging so-
cieties worshipped in prehistoric times.
It neither created you nor preceded you, and it will not survive
your death. It doesn’t speak and it can’t guide your moral life. It’s
completely yours, and it can’t be shared with anyone.
Your Morning Preparation will be like a sacrifice (of your time) to
this god; and as close to a private religious ceremony as you’re likely
to get outside a church, synagogue, mosque, or ashram.
Will you come to “believe” or have faith in this “god” if you prac-
tice Acting Well?
Yes, if you reach the final pinnacle of its practice, which is to be
able to visualize the Oculus. You will “feel” its truth, which is to know
its existence. Your belief will be as strong as that of many people who
are convinced that a personal God watches over them. The Oculus
will watch you and witness your performance. Indeed, it’s watching
at this very moment!
It’s a benign god, not an evil spirit. It will never interfere in your
life. It will never hurt you (or punish your sins) nor will it ever help
you (by answering prayers). It will simply be there when you look for
it during your Morning Preparation, and rarely any other time. How-

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ever, the fact that you look for it daily, and that you know it always
watches you, is the ultimate source that empowers the resolution to
change your life. It’s the face of your willpower.
The Oculus is not unlike the eye of “HAL,” Stanley Kubrick’s
computer god in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The effect of “seeing” it is
similar. It’s always there, ready to observe, offering no response be-
yond that which it is programmed (by you) to do.
In one respect, it is not unlike the God of the Chassidic Jews, who
believe that God depends on Man to worship Him. There’s more to it
than that, of course; but those Jews understand something you will
come to understand: that the Oculus, as your audience, depends on
your performance. This knowledge is more than comforting. When
your sights close in on it, it’s thrilling!

That and Which

After many years of being unaware that I had made up my own,
unconventional rules about when to use “that” and when to use
“which,” I started using the “Spelling and Grammar” option of Mi-
crosoft WORD. I soon discovered that I was making major grammati-
cal errors!
I researched the problem on the Internet and began to practice
some examples. At first, I had to think about what I did each time. A
few weeks later, all at once I became “certain” of the difference. I no
longer had to refer to, or remember any rules, or even think about the
problem. I “just knew.”
This sense of certainty mystified me. After all, I’d been doing
things wrong for at least fifty years! Suddenly, after a few weeks, I
started to get it right each time, without “thinking,” as if I’d always
known what to do.
My certainty came about abruptly, unexpectedly, from out of the
blue, giving me possession of a piece of knowledge that I never
thought I could possess. (I learned that, generally speaking, use
“which” with commas and “that” without—not that that distinction
covers the entire matter!)
I now realize what the substance of my newfound knowledge
was. There had to be some new brain cells in my head that weren’t
there previously. In other words, learning the difference between
“that” and “which” isn’t just a matter of older brain cells hooking up
in new or different ways (in which case the “difference” wouldn’t feel
so abrupt or unequivocal), but of new cells patching together old ones
in ways that were formerly impossible (or highly improbable) be-
cause “something just wasn’t there.” Now it is.
Furthermore, I now notice the correct or incorrect usage of “that”
and “which” every time these choices appear in other people’s writ-
ing. The words stand out like sore thumbs, and I’ve learned that there
are many professional writers who continue to be as confused as I
used to be about these words!

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 How can this phenomenon be possible without neurogenesis?
Is the difference between choosing between “that” and “which”
so different from choosing between health-promoting foods in the
supermarket and foods that provide only empty calories?
There’s no question that my bicycling experiences have changed
since I first began them. The whole experience of getting ready to go
out to ride has shifted from a semi-embarrassing, uncertain struggle
at the service elevator, and considerable energy expended getting
around the park, to a pleasant experience to which I look forward,
and which I miss when the weather makes it impossible.
I’ve learned about the subtleties of riding, such as where and
when to speed up and slow down, how to stand up while pedaling
(which took me years to try!), what to expect along various stretches
of the road, and so forth. These bits of knowledge express modes of
“certainty” as strong as those concerning “that” and “which.”
I now understand, furthermore, why most people are reluctant to
exercise and eat healthy. They’re as uncertain about “how to live” as I
used to be about “that” and “which”!
I also realize that they could master as much knowledge about
life as I have gained recently about grammar if they’d just make the
proper effort. The secret is giving your brain a chance to hook up new
cells. Understanding and believing in neurogenesis, therefore, can be
a step toward healthier living. Once you understand how things
work, you can glory in the process when it works so clearly to your
advantage.

Does God Exist?

Turning the question into a negative, if you asked me, “Does God
not exist?” my answer would quote President Clinton:
It depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” means. If “is”
means “is, and never has been,” that’s one thing. If it means, “there
is none,” that was a completely true statement.
In other words, whether or not you deny the existence of God de-
pends not so much on your belief or non-belief in a Deity as it does on
your belief or non-belief in the existence of “existence.”
Do you believe anything “exists”? If so, try to prove it!
On the other hand, if, like any scientist or actor, you realize that
when you try to create something (like a “fact” or a “character”)
through mere words or sheer willpower, you won’t get very far.
You’ll eventually convince yourself that the ideas you have about
things you believe “exist” have more to do with actions you observe
(things or people doing something) than about metaphysical states of
being that could theoretically be devoid of action (such as unex-
pressed “willpower”).
Anything not animated can’t operate in the Universe. Therefore,
animation expressed through action is a ruling factor behind anything

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whose existence we claim (as in “loyalty”), believe in (as in “ghosts”),
or measure (as in “heat”). Therefore, it isn’t necessary to decide
whether something exists or not. If something has a measurable ac-
tion, you won’t go wrong by claiming it exists. If it has no action (for
example, if it’s imaginary, or assigned a conventional meaning, like
the “Commonwealth” of Massachusetts), then you can believe in it or
not, however you wish. However, you can’t prove it, and you
shouldn’t have to.
Massachusetts is one of the United States of America. It isn’t a
“Commonwealth” (whatever that is). It’s only called a “Common-
wealth.”
Likewise, “God” is a conventional representation (or name, like
“Commonwealth”) of what certain religious people believe is the
animating force behind the Universe. Perhaps there’s no such thing as
a centralized animating force behind the Universe. God knows there
doesn’t have to be such an entity! Who are we to decide there does?
The Chassidic Jews, who are the most religious group of people
with whom I’m familiar, believe that God requires men to worship
Him. In effect, worshipful men (and I’m afraid the Chassidim are sex-
ists on this point) are required to bring God into existence!
If such an ultra-Orthodox group of religious people acknowledge
the importance of human religious actions (they’re required to bring
God into existence!), can we deny the imaginary and conventional
(that is, socially agreed-upon) nature of the Deity?
The important thing to resist is anyone who claims that belief in
the existence of God is “natural,” “obvious,” “inevitable,” or the
“right thing for America.” That person is assuming that “existence”
can exist without action.
There’s nothing un-American about believing in God. However,
politicizing your beliefs is against the spirit of the Declaration of In-
dependence and the Constitution of the United States. In other words,
it’s un-American.
Likewise, if anyone tries to convince you to “believe in” Acting
Well, understand that if Acting Well becomes a quasi-religion for cer-
tain people, they, too, are acting in an un-American manner.
Acting Well is only a name (a “convention”) for a collection of
techniques that can motivate your compliance to a healthier lifestyle.
If you follow it, it will work. If you don’t, it won’t exist...
...for you.

Gorge and Grow Thin!

Let’s get one thing straight: Headlines like the one above are lies!
There are no such things as “fun diets,” or ways to “melt pounds
and keep them off forever.” All that tabloid self-help talk is advertis-
ing bullshit, and this book isn’t. It’s a way to help you find your way;
and if you take it, you win. Believe it or not, that’s it.
Since there are billions of people in the world, many of them

202
overweight, there must be millions of ways to lose excess pounds and
keep them off. But there’s only one you; and so there’s only one right
way to make the improvements in your body (and brain!) that you
desire, fulfilling your wishes to be thinner, younger looking, health-
ier, and more attractive that led you to open this book in the first
place. The rest of the book will help you discover and create that
unique and singular program: the one and only program that can
work for you.
There’s no trick involved here. Thousands of diet and self-help
books have been published with nutritional formulas, programs,
methods, systems, “breakthroughs,” lists of foods to eat or avoid, sci-
entific theories, and all sorts of assorted advice, much of it contradic-
tory hoo-ha, telling you what to do, what someone else did, and
what’s supposed to work—for some people—some of the time.
Unless you’re the author of one of those books, not a single one of
them will work for you permanently.
No one has yet invented a diet that works. Not one single person.
Ditto for exercise programs; and the same for stress reduction tech-
niques. There are only a couple of rules you can extract from Amer-
ica’s expensive experience with the self-help movement, and they are:
• No one knows anything,
• No one has any willpower,
• We all lie to ourselves, and
• Nothing works!

There’s one exception to these rules, and it’s the one that proves
them all: Your way will work. It’s the only way that will.
I offer myself and my own “testimonial” as incontrovertible an-
ecdotal evidence!
I worked on some of the programs you’ll find in this book for
more than thirty years. Nevertheless, by age 50 I was overweight (by
about 15 pounds, after numerous diets failed), had hypertension (for
which I took beta blockers for four years), swallowed 12 aspirins a
day for joint pains (which one doctor misdiagnosed as arthritis), got
indigestion from eating rich food, was almost always sedentary, had
difficulty sleeping, and got pretty stressed out from overwork most of
the time.
Then a few years ago I discovered “my way.”
I started cycling six miles every day, lost the weight, threw away
the pills, changed doctors (my new doctor now calls me “ridiculously
healthy”), ignored and forgot about the pain (which went away be-
cause of the exercise), slept just fine, rarely took antacid pills, never
took laxatives, was neither lonely, unhappy, nor unloved, and almost
always felt relaxed.
Moreover, some wonderful things started happening to me psy-
chologically and socially that I knew were related to my new life. I felt

203
more a part of the world outside my Manhattan apartment. Now I’m
sure I’ll never go back to my old ways, and that I’ll be healthy right to
the end of my days.
(Of course, genetics help: both my parents lived into their 90’s.)
So, that’s my story. Now, what’s yours?

Quick Weight Loss

What difference does it make how quickly you can lose weight?
All you prove through quick weight loss is that you can quit overeat-
ing (or smoking or drinking) and then, when you’ve proven what a
strong character you have, go back to practicing your bad habits.
You don’t prove the most important thing: that you can sustain
your objective!
It’s much better to lose 15 pounds in a year than to lose 20 pounds
in two weeks; because if you follow a quick weight loss diet, in most
cases you’ll gain back most of the weight before long.
The problem with quick weight loss diets is that people under-
take them because they’ve found every diet they’ve gone on so oner-
ous that they want to “get it over with” quickly. They think that once
they’ve lost the weight it’ll be easy to maintain their ideal weight
from then on.
For example, if you weigh 170 pounds now, and have been that
weight for the past two years; and if you weighed 150 pounds in col-
lege and want to get back to that level, you may figure that if you go
on a quick weight loss diet in order to lose 20 pounds in six weeks
you’ll be able to quit the diet when you’ve reached your goal and be
able to return to the menu you’re currently on—and stay at 150
pounds forever!
After all, you stayed at 170 pounds (more or less) for two years
and perhaps only gained two pounds. Therefore, you should just
have to return to where you want to be, and then things can get back
to normal and you can eat exactly what you’re eating now—at least
for the next 20 years.
The concept makes perfect sense. It happens to be completely
wrong.
What you haven’t figured on is that your metabolism has
changed since you were young, and changed even more since you
gained all that weight. Therefore, you’re operating according to dif-
ferent rules. Your body “wants” to be at the weight you are now,
based on the level of its physical activity. To lower your weight to a
different level you must increase your physical activity and reduce
your intake to a level that neither you nor any doctor can predict is
correct except through months of experimentation.
In other words, no diet books, recipes, prescriptions, drugs, or
advice can tell you what your levels of food intake should be. Only
you can determine those levels (based on how much weight you gain
or lose over a period of adhering to a daily menu), and it may take

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you months of quasi-scientific attention to what you’re doing before
you figure out how best to meet your needs.
So, what’s the great hurry? And what are you waiting for?
If you practice Acting Well, you’ll enjoy the benefits of increased
consciousness that cushion your intake restrictions and help you cre-
ate your daily “life’s menu” that includes only the sensible foods you
love.
Then, if you include strenuous physical activity in every one of
your days from now on (which you must do if you want to maintain
an ideal weight), you can take as much as a year or even two to
achieve your healthiest weight level. At that point, it will be a piece of
(possibly dietetic) cake to maintain your ideal weight forever.

Costumes for the World Walk

Every actor needs to be concerned about costumes, not just be-
cause it impresses the audience, but because it helps to make the actor
feel like the character being portrayed.
It is this latter function we want you to think about. If you go out
for a World Walk in the city or the country, what will you wear that
will make you feel like you?
When you do Morning Preparation, the first thing you should do
(before Listening) is to remember how you felt the previous day when
out of doors. That feeling can be conjured or enhanced by remember-
ing what you were wearing and how you felt wearing the particular
garment you chose.
You may already have plenty of clothes in your wardrobe that
will be perfect for the purpose; or you may feel you need to augment
your wardrobe by purchasing special clothing that will enhance your
memory and make you feel special when you go outside.
Try to make the clothes you wear for Morning Preparation more
special by not wearing them out of doors.
Don’t choose any garment for the purpose, catch-as-catch-can.
Choose special garments every time you go outside. You may have
two or three selections from which to choose, depending on the
weather, etc.
If you wish to use clothes you already possess, then you’ll have to
“bless” the garments you wish to wear.
“Blessing” a garment means examining and looking at it to see
whether it makes you look “your best” and is the most appropriate
thing to wear for a particular occasion.
The fabric should “feel” a certain way. Avoid polyester clothing
or clothing that “looks” like it’s made out of luxurious fabric but
doesn’t “feel” that way next to your skin.
If you only possess cheap garments, you should invest in new
ones. However, try to find an inexpensive clothing store that offers a
huge selection of garments from which to choose. Spend a lot of time
going through the racks until you find exactly what suits you for the

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purpose. Maybe only one-percent of the garments will qualify; but if
you take your time and keep going back over the same garments,
you’ll probably find what you want.
Jeans, shorts, gymnasium outfits, and most casual wear appropri-
ate for fitness exercises won’t make you look your best. Outstand-
ingly handsome men and women may look great in that kind of cloth-
ing; but they look even better in the kind of clothing recommended
here.
Pay attention to accessories! The wrong jewelry, shoes, women’s
handbags, scarves, belts, etc. mainly reveal bad taste.
Once you’re dressed, try to walk among people feeling proud of
how you look. Think about the pride as you walk, and it will affect
your gait.
Walk where you’ll encounter people, but avoid large crowds.
Many African-Americans master this kind of walking best. Men
do it better than women do, although the actor playing “Patsy,” on
“Absolutely Fabulous” (Joanne Lumley) probably had the technique
down better than anyone else did.
Walk as if you know exactly where you’re going and own the
sidewalk. Don’t loll, don’t walk too fast, and enjoy the stroll. Be po-
lite. Smile a little. Try to remember what you see.
To master the right walk is extremely important!

The Second Lunch

Over one-half of the American population is currently over-
weight. (This percentage is even worse among African-Americans.)
Most people don’t want to be overweight, but they can’t control
themselves. Clearly, something in the American culture is terribly
wrong.
Although there are many reasons for this alarming situation, one
factor stands out.
Most people don’t have eating problems with breakfast or lunch.
They tend to eat the same thing every morning and afternoon—often
exactly the same thing (although, if you ask them, they’ll claim they
“must” have variety in their daily menus and that they “couldn’t
stand it” if they were required to eat the same thing day after day).
Furthermore, most people don’t overeat at breakfast or lunch. It’s
even common to find overweight people who claim they “never” eat
breakfast—although this claim may be inaccurate, since many people
lie to themselves (and others) without realizing it. It’s also a terrible
idea to skip breakfast if you really want to control your weight.
The problem in American culture is dinner; and the problem with
dinner is twofold:
• Most American dinners are served “family style,”
which usually means that more food is prepared than
necessary. (This problem usually doesn’t occur at

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 breakfast or lunch.) Those who prepare the food tend
to want their family not to “waste” what they pre-
pared for dinner. Therefore, these servers offer sec-
onds and even third “helpings” (about as “helpful” as
a sword through the heart!) to whoever wants to
“have more.” It becomes almost rude to turn down
these servers, as if not stuffing yourself to the point
of discomfort indicates that you don’t like someone’s
cooking.
• For certain reasons (having to do with how the rising
middle classes of the Nineteenth Century tried to
imitate—incorrectly—the serving habits of royalty)
Americans have come to believe that dinners should
be “balanced.” Thus, the typical dinner is considered
incomplete without the following five “mounds” of
food: (a) a salad or appetizer; (b) a healthy portion of
meat, chicken, or fish; (c) a mound of potatoes or
similar starch; (d) a mound of cooked vegetables;
and finally, (e) a dessert.

The problem is that unless someone is trying to gain weight, no

one should eat more than three mounds of food at dinner, especially
people trying to maintain a healthy weight. (The “mounds” should be
large enough, of course, so that no one will ever go hungry!)
When you add to this cultural absurdity the problem of “sec-
onds” and “thirds” night after night, the forces that cause people to
gain weight become overwhelming.
The solution to this problem is actually quite simple. Since most
people don’t have problems with breakfast or lunch, everyone should
simply not eat dinner. They should eat two lunches. The first lunch
should be consumed around noon, and the second (consisting of en-
tirely different foods, of course) should be served between six and
eight o’clock.
“Dinner” should be abolished!
This solution is more than a “modest proposal.” I’m serious! Let’s
do it!
I’ve been doing it for years. I call my dinner (which usually con-
sists of a mound of salad, a mound of pasta with sauce, and a light
dessert) “dinner”; but really, it’s a second lunch.
I recommend it highly!
Yum!

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 The Facts Behind the Cost of Being Fat
In November 2000, the National Health and Nutrition Examina-
tion Survey (NHANES) claimed that the prevalence of overweight
and obesity among the adult population had continued to increase
from approximately 25 percent of the U.S. adult population by the
late Seventies (1976-80) to a startling 33 percent by 1991.
Approximately 40 percent of women and 24 percent of men were
trying to lose weight at any given time.
Overweight/obesity prevalence continued to increase from 1988
to 1994 by 3.3 percentage points for men and 3.6 percentage points for
women from 1988-1994. Similar trends were indicated for children
and adolescents. More current NHANES figures showed over-
weight/obesity levels of approximately 11 percent for both children
and adolescents. Overweight/obesity prevalence seemed to be in-
creasing annually by nearly one percent.
Twenty-five percent of men and nearly forty percent of women
were then trying to lose weight. The prevalence of over-
weight/obesity was of great concern because it had been associated
with the increased risk of several chronic and life-threatening diseases
including type II diabetes, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and
certain types of cancer.
The importance of controlling overweight/obesity and promoting
safe and effective weight loss treatments was heightened by several
clinical studies that demonstrated how even modest amounts of
weight loss (5-10 percent of body weight) could result in significant
improvement of these co-morbidity factors (that is, diseases associ-
ated with obesity). As it was, health problems related to over-
weight/obesity accounted for $70 billion annually in health costs. In
addition, consumers were spending $33 billion per year trying to lose
weight or to prevent weight gain. Adding these two figures together
created the basis for the often-quoted figure of $100 billion annually
in health care costs and money spent on weight loss products and
services as the enormous overall cost of overweight/obesity.
Almost all of the $100 billion was wasted each year, however! In
controlled settings, although participants who remained in weight
loss programs lost approximately 10 percent of their weight, one-third
to two-thirds of the weight was regained within one year. Almost all
of it was regained within five years.
The reason for this gigantic waste of time, effort, and money is
stunningly simple:
People on weight loss programs generally either fail to exercise at
all; or they exercise sporadically (for example, “most days of the
week”); or they exercise while losing weight, but give up their exer-
cise discipline after they’ve met their “goal weight”; or they exercise
insufficiently—that is, without “touching the envelope,” much less
“pushing” it.

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 Without daily strenuous exercise, their metabolism changes little,
if at all. Thus, they have to constantly “go hungry” in order (1) to lose
weight, and, more significantly (2) keep the excess weight from com-
ing back. After a while, the degree of denial required to stay slim be-
comes so onerous that these people simply give up and let themselves
gain weight again.
The reason that practitioners of Acting Well can lose weight
fairly easily (although slowly) and not gain it back is that they don’t
deny themselves in the first place in order to lose the weight. There-
fore, they don’t have to deny themselves in order to keep the weight
from coming back!

The Sins of the Doctors

Many “health professions” (such as medicine, professional health
organizations, health clubs, nutritionists, and personal trainers) des-
ignate four essential training components: aerobic, strength, endur-
ance, and flexibility. These professionals usually insist that their cli-
ents practice all four components separately at least a few times a
week.
No one ever suggests a single, short, daily, “universal” exercise
that combines all four training components. (Most professionals
would suggest that such an exercise doesn’t exist.)
However, 20-30 minutes on a bicycle every day, which includes 6-
8 minutes of climbing steep hills while standing up (or an equivalent
workout on an exercise bicycle), is probably the best possible exercise,
because when done properly it combines all four training compo-
nents—or, more accurately, makes all but aerobic activity unneces-
sary.
Unfortunately, one must practice daily on a bike (or perform any
other “universal” exercise) for many months or years before all four
elements “kick in” effectively. Thus, if someone is just starting out
creating an exercise routine, an instructor is bound to design a
lengthy program that can be efficiently supervised (and efficiently
charged for!) to “make sure to cover all the bases.” For example, if a
client strains too much, muscle damage may ensue. Therefore, flexi-
bility training is usually suggested in order to prevent or heal any
damage from a beginner’s mistakes.
To provide a meaningful (and chargeable) program of this kind
usually involves expensive equipment in special locations (such as an
indoor gymnasium) as well as several hours to get to the place,
change clothes (twice!), shower, and go about the place moving from
machines to free weights to a pool to an aerobics and/or yoga class.
Almost no one can devote this much time to these many activities
on a daily basis! Therefore, the American Heart Association (among
other professional groups) has declared that “most days of the week”
is good enough for exercise.
All of the thinking behind these strategies is self-serving, greed-

209
based, and destructive. None of it is based on science!
If it takes years to exercise efficiently enough to get all you need
from a 30-minute daily workout, what’s the rush? Why should begin-
ning exercisers be treated like professionals?—except that not as
much money can be made from coaching them if they’re simply in-
structed how to “ride their bicycles every day, no further instruction
required”?
Doctors seem never to insist that their patients exercise daily!
However, if a person doesn’t exercise 30 minutes per day every day,
that person cannot create a proper fitness habit!
For those people who have created a fitness habit, an exception
will have no negative effect. However, for people who have not cre-
ated such a habit, taking a day or two off becomes the habit. 90% of
the time discipline quickly sinks to zero.
These statements aren’t scientific “findings.” They’re part of hu-
man nature. They’re true of strong individuals as well as weak ones.
No one is exempt.
The appalling indulgence that the medical profession offers its
patients (namely, to permit regular days off during the week from ex-
ercising) isn’t just wrong-headed and unscientific. It’s contemptible.

Self-Help Book
I’ve just been reading a recently published inspirational book by a
celebrity author (with no discernible writing talent) and wondering
how the hell she got the thing printed.
Obviously, publishers know how to exploit celebrities (the book
cost me $32!), and obviously, she believes what she says. But whoever
reads her book will be hard pressed to grasp a single thread of action
in all the nostrums, generalities, panaceas, and well-meaning, but
meaningless advice she lays on her readers with trowels of cheerful-
ness, balanced by an occasional “But oh my God, what I’ve been
through!”
I mean, how do you “Change what you can and accept what you
can’t change”? (Alcoholics Anonymous has been trying it for years!)
How do you “Look for the joy in the day”? And if you find it, what
then?
Why is what I want to say so different from all the other self-help
books I might have picked up? Why do those books make me so an-
gry?—or so sad, when I think of all the decent people who buy them
hoping for some way to reform themselves, get more out of life, be a
better person, friend, lover, or parent?
I didn’t set out to change myself, but I changed in ways that now
seem miraculous. I didn’t buy someone’s book to follow as a guide. I
did it on my own, step by step, without realizing that in my 50’s, I
was making permanent life changes; that I was growing healthier,
happier, and stronger than I had ever been. Why should I write a
book explaining what I did if it wasn’t books that worked for me?

210
 The reason is clear. To set down the story is part of the process of
change. I’ve kept notes on what I did, and they’ve accumulated to
such an extent that I now have to pull them together and share this
new knowledge—or else store them on shelves in boxes that some-
one, someday, will simply burn. Thus I’m writing this book for me, so
that part of me can live instead of disappear.
If you learn anything from what I tell you, you’ll start to keep
your own notes. If you don’t base a book on them, or an article or a
poem, or just chat with someone about this work on the Internet, at
least you’ll be motivated to teach your children or your friends the
lessons you learned from embarking on this work.
If your life is transformed as a result of what you do after reading
about what I did, it won’t be the book or I that inspired the change.
For I have no maps of hidden treasure to share. Unlike the cheerful
author above, who’s thrilled to share her nuggets of wisdom, I can
only point the way to where the gold lies buried in the earth. It’s up
to you to tunnel in the mines. They’re hot, dark, and frightening; but
they’re real places where you can discover wonderful things.

—June 1997
_________________________________

Roy Scheider
May 7, 2000

Ronald R. Masden, M.D.

President and Medical Director
Anchor-International Foundation

Dear Dr. Masden:

As an actor, I was genuinely pleased to learn that your organization is devel-

oping acting techniques for health purposes unrelated to my profession. Until
I became aware that these techniques can be used in cardiac rehabilitation
and preventive cardiology programs, I wouldn’t have guessed that practicing
them could make a difference between life and death.

When I first heard about your foundation’s work I was reminded of an expe-
rience that happened to me nine years ago when I was about to become a fa-
ther again at the age of 58.

I’d been a full-time smoker who’d quit many times (without success) when I
realized that I would be playing the role of “Father” probably for the rest of
my life. I distinctly remember the moment I crossed Sixth Avenue and 51st
Street in Manhattan, smoking a cigarette, when I looked at it and said to my-
self, “Roy Scheider doesn’t smoke!” I quit that very moment. I waited a few
weeks—it stuck. I never picked it up again. It was simply not in “character”
with my new role!

211
It’s exciting to think that people can lose weight and keep it off, manage
stress, conform to an exercise regimen, and generally manage their lives bet-
ter if they learn how to prepare their “character” using techniques that were
articulated a century ago by the great Russian director, Konstantin
Stanislavski.

I’m honored that my profession can contribute to the world’s health in this
way; and I personally support your efforts to bring this applied knowledge
back to Russia, the great country where it was so richly developed.

Sincerely,

_________________________________

"Deepwood"
Mount Washington, Kentucky 40047
May 11, 2000

Dear Roy Scheider:

I was pleased and honored to receive your letter of

support for Anchor-International Foundation’s pre-
ventive cardiology programs.

As an interventional cardiologist performing as

many as 700 procedures a year, let me assure you
how fascinated and impressed I was by your distin-
guished portrayal of probably the most famous myo-
cardial infarction victim in all cinema! Of course
All That Jazz was produced before we’d discovered
many of the revolutionary techniques now in common
use, some of which I had the honor to help develop.

I’m relieved to learn that you’ve abandoned smok-

ing, and that you’ve been able to adjust your art
of living so impressively as to become a veritable
“poster boy” for healthier lifestyles in mature
adults. Your example will be especially important
in Russia, where men’s lives commonly end before
age 60.

We doctors tend to pay more attention to curing

illness than promoting wellness. And so I must ad-
mit that as a cardiologist I had to refocus my
thinking when Marshall Yaeger brought the fundamen-
tals of “Acting Well” to my attention in 1997. I’m
convinced that, because of your fame and persuasive

212
talents, your support of these techniques as a non-
physician will save and improve more people’s lives
than anyone can imagine.

Sincerely,

Ronald R. Masden, M.D.

Menu Planning
Americans suffer from the belief that they need to jump from
food to food throughout the week as if they had to choose their menu
from a constantly changing tapas table. They seem to harbor the su-
perstitious belief that if they don’t skip from healthy food to healthy
food they’ll fail to get enough of the right nutrients to stay alive.
This idea is absurd and unhealthy. If you plan properly and stick
to the right menu, you’re far more likely to get enough of the nutri-
ents you need than if you occasionally get this and occasionally get
that essential nutrient, but don’t get any nutrient often enough to
meet the average minimum required amount.
Part of the problem may be the fact that packagers and nutrition-
ists tend to specify “minimum daily amounts” of nutrients needed,
basing their figures on what they think the average American needs
to get on the average.
The implication is that, although you should have a certain
amount of this and a certain amount of that every day, there is no one
food that contains every essential nutrient. Therefore, you need to
have a number of foods every day. Since there’s a lot more “food” in
food than its essential nutrients, in order to get the right amount of
every nutrient you need every day, you would have to eat far too
much extra “food” to keep a slim figure. Therefore, you are allowed
to skip around ingesting twice as much of this nutrient on Monday
and none of it on Tuesday.
This system seems logical, but it’s a terrible idea! For one thing, it
encourages the “variety-ism” that leads directly to overeating because
it prevents people from being able to figure out their appropriate por-
tion sizes.
What you need to do is to stop thinking you can average out your
nutrients over the week and accept the idea that you must get an ex-
act amount of the nutrients you decide are important for you, and
make sure that you get them every day.
Thus, you must include in your daily menu, on a repeating basis,
the same foods every day so that you’re sure to meet a weekly re-
quirement.
This system is a matter of controlled balance vs. an uncontrolled
“shotgun” approach (trying to hit every necessary item by means of
variety spread over several days).

213
 A steady, balanced, controlled menu is healthier than eating an
uncontrolled variety of foods hoping to catch as catch can. Thus, the
key to enjoying healthy food is to spend time (several months, at
least!) to discover what and where to buy nutritious foods that you’ll
love enough to eat constantly and exclusively. That method solves
both the problem of what nutrients to include in your menu and the
more serious problem of determining proper portion sizes for every
meal.
Without knowing exactly what your proper portion sizes are for
every meal (determined entirely through experimentation, not the-
ory!), no one can ever gain control over his or her weight.

FAQ: Nutrients and Menus

“Can I get all the nutrients I need and still lose weight if I have to fol-
low the same menu every day?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 You can’t possibly stay hale and hearty sticking to exactly the
same foods day after day, especially when you’re on a diet! You
would have to eat so much every day that you’d gain weight
for sure!

 Besides that, certain foods have particular values for certain

people (such as cooked tomatoes that prevent prostate cancer).
You don’t have to eat those foods every day just to get those
values.

 In other words, you need and should insist on variety in your

menu to get every possible nutrient you could need! You’ll miss
some for sure if you stick to an identical daily menu.

 Therefore, you need to play “round robin” every day, and keep
circulating your diet in order to eat as many foods as you can in
a week (or a month or a year).
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Human evolution didn’t know anything about “nutrition.” People
ate whatever was at hand, and the diets of primitive people were much
the same from day to day. It wasn’t until recently, with incredible af-
fluence and market pressures, that the food industry began convincing
people to choose their food from many sources, and constantly to try
out new products.
In other words, the human race survived without nutritionists tell-
ing them they had to eat a variety of foods. In addition, just because
large doses of trace chemicals that are found in certain foods may ap-

214
pear to inhibit cancer in laboratory rats, the public shouldn’t be misled
into thinking that occasionally eating these foods will “prevent can-
cer.” That conclusion is just silly.
Therefore, there’s no theoretical reason why eating the same menu
day after day will either harm you, or that eating a variety of foods will
be helpful. In fact, variety is counterproductive because (1) it doesn’t
promote your “getting better and better” at preparing your food; (2) it
removes any semblance of control in finding out what foods you
should eat, and in what quantities, in order to lose or maintain weight;
and (3) encouraging a variety of food in your daily diet may encourage
eating obsessions, which nobody should want.
_______________________________________________________

More on this subject:

If you wish to ingest vitamins and minerals on a daily basis as an
“insurance policy” against failing to get all the nutrients you need
from your daily menu, then feel free to spend the money to buy them
(for example, I do). However, be careful what you ingest! You may
have a health condition (such as hemochromatosis, which I have) that
requires you to ingest only specially formulated, hard-to-find vitamin-
mineral formulas (for which I have constantly to search).
In most cases, however, we believe that by eating plenty of fruits
and vegetables you’ll get all the nutrients you need.
Food supplements can’t really take the place of the real thing and
should never be depended on to do so!

Character
James Hillman (author of The Force of Character and the Lasting Life)
would have us believe that everyone has a unique character that
grows ripe with age. Thus one of the advantages of growing old is
that we can finally discover our essence and know who we truly
“are.”
Derek Bickerton, writing about this book, points out some of the
problems with this argument by pointing out what Hillman tells us
character is not:
Character isn’t our bodies or our minds; these change, but character
doesn’t. It isn’t “ego,” “Self” or “identity,” for these “are bare ab-
stractions, telling us nothing of the human being they supposedly
inhabit and govern.” It has nothing to do with “occupation, age,
gender, religion, nationality, income, I.Q., diagnosis.” It’s not
strength of character à la William Bennett; Hillman devotes a chap-
ter...to stripping the notion of character from the moralistic over-
tones imposed on it by the Victorians.
If character is anything at all, it seems to boil down to the sum of
“unique differences” and “individual oddities” that each person ex-
hibits.... Perhaps all that unifies character is “your idea of your

215
 character.” But then who is the “you” that has that idea (or that
character, if it comes to that)? We are exhorted to study character,
yet the author never explains how one would set about studying
anything so slippery and elusive.
Character isn’t as slippery as all that, for it’s one of those things,
like consciousness, where everyone knows what it is but few people
agree on its definition.
Probably the best definition of character was given by a self-
characterized “broken down acting teacher,” Herbert Berghof (who
was my chief mentor).
“Tell me what you do and I will tell you who you are,” he said. This
theatrical explanation of dramatic character (which merely says that
“character” is “action”) works just fine on stage or off. You are what
you’re in the habit of doing. For example, if some extraordinary cir-
cumstance comes up that’s never happened to you before, and you
rise to the occasion, saving someone’s life by putting yourself in
harm’s way, for example, then people will say that you’re a person of
“real character.” Your action reacting to extraordinary circumstances
indicates that you will habitually behave in exemplary ways, which is
what we often mean by “having character.”
Character cannot be Hillman’s “idea of your character,” for such a
“thing” does not exist except by spinning through your head on those
rare occasions when you become consciously self-aware. Such a
“spinner” could never get you to rise to any occasion; it would be
purely reflective and lead to no action whatsoever.
Character isn’t a noun, it’s a verb; or more specifically, it’s a ger-
und. Character isn’t who you are; it’s what you’re doing at any par-
ticular time, which you tend to do habitually. It’s how you act, how
you react, and generally how you strut and fret upon your stage of
life hopefully making more than sound and fury.

FAQ: Do I have to make a commitment?

What “They” say:

 In order to stay on a diet, the first thing you have to do is make

a commitment. Then you have to stick with it.

 In other words, your commitment is your conscious decision to

make. Once you make it, you should be able to carry it out.

 Therefore, don’t tell us you can’t stick to a diet! You’re awake!

You’re intelligent! Why can’t you carry through on a decision
that you, yourself, make?
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

The motivations to stick to healthy habits (not just diets and daily

216
exercises, but such things as drinking enough liquids, flossing, etc.)
have nothing to do with making conscious decisions. These habits can
only result from programming your unconscious to comply with
needs and activities you set up on a daily basis. Creating these habits
can take weeks or months before your unconscious becomes con-
vinced it has to do them—or it won’t feel comfortable (for example,
not feeling fully “clean” if you don’t brush your teeth after breakfast).
Your subconscious then simply does these things “without thinking”;
and it feels uncomfortable when it’s thwarted from completing them.
In other words, once you have to start “thinking” about what
you’re supposed to eat, or what you’re supposed to do for today’s ex-
ercise, you’ve lost the game completely! You’re like an actor who goes
up on lines and starts wandering around the stage not knowing what
to do. You didn’t do your homework!
Therefore, you must simply practice your routines until you
know them “by heart.” Those routines cannot be filled with variable
choices you have to think about (such as performing different exer-
cises on different days, or eating at different restaurants every night).
Actors can’t memorize a different script for each night of the week!
Therefore you must regularize your life in areas of health, get really
good at preparing your food and at your fitness exercise, learn “the
virtue of patience,” and appreciate small victories that lead to ulti-
mate triumphs.
_______________________________________________________

More on this subject:

Acting Well is the application of acting techniques that program
the unconscious to comply with healthy nutrition and fitness habits.
Although the objective of Acting Well is to program the uncon-
scious, the method by which the programming is done is highly con-
scious. In an analogous manner, an actor may rehearse a part many
times in order consciously to choose the most appropriate actions and
memorize the lines. After several weeks, however, an actor’s per-
formance should become so automatic, that by the time an audience
observes the play, the actor’s moment-to-moment conscious determi-
nation (which might interfere with the actor’s emotional life) is no
longer required.
The Stanislavski system of acting is an excellent tool to program
unconscious motivations that lead to good dietary habits and daily
exercise as well as other compliant health measures, such as drinking
plenty of liquids, flossing, or taking prescribed medications.

Acting Well Coaching Program

(Proposed Website Copy)

Maybe what you need is a live coach to lose weight.

Let’s face it, 95% of all people who try to lose a pound a week or

217
more gain most of it back.
Why suffer all that effort and discomfort again and again? Use
our coaching program. Instead of failing most of the time, our pro-
gram succeeds almost all of the time.
It’s not a buddy or a pep-talk program; it’s a sensible, all-
inclusive system, successfully tested over many years, based on sci-
ence, and supervised by doctors.
We think you’ll love the program because it helps you lose
weight painlessly while doing your favorite activities and eating your
favorite foods.
If you’re obese, or simply overweight, you need to change some
of your habits before you try to change your physique. Otherwise,
you may lose one or two pounds a week, but you’ll gain all of it back.
No other prognosis is possible!
We can work with you on a highly personal level to talk you
through the behavioral changes you need to make. We’ll send you
special materials for each week. We’ll customize our program to meet
your specific needs. We’ll give you detailed advice on what to eat,
how much to serve, where to buy it most inexpensively—even how to
deal with family situations that affect your eating habits.
Food is central to your life now, and it’s central to our program.
Therefore, we don’t just make suggestions. We give you a choice of
recipes matched to your preferences. We tell you how to find the right
ingredients in your neighborhood. Even if you’re an excellent cook,
we can adjust your techniques so that you prepare and combine the
best foods for you, in minimal time and precise quantities, to make
sure you continuously lose weight.
What we do for you with food we also do with fitness, motiva-
tion, cravings, addictions, and stress reduction.
For example, we’ll find the right exercise plan for you, custom-
ized to your age, preferences, general health, and extent of your
weight problem. We’ll alter your program as you alter your weight,
and we’ll limit you to a single fitness exercise that’s balanced to your
diet in such a way that you’re guaranteed to lose weight continuously
until you meet your goal.
If you’re severely obese, after you’ve lost at least nine pounds on
our program, we (and your physician) will guide you through a series
of periodic, drug-assisted, crash diets. Over one to two years, you
could lose as much as 100 pounds.
Most importantly, you won’t gain back the weight, ever!
One or two years may seem like a long time to lose weight; but
it’s the behavioral habits that take so long to change, not the limiting
of calories or the metabolizing of fat cells.
Click here to learn about the cost....

—December 2000

218
 Moderation
The Greeks were famous for counseling moderation; but they
weren’t necessarily temperate themselves. For example, Dionysus, in
a Greek comedy by Eubulus, dedicates the first cup of wine to
“health.” The second he dedicates to “love and pleasure.” The third is
for “sleep.” Therein are the three portions of wine for the temperate.
From thereon, it’s downhill. The fourth cup he assigns to “hu-
bris,” the fifth to “uproar,” the sixth to “drunken revels,” the seventh
to “black eyes,” the eighth “to the police,” the ninth to “vomiting,”
and the tenth “to throwing the furniture.”
Most people would define “moderation” as meaning “Do a little
bit of something you’ll enjoy every day; but don’t do too much on any
particular day.”
Thus, according to many doctors, people should drink one to two
drinks (depending on their body mass) every day. “Red wine is good
for the heart,” they say. However, people should avoid getting drunk.
The “fact” that drinking may help lower the incidence of heart
disease may be of general interest to epidemiologists; but for the av-
erage person, it’s an irrelevant excuse for drinking too much. There
are many more sensible ways to avoid heart disease than getting high
on two glasses of wine every night!
Moderation should really mean the opposite of “a little all the
time, but a lot never.” We may learn, for example, that alcohol hurts
people in ways not now recognized. (It’s been suggested, for example,
that alcohol kills brain cells. How many, and under what circum-
stances, however, isn’t clear.) If you drink enough alcohol to “get high
once in a while” (for example, once a week), it probably won’t hurt
you at all. However, if you get high every night—even if you don’t
get really drunk—it may hurt you—a lot! Therefore, you should de-
fine moderation as “a lot once in a while is okay, but a little all the
time isn’t.”
This guideline applies to many human activities, from sex to
various kinds of food, such as eggs, meat, and rich desserts. Even fit-
ness exercises should be practiced with moderation, meaning a half-
hour a day, no more. If you practice regular exercises too long, you
negate the value of exercise-induced testosterone, thus lowering your
psychological “reward” levels instead of elevating them. This prob-
lem can quickly lead to your abandoning your regular efforts to stay
fit.
There’s a joke about a sexologist asking a lecture audience for a
show of hands about the frequency of their marital activities. One
man raised his hand so eagerly he almost fell out of his chair. The lec-
turer turned to him and said, “And how frequently do you have sex
with your wife, sir?”
“Once a year,” came back the reply. “Tonight’s the night!”

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 Compliance Rules
DIET
Every week you must take complete and total responsibility for
purchasing, preparing, and controlling portion sizes (determined
solely through experimentation on your own body) for a total of 20
out of 21 of your own meals. No diets, no diet books, no dieticians, no
snacks, no special “health” foods or food supplements, no daily “va-
riety,” no “reward” foods, no family style servings, no weight loss to
exceed two pounds per month. You may take vitamins as “insurance”
if it makes you feel better. Others may cook for you if and only if they
comply with these rules. Once a week, be sure to indulge in a “family
dinner” or feast where no rules or habits apply.
EXERCISE
Every day you must do 30 minutes (not much more or less) of fit-
ness exercises consisting of short periods of moderate aerobic activity
alternating with intense aerobic activity (that is, “touching” but not
“pushing the envelope”; for example, bicycling or in-line skating as
fast as you can go without getting “out of breath” up hills and coast-
ing down hills). There should be no competitive racing (which can in-
terfere with regular elevated testosterone production), no “goals”
(which can destroy motivation), no recreational sports (which have
nothing to do with health and should be saved for weekends or other
free or family time), no cosmetic exercises (such as weight-lifting,
which has no place in a fitness regimen), no regular socializing
(which can waste too much time for continual daily practice), no me-
chanical pulse monitoring (except, possibly, for the first few weeks—
if directed by a physician), no “professionalism” (such as doing
“stretching exercises” that can extend a daily exercise period too long
for an average person’s schedule), no carrying or drinking from water
bottles en route (they’re pretentious for half-hour routines), no expen-
sive costumes (which can become unsanitary when used daily), and
no dependencies on expensive personal trainers or “fitness gurus”
(they can never be “lifelong”).
STRESS REDUCTION
Every morning, first thing, you must do 30-60 minutes of at least
eight alternating periods of “directed contemplation” and graphic ex-
pression (such as taking notes, journal writing, typing, and/or draw-
ing). No diaries, and no religious praying or other spiritual practices
such as yoga, which may be done at other times during the day for
spiritual, never for health, purposes.
WORLD WALK
Every day you must take a walk, preferably around sunset, to

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“rejoin the community.”
SMOKING CESSATION
Thou shalt not smoke!
LOVE
You know what to do. (Not really a compliance rule, but eternally
important.)
LOG
Keeping a log of your daily activities (until around 6 p.m.), from
which you can calculate your weekly compliance, will help you main-
tain at least an 85% ratio. Don’t try to do better. Enjoy being human.

FAQ: Approved Food List

“Can you give me a list of approved foods I can eat?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 No problem-o!

 You may eat milk, yogurt, cheese, meat, poultry, fish, dry
beans, eggs, nuts, raw leafy vegetables, other cooked or
chopped raw vegetables, vegetable juice, apples, bananas, or-
anges, chopped fruit, cooked fruit, canned fruit, fruit juice,
bread, ready-to-eat cereal, cooked cereal, rice, and pasta.

 (See the “Food Pyramid” to learn how much of each food we

recommend.)

 In other words, you’re not likely to see any foods you really
love (such as desserts!) on a “recommended” list of food.

 Therefore, resign yourself to eating healthy but uninteresting

food for the rest of your life!
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

If you find the above list unappetizing, it’s because the list
doesn’t give you a clue as to how any of the foods are prepared. The
way these lists are presented assumes that everyone’s a terrible cook,
which just about everyone is the first time few times they cook some-
thing new. (Even professional chefs have to practice!)
But you can make almost any of the above foods into, or add
them to, world-class, appetizing dishes if you make the decision to
get “really good at” cooking a particular meal in a particular way,
and practice making the same dish week after week. (You can use

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large pots to make enough to last a few weeks, for example, and
freeze portions for day to day use.) You can even get better at cooking
oatmeal in the morning, if you do it often enough!
In other words, publishing a “recommended” list of foods is both
meaningless and useless. You already know what’s good for you and
what isn’t so good. You know, for example, that vegetables are better
than candy, and fruit is better than lard. Nobody has to spell it out!
Therefore, in constructing your menu, depend on yourself to fig-
ure out a daily “perfect” three-meal menu that’s nutritionally sound
and that offers enough variety throughout the day so that you’ll
never get bored or hungry again.
Others do it. So can you!
_______________________________________________________

More on the subject:

• Discovering a special sauce to put over a less appe-
tizing food can make the difference between a food
you wouldn’t want to eat all the time and one you
learn to love and look forward to eating every day.
• Processed “diet dinners,” like Lean Cuisine or
Weight Watchers frozen foods, are ideal. They’re
nutritionally sound, night after night, and offer a va-
riety of entrees. However, you may find that you’re
able to heat up a better (and significantly less expen-
sive!) precooked meal yourself, and do so well at it
that you don’t miss the variety at all!

Assume the Position

The solemn moment that comes when you sit down, alone, at
your special desk, and start to do Morning Preparation should (and
will!) become the most precious, shocking, intense, and interesting
moment of your day as—for the first time since you woke—you grasp
the moment of coming fully to life.
(The earlier you start the better; so that your aliveness can spill
out to sweeten the rest of the day.)
“Assume the position!” is what police shout at an alleged male
“perp” when they shove him against a wall, spread-eagle his legs,
and brace his arms and hands against the wall in such a way that if he
tries to run he’ll fall. Sometimes this practice, extended a bit farther, is
called “rousting.” You can think of yourself as needing to roust your-
self every morning.
Your position when you do Morning Preparation won’t be that
stressful; but it will be as distinctive. You’ll think of sitting down and
preparing to do Morning Preparation as “assuming the position”—

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simply because that phrase is exactly how it feels.
You’ve probably heard the following drill: “Sit up! Back straight!
Feet flat on the floor! Chin tucked in!” and so forth.
Forget it! Doing Morning Preparation isn’t typing, and you can’t
get carpal tunnel syndrome from doing it. When you achieve the right
position, your body will let you know and you won’t have to worry
about it.
You may change positions slightly from day to day and minute to
minute depending on many factors. However, your body and brain
will eventually find their ideal “home” position, which you’ll fall into
whenever you return to your first main task of the day.
Morning Preparation is like filling a grocery bag with groceries: the
form of the bag shapes itself to what goes in the bag, not the other
way around.
In other words, never go for “results.”
Doing Morning Preparation is a kind of “chicken and egg” or
“bootstrap” operation. In other words, before you achieve B you must
accomplish A. But A relies on your doing C correctly, so where do
you begin?
The answer is, like the chicken, simply get started, and don’t
worry about it.
One clue we can share: If you’re right-handed, you’ll probably do
well to cup your right hand over your left with your elbows resting
on the table or desk. If you cuddle one hand with the other, one day
you may realize that you’re expressing affection for yourself. Being
conscious at that moment will make you like yourself better.
However, don’t think of these kinds of affectionate moments as
techniques to “raise self-esteem.” That intention would be “going for
results.”

FAQ: Should Calories Out Equal Calo-

ries In?
What “They” say:

 A loss of one to two pounds per week while dieting is consid-

ered healthy. To lose that pound of fat, in one week you need to
burn 3,500 calories more than you take in, or consume 3,500
fewer calories than you need.

 In other words, if you eat 500 fewer calories than you need each
day, or you exercise to burn 500 calories each day, you’ll lose
about a pound per week.

 Therefore, dieting is a simple matter of figuring out how to take

in fewer calories than you burn. If you can add and subtract,
you can lose weight easily!

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_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

First, there’s no way you can calculate a relationship between
physical activity and how many calories you burn. Too many other
factors profoundly affect the results (the main one being: when do
you measure your metabolic rate? During the first minute of exercise,
when the result may be zero, or the 30th when it may be highest, or the
60th, when it may fall back again?). The same problem applies to
measuring how many calories there are in a portion of almost any
kind food. “Averaging” or “rounding off” can lead to wild errors.
Second, although many experts regard the loss of one or two
pounds a week “healthy,” such a rapid weight loss is four to eight
times faster than you can go without carrying you headlong into yo-
yo dieting. Unconscious processes sense that something’s wrong in a
body not used to sudden weight loss, and they may release chemicals
(that is, certain neurotransmitters) to repair the “damage.” These
chemicals can make you ravenous and devastate your diet.
In other words, dieting isn’t simple! If you want to take off
weight, you have to fool your unconscious into thinking that every-
thing is fine, which you can do when your weight loss is so gradual
that your body won’t get alarmed. Therefore:
• The only way to skew a balance between intake of
fuel and expenditure of energy in order to lose
weight is to (a) regularize a three-meal daily menu,
knowing exactly what you’re going to eat and how
much of each food; (b) regularize a fitness exercise;
and (c) measure the results weekly or every other
week and adjust accordingly. That means, if you’ve
lost too much weight too quickly you may actually
need to eat more portions of food the following
week.
• Think of your obese body as a pit bull that gets ex-
cited when the doorbell rings. Tiptoe around when
making unexpected moves. Be prepared to go slow.
Pet often.

Panic Attacks
A panic attack is a reverberation of anxiety. That is, the more you
feel it, the more it echoes, reverberates, and gets stronger—until you
become afraid of the fear itself. The fear strengthens as it feeds on it-
self until it reaches an unbearable level that makes you feel discon-
nected from yourself, as if you’re “going crazy” (you’re not!), or as if
you’re looking at the world through a long tunnel.

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 This experience is quite common, especially among teenagers and
young adults.
If, when dredging up anxiety from your unconscious, this experi-
ence happens to you, do the following:
Consider your diet. If you eat too much sugar, the insulin it
leaves behind after it metabolizes may contribute the physiological
component of a panic trigger. (That’s one reason not to drink orange
juice in the morning!)
Realize that it is always the case that there is a psychological com-
ponent to a panic attack: You did something “good” and “positive”
for yourself that threatened your sense of who you are. The fear it
caused your sense of character stability (not necessarily a healthy
state!) can contribute the psychological component of a panic trigger.
If panic grips you, immediately try to figure out what it was that
you did for yourself that was positive and good. Go through every ac-
tion you may have performed as carefully as you can until you hit the
exact one that caused the problem.
When you find the precise action-trigger, you’ll know you have
found it because the panicky feelings you have—those very feelings—
will convert into an equally strong feeling of joy. The sensation is so
dramatic that you’ll have no doubt about having found the very ac-
tion that propelled the fear.
You’ll experience the joy as the same feeling that you felt when
you were panicked; but instead of running through the aversion cen-
ter of your brain (the “pain center”) it will run through the “pleasure
center.” As strong as the anxiety was, that strong will be the joy!
The next time you experience a panic attack, your aversion to it
will be less than it was before. Immediately go to work to find out the
cause. You’ll find it, and the anxiety will convert to joy—but it will be
less joyful than before because it will match the diminished level of
the new anxiety.
You may have two or three subsequent episodes, each of them
diminished, then nothing for the rest of your life.
If you take pills to prevent panic attacks, you cannot use this
natural method to end them.
Use this information to help you “convert anxiety into joy” dur-
ing Steps & Landings.

Variety
For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings ate virtually
the same meals every day. Only recently did the rise of market
economies create such a plethora of choices that the average super-
market may stock more than 30,000 items at a time.
Behind each choice is a competitive business pushing its wares,
creating an unwieldy cornucopia of choices and an unprecedented
situation in the modern world.
Despite this engorgement of food, the public is continually being

225
frightened into thinking that leaving out an essential nutrient may
prove fatal. “Why take chances?” is the best advice. “Try everything!”
Thus, almost all mothers try to offer their families a variety of foods,
to make sure no one gets bored and no nutrients are missed; and su-
permarkets become more like restaurants tempting people’s appetites
than resources for stocking private kitchens.
Those who “try everything” tend to go overboard. Most people
resist entreaties to change and experiment. Nevertheless, almost eve-
ryone succumbs occasionally to one opportunity or another to sample
some new thing.
Trying to cover all bases creates a peculiarly American disease
because America is able to offer such a variety. The disease reflects an
excess of personal freedom that encourages the self-gratification of
cravings to the point of obesity.
Anyone should be able to make and sell anything that does no
harm. However, harm may come from variety itself when one is con-
tinually encouraged to test and choose new things.
Thus, people’s lives become filled with irresistible desires for
ever-new gratifications in travel, foods, fads, ideas, friends, and lov-
ers. What started out as variety becomes a taste for novelty. The result
is a kind of obesity of both the body and the brain.
The problem doesn’t arise because one consumes too many dif-
ferent things. For example, most people suffering from this disease
usually crave the same rich snacks and desserts time after time. The
disease arises because one’s sense of self-control is abandoned.
Variety itself is tempting because accompanying it is permission
to abandon all rules and limitations. Variety, disguised as novelty,
always sets up a temporary trial system: “Let’s try out this new
thing.” Rules are suspended during trial periods, and that suspension
of self-disciplinary rules is a major appeal that helps to mislead peo-
ple into thinking, “variety is good for your health.”
Thus, variety and novelty yield multiple reward systems: One
reward is the excitement of sampling new things themselves. The
other reward is permission to abandon ordinary rules of moderation.
This double reward system is considered good for the economy
(which it obviously is). However, the system is ruining the general
health of American families.

Hunger and boredom

Hunger and boredom are two giveaway words that denote bullshit.
The minute someone says, “I get bored exercising regularly,” you
know they’re bullshitting themselves. The minute someone says, “I
get too hungry in the afternoons to stop myself from bingeing,” you
know they’re bullshitting you.
As to boredom: People get bored because they don’t exercise
regularly, not because they do. They create two habits: one for days
they exercise and one for days they don’t. Which habit do you think

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wins out in the end?
As to hunger: When people exercise regularly and properly, they
only have to eat enough not to get hungry. In that case, they eventu-
ally will never get hungry and will never gain weight.
However, when people don’t exercise, the same amount of food
they need in order not to get hungry will be slightly more than they
should eat in order to maintain their ideal weight. That slight differ-
ence can accumulate into a pound or more per year. Therefore, these
people gain weight. They may blame their problem on “hunger,” but
their diagnosis is bullshit.
If someone exercises “most days of the week” (or any variation
thereof), they may not gain weight on days they exercise—even if
they eat to avoid hunger. However, these people will probably gain
weight (even if it’s only a fraction of an ounce) on the “off” days
when they don’t exercise. They may respond to the same hunger; but
on their “off” days, it will cause them to gain. Over a year’s time,
even if the net gain is only a pound a year, in 20 years, the net gain
will be 20 pounds.
20 years go by quickly. (Ask anyone who’s more than 40 years
old!)
These calculations demonstrate the overwhelming reason why
medical advice to exercise “most days of the week” is lethal: it creates
boredom in the exerciser and it causes the exerciser to gain weight
overall.
Therefore, it isn’t just the practitioners of this bad advice who are
bullshitting themselves, it’s the medical profession that authenticates
the bullshit in the first place. If you ask doctors why they do it (and
I’ve asked several!), they’ll explain that their patients won’t tolerate
an “every day” prescription for exercise. It seems to me that this pan-
dering to patients is a form of institutional malpractice, for it leads
many people to an early death.
These people wind up doing no exercise at all; and they suffer the
extreme consequences of heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and/or cer-
tain forms of cancer, and so on.
Let’s end the bullshit!

Frequent Meals
Some nutritionists warn against eating three meals a day. Instead,
they recommend small meals (or “feedings”) no more than four hours
apart.
Their schedule turns out to be: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and “a
couple of nutritious snacks throughout the day.”
The two reasons for this advice are (1) when you eat small meals
you won’t get too full, and (2) you won’t feel fatigued from eating ex-
cess calories that put you on a “blood-sugar roller coaster.”
In other words, “feedings” aren’t about nutrition at all; they’re
about “feelings” (of fullness and fatigue).

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 Aren’t there more rational ways to avoid those feelings?
For example, what if you don’t stuff yourself at any meal? What if
you just eat normal amounts of food at breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
and just say “no” to the excess calories that run blood sugar up and
down?
“Snacks” are related to the canard about frequent small meals.
They’re considered especially healthy when they’re tasteless, watery,
and full of chewy fiber.
Thus, leaving celery sticks around the kitchen is considered ap-
propriate for children. Supposedly, the little darlings will be tempted
to munch on these warm, green tidbits, thus avoiding candy bars and
other tempting treats beyond a shouting distance from nutrition.
Of course, the truth is that anyone who indulges in snacking has
less interest in an apricot than in a stolen scoop of ice cream at four in
the morning. Stealth is part of the pleasure. Make no mistake about it:
snacking is about rewards and pleasure. The practice releases dopa-
mine. In that sense, it can be addictive.
Aren’t those more sensible alternatives to dividing your daily in-
take into five or more sections, thereby risking the temptation to con-
sume extra calories?
Almost nobody overeats at breakfast or lunch. The problems of
being overweight usually begin and end at dinnertime. Therefore, if
you move some of the foods you normally eat for dinner to an earlier
meal in the day, you can solve the “fullness” problem.
In fact, if you calculate exactly what you need to eat each day in
order to maintain a constant weight; and if you divide that day’s
menu into breakfast, lunch, and dinner; you will (1) never get too full
again; and (2), if your blood sugar’s causing problems, those prob-
lems will end permanently.
Some nutritionists figure otherwise about blood sugar; but not a
single scientific study supports their view. People who eat well and
exercise regularly have no problems with blood sugar—even people
like me, who have an extensive history of diabetes in the family.

Alcoholics Anonymous
In 1934, after three failures in a Manhattan hospital to stop drink-
ing, Bill Wilson was alone in his room when he shouted, “If there is a
God, let him show himself now!”
According to legend, Wilson’s room filled with light. He saw
himself standing atop a mountain, with wind blowing toward him,
then through him.
He immediately recognized the change in his character; and from
that day until he died 36 years later, “Bill W.” never drank alcohol
again. He went on to found Alcoholics Anonymous as a broad-based,
democratic fellowship available to anyone with a drinking problem.
Note the following points in Bill Wilson’s story:

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 • His epiphany created a new character for himself: a
person who didn’t drink. He saw himself that way,
and his vision never wavered for the rest of his life.
• Wilson’s epiphany came in response to the recogni-
tion (or “belief in”) a “force” larger than himself.
The recognition of such a “force” is an essential part
of the 12-step program on which AA is based.
(However, even today, AA discourages any specific
religious interpretation of this “larger force”—so as
not to disqualify atheists from its program, for ex-
ample).
• Wilson sought to share his technique for changing
one’s character through a system of dramatic con-
frontations with others who share the same problem
rather than medically or educationally. Thus, typical
AA meetings are not like lecture halls where pup-
petmaster-teachers enlighten (and test) students;
they’re more like Quaker meetings in which co-
congregationalists are free to share their spiritual
life.
• When members of AA stand up and speak before
their peers, they are “performing” (actually, they’re
“acting well”!).
• Wilson didn’t use his profound experience to profit
himself. He didn’t become a guru or a disciple of
God or anyone else to make a living. Today, AA
continues as a “lateral” (as opposed to a “hierarchi-
cal”) institution.

The sense of “community” has always been strong in AA. Al-

though the “AA community” refers mainly to alcoholics, it knows its
destiny depends on the larger world beyond.
Acting Well seeks to create a similar sense of community; there-
fore, its techniques include a daily outreach through various means.
Like acting, it seeks to stimulate a non-scientific belief system (for ex-
ample, in the forces that establish one’s “character”) that is effective
even though it isn’t “true.” (That is, an actor’s work involves fiction,
not science.) Acting Well seeks to be lateral, not hierarchical. Finally,
it seeks to pertain to the community beyond its adherents and to be
international in scope.

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 How Babies Learn
On the bus, today, I watched a small baby (only a few months
old) sitting on its mother’s lap, trying to make order of the world.
I tried to catch its eye, and I did; but I could tell that I was no
more important to this baby than whatever lay outside the window
behind me.
The baby flashed a tentative smile at what lay outside one or an-
other of the windows from time to time; and perhaps I even saw a
flicker of a smile when my image passed briefly through its new,
growing, and activated store of images.
I could tell that much more was going on in the baby’s head than
“met the eye.” I could clearly see how the baby’s brain was involved
in a full-time job trying to figure out what was going on.
Was anything it saw familiar (I suppose it asked itself)? Did the
baby recognize anything that it now saw? Or did it have to make new
sense of new information imposing itself on its new set of eyes, forc-
ing it to connect old neural column combinations (which might have
been hooked up only yesterday!) with new ones in order to prepare
its brain for tomorrow?
I could tell how much work the baby’s brain would have to do
while in the daily and nightly process of implanting new columns
and combinations during this critical period of its brain’s growth.
When I suddenly realized how its (not so) tiny brain was probably be-
ing flooded nightly with permanent new columns eager to hook up, I
also understood why babies sleep so much of the time. (Being con-
stantly bombarded throughout their waking days by, what to them, is
new information, they obviously would run out of their constant
supply of available new columns more quickly than my adult brain
would!)
The whole process opened before me! Whereas, before I stumbled
onto these new theories, I would have imagined that not much of
anything goes on inside a child’s brain (no matter what my eyes
would tell me—for all would have seemed like a clouded period of
childish confusion to me!); now, I could tell how intense the concen-
tration was that I was witnessing. The baby looked like it was learn-
ing as much, if not more, than a college student who attends a lecture!
The baby was Acting Well! I could actually see how “things”
were fitting together in its head; and the sight of it all was beautiful
and inspiring to watch!

Scripts and Logs

Just spoke to R about his keeping track of what he does in the log
and its importance to Acting Well.

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 I said I thought that task was the equivalent of an actor adhering
to a script.
It’s possible that an arrogant (or poorly trained) actor would say,
“I don’t have to follow the script exactly! I know the story, more or
less. Therefore, if I go onstage, I can just wing it and it’ll come out
more or less as it should.”
What would a playwright say to that remark (before firing the ac-
tor!)?
Obviously, in life, there’s no playwright (unless you consider
your “playwright” an aspect of your persona that drifts in and out).
Nevertheless, it’s essential to keep accurate records of what happens
during an Acting Well day—for the same reason that a stage actor
has to adhere to a script.
What may seem confusing is that a script tells you what you’re
supposed to do (in the future), and a log tells you (or others) what
you just did (in the past). The difference between them seems to be
one of differing relationships to time, whether to the future or to the
past.
In fact, both script and log are about the present. That is, when
you adhere to a script, it’s in the present; and when you record some-
thing in the log, you also are recording it in the present. Whatever
value there is in adhering to, or recording in, a script or a log, that
value occurs in the present—not the past (certainly!) nor in the future.
It’s right now.
In other words, what you just did, or what you’re supposed to do,
makes no difference in the life you’re living that’s occurring right
now. Therein is the connection between a script and a log. They’re
both instruments of the now; and they’re both important—and for the
same reason.
Your “now” is the same “now” whether you’re reciting the words
of a script or recording an action just completed. Only in the now can
you change your life. Thus, only by Acting Well can you be assured
of living your life in the “eternal present”—as much as it’s possible
for a person to do from moment to moment.
Of course, 90% of the time you won’t be conscious of the eternal
present; but if you only raise your level of consciousness to 10% of the
time from 1% of the time, you’ll be doing a lot!

Making Time for Morning Preparation

“As much as an hour? A whole hour out of my life to do Morning
Preparation? I don’t have any spare hours! I have to make a living, I
have to sleep a reasonable amount of time; and then there’s my fam-
ily—or my friends—or my lover(s)—or my hobbies—or my televi-
sion.... An hour? From where?”
The answer is: Steal!
However, you have to be a good thief, a reasonable thief, and a
generous thief. You also have to be ruthless about taking time that

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 can be yours only if you claim it.
For this kind of theft, the loot can be magnificent! (And you never
are punished.)
“But what if my mate gives me flak?” you ask.
First, arrange with your sleeping partner to have the bedroom to
yourself exclusively for an hour a day. (Virginia Woolf’s advice on
creativity said it most succinctly: “A woman must have money and a
room of her own if she is to write fiction.”)
Use a small desk that’s yours exclusively for doing Morning
Preparation. Keep it clear at all times, and don’t let anyone else use it.
(If you use a bedroom for this purpose, always make the bed, and
keep the room neat and “office-like” while doing Morning Prepara-
tion.)
Make sure you’re stealing the time from yourself, not your mate
(for example, your children demand, need, and deserve plenty of
time, too).
Ask yourself, and whoever else is concerned, if it’s unreasonable
to ask for (and to give, if the tables turn and they ask you) an hour of
privacy each day. If you ask your mates how much of your time they
expect from you each day, you’ll probably be disappointed to find out
that it’s much less than you thought!
If you were ill and had to have medical treatments every day, no
one would complain about the time it took. Thus, consider Morning
Preparation as a preventive medical treatment to ward off illnesses
and other evils.
Another strategy is to demand that whoever complains about
your need for isolation practice what you practice at the same time
you do—but in a different room. In general, if you don’t live alone
you’ll find it much easier to do Morning Preparation if your mate does
it as well. Joining you is the best form of supportiveness for such
goals as losing weight, being more creative, and so forth.

FAQ: Portion Sizes

“How much pasta (or anything else) should I spoon out every night?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 The specifications on a typical box of pasta are: “NET WT. 16

OZ. (1 LB). Serving Size 1 cup (2 OZ.). 8 servings per Container.
200 Calories per serving.”

 The New York Times main course pasta recipes recommend that
you prepare enough for three servings per person.

 In other words, the pasta company recommends that each serv-

ing should be no more than two ounces (which yield 200 calo-

232
 ries). The New York Times recommends that each serving should
be 5.3 ounces (which yield 533 calories).

 Therefore, if you eat triple portion sizes of pasta every night,

you will eat 23.3 more ounces of pasta per week than if you eat
a normal serving size. That’s 2,333 additional calories per week!
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

If you’re losing or maintaining weight, you should control the
amounts in your recipes with great precision (weighing them on a
cooking scale, for example) and never allow yourself to partake of
more generous portion sizes. If you eat the same pasta dish every
night according to recipes in The New York Times, you will be eating
an additional 76 pounds of food per year (not counting the extra
sauce you’d spoon over the pasta!), which will not only make losing
weight impossible, but avoiding gaining weight highly unlikely.
In other words, never serve yourself (or anyone else!) “family
style.” Always calculate recipe amounts precisely, even if you have to
alter recipes to do so (by experimenting with the right quantities until
you get the food to taste exactly right—which is a good reason to set-
tle on only a few choices of dinner entrees for yourself and your
guests).
Therefore, always control portion sizes according to a food manu-
facturer’s instructions (assuming they’re honest!), not to recipes that
encourage you to serve generous portion sizes “family style.” Unless
you have real pigs as friends, most of your guests won’t know the dif-
ference. Assume that people expect to eat exactly what’s put on their
plate. (That’s what most parents, unfortunately, teach their children!)
If you spoon out more, or offer seconds, most of your guests will
think it’s rude not to eat everything, even if they’re full. To anticipate
that your guests will act like pigs, or to expect them to behave so, dis-
plays extreme bad manners on your part, not theirs.

Sensible Care
There are several ways to care for the human mind and body:
• Formative care is the parental care and education
we give to children who haven’t quite mastered the
tasks of caring for themselves.
• Critical care is life-and-death therapeutic care we
need when, for example, we’re poisoned or injured
and can’t care for ourselves or haven’t the experi-
ence to know what to do.

Both formative and critical care presumably involve “experts”:

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usually doctors or parents.
• Operational care is the conscious attention we pay
to the details of our life; for example, our eating,
sleeping, and cleanliness habits.
• Sensible care is operational care attuned to the intui-
tive (or unconscious) needs of our body.

The theory of sensible care is that “the body knows best” how to
ensure its survival. Its intuitive knowledge, which is locked in the un-
conscious, can be retrieved through various means, such as trial and
error, paying close attention to how one feels, keeping track of regular
habits, keeping a log, being as practical and scientific as possible, and
using common sense.
Sensible care both requires and provides motivation. Motivation
(or “willpower”) ought to be a simple matter since it costs nothing
and everyone wants to stay healthy. A major threat to motivation,
however, comes from commercial sources, such as doctors, insurance
companies, authors, educators, and sellers of medical and pseudo-
scientific products. These “experts” use high-powered sales tech-
niques to seduce consumers away from sensible care to marketable
forms of critical care—such as quick weight-loss programs, exercise
machines, and stress reduction training. These products and services
(called “health maintenance,” “preventive medicine,” “wellness,” or
“lifestyle modification”) are pernicious when they appeal to people’s
indolence and vanity, promising obese people, for example, magic
methods to “gorge and grow thin.”
Nature didn’t evolve human creatures that had to know about vi-
tamins, daily exercises, or meditation techniques. All the information
we need to survive is contained in our bodies. When our brains be-
come “sensitive” to our bodies, that information (which is in the un-
conscious) can motivate healthy behavior. However, when commer-
cial interests intervene with pills, diets, exercise machinery, and yoga
courses, motivation is displaced, leaving people confused, frustrated,
fearful, and riddled with guilt.
A return to the sensible care our ancient ancestors practiced is the
best advice for people who want to continue to enjoy good health.

—December 1997

FAQ: How long will it take to lose ten

pounds?
What “They” say:

 You can expect to lose from one to two pounds per week on any

234
 “approved” diet. If you try to take off more than that, you’ll be-
come overwhelmingly hungry and put the weight back on.

 In other words, when you lose too much weight too quickly,
your body (that is, your unconscious) senses that’s something’s
wrong, and it affects your metabolism so that you’re likely to
become ravenously hungry until you’ve gained back whatever
you lost.

 Therefore, there are no health issues to be concerned about if

you take off one to two pounds per week. It should therefore
take you five to ten weeks to lose ten pounds.
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

The fact is that 90% of the time, if you take off more than an aver-
age of four or five ounces per week, you’ll gain back the weight no
matter what else you do. The problem is that the unconscious system
that provokes ravenous hunger doesn’t just kick in if you lose more
than one or two pounds per week; it can kick in if you lose more than
a one to two pounds a month!
By losing weight slowly, on the other hand, you can trick your
unconscious (which is far more clever than you are!) into thinking
that nothing is wrong. It won’t make you hungry, and you’ll lose
weight slowly, but methodically.
In other words, Losing a “pound or two a week” is much too
rapid a weight loss, by a factor of two to four times too fast. However, if
you’re content to lose one-half of a pound a week, then you can lose
24 pounds in a year, 48 pounds in two years, and 72 pounds in three
years by Acting Well.
(It may be possible, although the idea hasn’t been tested, for
someone who has been on the Acting Well program for six months to
a year, or long enough to have programmed the subconscious effec-
tively, to go on a starvation diet—in order lose more massive
amounts of weight quickly—without gaining back the weight.)
Therefore, you can lose ten pounds in about five months if you’re
willing to be reasonable. However, more importantly, for the rest of
your life, you’ll never have to gain back those ten pounds!

—May 2000

The Acting Well Telephone Consulting

Program
(Proposed Advertising Copy)

What to Expect:

235
 We divide the Acting Well program into two periods: a “Re-
hearsal Period” that lasts approximately six months, followed by a
“Performance Period” that lasts indefinitely.
We don’t pay much attention to what you eat. (Caring mainly
about the quantity or quality of food while losing weight is like an ac-
tor merely memorizing words instead of recreating believable ac-
tions.)
We don’t care what you do for exercise as long as it’s consistent,
simple, enjoyable, gets you almost (but not quite) winded, and takes
no more than a half-hour per day.
By the end of the six-month Rehearsal Period:
• You’ll realize that you’ve committed yourself to
staying on the Program for the rest of your life.
• You’ll lose one-and-a-half to two pounds per month
while eating normal amounts of food.
• Your body’s muscles will become sufficiently coor-
dinated to be able to generate higher levels of sero-
tonin (which is the brain’s “fulfillment” hormone)
and testosterone (which is the body’s equivalent to
serotonin) during your half-hour daily exercise.
• The additional serotonin will shift your cravings for
food (that is, for “fulfillment”) to cravings for exer-
cise.
• If you’re still obese, and want to lose weight quickly
at that point, you’ll be ready to embark on a series of
temporarily accelerated starvation diets to lose more
substantial amounts of weight permanently.
• You’ll have learned enough to be able to continue
receiving lifelong benefits from Acting Well without
renewing your membership in our program.

Don’t expect your cravings for food, bingeing, weakened “will-

power,” etc., to disappear entirely before the end of the sixth month,
which is concurrent with the “serotonin shift.”
So far, every person who has gone on the Acting Well program
has experienced the same benefits on the same timetable, has lost
weight and kept it off, and has permanently committed to remain on
the program.

What You Get:

Weekly telephone sessions (30-45 minutes) for the first month,

and as needed thereafter.
Weekly logs to fill out, parts of which you mail back.

236
 Printed literature with instructions.
A videotape (“The Magic Bullet”) about the program.
Unlimited E-mail access.
Website support membership.

Monthly Cost:

First month: $300, non-refundable; months 2-12: $100; subsequent

months: $50.

Annual Cost:

First year: $1,200, up to $600 refundable. Subsequent years: $500.

—November 2000

Comparing “Calories In” with “Calories

Out”
You often hear that the best way to maintain your weight is to
make sure that the number of calories you take in when you eat
matches the number of calories you burn when you exercise.
Theoretically, those numbers should be equal in order to maintain
your ideal weight.
However, how can anyone observe this rule?
For example, if you regularly consume the calories in just one
more ounce of dinner entrée than you balance with exercise, in a sin-
gle year you’ll have taken in an extra 23 pounds of food you didn’t
need—and all the calories in those pounds.
How many push-ups do you have to do to metabolize 23 pounds?
The answer is that there simply is no meaningful correlation be-
tween weight gain or loss and number of calories in a portion of in-
gested food eaten on a particular day tallied against the number of
calories metabolized by exercise on that same day.
In other words, nobody can help you with these calculations. The
results will never be meaningful. The problem isn’t just comparing
apples and oranges; it’s more like trying to mix cement while mash-
ing potatoes. A similar example of this kind of lapsed logic would be
to claim that a plausible method to measure the distance between two
cities would be to calculate the amount of fuel burned by traveling be-
tween them.
To be sure, you burn fuel when you travel. However, you can’t
predict how much gasoline someone will need for a particular trip
without knowing whether the traveler will be riding in an SUV or a
Volkswagen; whether the vehicle uses diesel or high octane fuel; and
whether the trip involves going 30 mph in stop-go traffic, or 80 mph
on a freeway.
Not only can these variables make huge differences, but also cer-

237
 tain factors may vary from day to day and trip to trip, making inaccu-
rate calculations even more meaningless.
In other words, if you want to calculate distance accurately,
watch the odometer, not the gas gauge.
As for how much fuel you need on a particular day: if you know
where you’re going, and you watch the gas gauge, you can easily cal-
culate when you have to stop at a gas station.
That’s all you can know; and it’s all you need to know.

FAQ: About Changing Lifestyles

“My doctor says I have to change my lifestyle. What does that mean?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

Your physician may believe that your stress levels are too high
(which may mean you should change jobs—better a happy pauper
than an affluent corpse!). You may need to stop trying to live “on
the edge,” and start following the simple rules of good health. Here’s
what your doctor may want you to do to change your lifestyle:

 Stop smoking entirely, and cut drinking to a minimum.

 Walk to work and leave your car home.

 Stop taking elevators. Always climb the stairs (taking two at a

time gets you up there faster!).

 Get no less than eight hours sleep per night.

 Stop watching so much television with your family. Play ball

more often with your kid.

 Shovel snow or rake leaves every chance you get.

 Join a health club.

 Stop enjoying your food. Starve yourself until your body-mass

index goes below 25. Then proceed with extreme caution.

 Only go to holistic doctors.

 Only eat organic health foods.

 Take every supplement you can stand to swallow. (You never

know!)

You want to live well? That’s how!

238
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

What you have to do while Acting Well (specifically, keeping a
log, eating three meals a day instead of five, practicing a fitness exer-
cise no more than 30 minutes a day, preparing yourself in the morn-
ing, and taking a brief walk in the afternoon) hardly constitutes an en-
tire lifestyle change!
If you’ve been living a sedentary lifestyle in the past, and your
doctor tells you that you’d better get off your butt, your daily 30-
minute exercise regimen will do the trick entirely. All the other mis-
cellaneous activities (like shoveling snow) won't accomplish anything
because they’re not regular. On the other hand, if you exercise every
day, you’ll find that activities like raking leaves are easier and more
fun. However, if all you do to prepare for shoveling snow is shovel-
ing snow, you’re more likely to die of a heart attack while shoveling
snow than enjoying yourself!
In other words, from the point of view of Acting Well, changing
your lifestyle is not only impossible, it’s not desirable.

Acting Well Technique

When an actor playing MacBeth turns to his onstage wife to for-
swear committing regicide, he announces, “We will proceed no fur-
ther in this business.”
Lady MacBeth, appalled at his sudden loss of motivation, count-
ers, “But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail!”
In only seven exchanges with her husband, she wins the day. “I
am settled,” says MacBeth, “and bend up each corporal agent to this
terrible feat.”
The actor’s motivation in changing his mind so quickly cannot be
the same as MacBeth’s. Real life takes too long. The actor has to figure
out how to do it quicker and more efficiently.
Thus, he might conjure up the image of a hateful person by using
an object he placed somewhere onstage before the curtain rose, and
on which he begins to focus the moment Lady MacBeth mentions the
words “sticking-place.”
Suddenly, almost magically, his emotions shift, and he renews his
former objective. The audience believes it. So does he, at that moment.
The real MacBeth, on the other hand, would have go through a
much more tortuous, non-verbal process entirely within his head. No
doubt 95% of all men in MacBeth’s situation will abandon such a plot,
if not within minutes, than in weeks.
This example illustrates the difference between what most people
think of as “willpower” in sticking to a diet, and “Acting Well’s” mo-
tivational techniques. The common impression is that if you go on a
diet, you must “screw your courage to the sticking-place” in order not
to fail.

239
 The actor who performs MacBeth, on the other hand, isn’t so he-
roic. He may select an easy technique (called “substitution” in the
above example) to give the impression that he’s changed his mind
and will now commit murder.
Thus, whereas 95% of potential usurpers to a throne will abandon
all thoughts of regicide almost instantly, 100% of actors performing
the role of MacBeth, using Stanislavski technique, will succeed in
convincing the audiences (and themselves) that they must kill the
king! Likewise, 95% of all people determined to lose weight who are
convinced they can and must “screw their courage to the sticking-
point” will fail; whereas 100% of people using “Acting Well” tech-
niques are bound to succeed.

The Script
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a script to follow every day!
If you had a script with which to go through the day, you’d
automatically know what time to get up in the morning, what to eat
for breakfast, how long to meditate or chant, and how many sit-ups to
do.
A script would even imply that you could find a director to watch
and make sure you perform each task correctly. The problem is: have
you ever seen grade school kids perform a play where they memo-
rized every word and followed Teacher’s instructions perfectly—and
you didn’t believe a word of it?
Children are wonderful actors when you watch them play by
themselves. Their levels of belief in the pretend worlds they conjure
up are amazing. Just don’t try to write their script for them!
Acting Well is like a children’s play scenario. You can find out
exactly what to do (there are many healing disciplines that can tell
you exactly what to do!); but the only way Acting Well works is
when you write the script yourself, direct yourself, and perform and
captivate the audience yourself. It’s improvisation raised to the level
of art.
To practice Acting Well, you don’t need to buy or borrow some-
one else’s script—you might get the wrong guide for your situation.
Being an imperfect human being, you don’t fit anyone else’s mold.
Maybe you shouldn’t sleep as long as the guy down the hall.
Maybe you shouldn’t eat as big a breakfast as the gal upstairs. Maybe
your needs this year are altogether different from what they were
twenty or thirty years ago—or what they will be decades from now.
Maybe there’s some reason why you should roller skate and not play
basketball. Who knows? Who cares? You’re unique. All the scientific
tests in the world won’t tell you as much about your needs as your
body can tell you when it whispers its secrets.
Thus, your body and your unconscious are the best writers, direc-
tors, and producers in the world; and the world is your audience. It’s
a pretty good oyster. Just watch and listen carefully so you that can

240
pick up the subtle clues that lead you to yourself.

Spinners
“Mind” is a spinner. It’s independent of the brain; it’s what’s
spinning in the brain.
You spin yourself into self-knowledge.
Think of your mind as you would think of your country being in-
dependent of the soil.
Your country is more than the soil. Your country is the laws of
your country, its boundaries, and the feelings its citizens have about
it. You can’t touch, see, or scientifically demonstrate these spinners.
Spinners are as ephemeral as the shrieking of a bird. They echo
for a while and then are lost forever. They reverberate; that’s how you
recognize them. However, if you capture the sound of a whale you
hear the moan of immortality. It becomes like the song of the land. It
throbs with life and opens a road down which to travel. It’s magical
and god-infested. You plant it in a garden; it’s the seed.
At the atomic level, everything spins. Heisenberg’s contribution
to quantum mechanics showed that you can’t determine the position
and momentum of a spinning electron simultaneously because the
means you use to measure will change the one or the other. If an elec-
tron slowed and stopped, which is inconceivable, it would cease to
exist. Thus, with thoughts, you can’t slow them down, or they cease
to exist. They can’t exist without spin.
“Virtual Consciousness” is a consciousness that doesn’t exist in
“real reality.” We only experience scattered flashes of it, like moments
“looking in the mirror and seeing your eyes”; and yet we think con-
sciousness is a constant state.
That “constant” but non-existent state is “Virtual Consciousness.”
It’s assumed to be there, but it isn’t there. The illusion of its being
there (by virtue of the fact that it “ought” to be there) is precisely the
illusory constancy of our lives.
Without “spin” you couldn’t understand these thoughts or pos-
sess this knowledge.
Spinners include: ACTION, ART (that is, the idea of it, not the ar-
tifacts), ATTENTION, BEING, CARE, CONSCIOUSNESS, CREATIV-
ITY, DISCOVERY, ECHO, EXISTENCE, FEELINGS (all feelings are
spinners; anything felt is temporary), GOD, GRACE, HAPPINESS,
HEALTH, HOPE, ILLUSION, INTENTION, LIFE, LOVE, MIND,
MUSIC, NATION (or STATE), OBSERVATION, PASSION, POISE,
QUALITY, REALITY, SCIENCE, SELF, SELF-AWARENESS, SOUL,
SPIRIT, STARTLE, VALUE, and WORK.

Closure
Closure is a kind of happiness. It’s a kind of permission, the right

241
of the walk, le droit du seigneur.
Closure is variable: it varies from day to day, and it depends on
unpredictable experiences. It also seems to depend on pleasure.
Closure is a powerful tool for those who don’t know where to be-
gin Morning Preparation. That’s why it should be the first objective in
Steps & Landings. For Closure is “heroic walking.” (It follows the same
rhythm as walking.) It should take no more discipline to begin Morn-
ing Preparation with the first idea (which is to remember doing heroic
walking) than it takes to “Assume the Position.”
Closure is a form of affective memory that actors use. You get a
certain “click” when you “close” on something. An actor probably
feels the same thing when using mental tricks.
Closure to a crowd scene is easiest. Thus, the memory you choose
to close to is best formed in the presence of people.
The principle of emerging is important to Closure—coming out of a
building onto a crowded street, for example. Very often, the idea of
exiting the residence where you live is the moment you’ll select next
day for Closure.
Closure is also an entering. It’s like a actor’s character’s entrance
onto the stage (of life), which is why walking—or pretending to
walk—is so essential to Morning Preparation, even while you’re only
sitting in a chair.
Movement makes it happen. Movement makes thoughts. Neuro-
science has suggested the idea that there can be no real, extended
thought without movement.
The idea of body image is important to Closure.
You can have more than one kind of body image. Some examples
are:
• A real image (in which you view yourself in photo-
graphs or sometimes in a mirror when the light is un-
flattering);
• An imagined image, which—if you wear glasses,
and if your visage going into middle age has become
more “complicated”—is what you seem to look like
when you can see yourself in a mirror without wear-
ing your glasses; and
• The image projected next day from a Closure to
walking down a street dressed in a way you feel at-
tractive.

The reality of what you look like isn’t the important thing; it’s the
preparation and reinforcement that counts.
The silent eloquence of body language involves posture, costume,
and attitude. In a crowd scene, you speak with body language. That’s
the dialect of how to “own the street.”
People like to go to stores or places that provide them with the

242
kind of attitude most useful for Closure. Clever marketers understand
this preference and design their malls accordingly.
It matters how you walk when you’re in conducive surroundings.
You should try to perform professionally, and to dress appropriately.
Life is neither a fiction nor a dream to conjure up in the brains of an
audience. Life is as real as it gets.

Correct Posture while doing Acting Well

Yoga recommends various sitting positions to overcome any pos-
sible “kinks” that develop when people don’t sit straight. Likewise,
chiropractors generally urge their patients not to interrupt a healthy
flow of energy through the spine by risking “subluxations” caused by
poor posture.
It would be nice to think that a particular posture (say, a ramrod-
stiff spine) could make you more conscious, prevent and cure disease,
and release psychic energies that will carry you all the way to Nir-
vana!
The idea that posture affects the spirit lies behind the peculiar po-
sitions yoga recommends, such as the lotus position. However, there
is no scientific or clinical evidence that any kind of physical, mystical,
psychic, or spiritual energy exists, much less that it courses up and
down your spine and can be affected by posture. Therefore, don’t
worry about how you sit.
As far as posture is concerned, you’ll do much better doing
stretching exercises as you get older to protect yourself against lower
back pain. These prophylactic exercises may help prevent “spasms”
that can fell people for weeks. However, they have no spiritual or
psychic value.
You don’t have to sit in a lotus position to do Acting Well. In fact,
you can’t write when you’re in the lotus position! Therefore, if you’re
going to practice Acting Well, you’ll have to think differently about
posture.
It’s desirable, but not always necessary, to be comfortable when
sitting at a desk while doing your Morning Preparation. However, you
can do Acting Well in any sitting or lying position you like; and it’s
an interesting experiment to try out different postures from time to
time (for example, if you happen to be on vacation and have no place
else to do your Morning Preparation except in a bed). You’ll eventually
find the posture that works best for you. In all likelihood, that posture
will have you seated at a desk or table, feet flat on the floor, arms rest-
ing on the desk. You’ll probably fall into this posture naturally.

FAQ: The Food Pyramid

“Should I plan my menus around the Food Pyramid?”
_______________________________________________________

243
 What “They” say:

 Every day you should eat 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice, or
pasta; 2-4 servings of fruit; 2-3 servings of meat, poultry, fish,
dry beans, eggs, or nuts; 3-5 servings of vegetables; 2-3 servings
of milk, yogurt, or cheese; and use fats, oils, and sweets spar-
ingly.

 In other words, you should eat between 15 and 26 “servings”

drawn from 18 different kinds of food every day.

 Therefore, if you follow the high end of only the “grain group”
recommendations, you will eat the equivalent of more than
one-half of a loaf of bread per day. And that’s just from the
grain group!
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

It’s almost certain that if you tend to be overweight, and you fol-
low the government’s advice, even at the lowest end, you’d get heav-
ier and heavier until you’re obese.
In other words, whatever it was that the U.S. Department of Agri-
culture was smoking when they devised the “pyramid scheme” listed
above is anybody’s guess. That they struggled not to displease the
American food industry is obvious.
Therefore, you should ignore these ridiculous guidelines, as they
are wildly unhealthy. They suggest so much variety that making dif-
ferent choices daily (which the government obviously wants to en-
courage) would be mandatory.
Furthermore, suggesting “servings” is no way to help you figure
out how much you should eat. You may want to eat a banana, an ap-
ple, and a handful of raisins every day to get your fruit. However,
that’s not 3 “servings” of fruit. (It may be five or six some days, de-
pending on the size of the banana, the apple, or your hand.)
A “banana, an apple, and a handful of raisins” is an easy concept
to understand. Determining whether these three fruits are too much
or too little for you is easily done if you eat them every day and
measure what happens to your weight after a few weeks.

Bianca’s Summer Hampton

Psychic Makeover Class
Wednesday, December 3, 1997
I’ve been worried about the organization of all these articles—
probably more than 500 of them, and thousands of entries!—but I see
a natural way to do it.

244
 I’m also worried about the tone of the writing. It needs to be
amusing and well written, and not too scientific or technical. But it’s
gotten stodgy and too precise and not interesting!
I need to include my co-author (Bianca Jagger), of course, but I
haven’t been able quite to figure out how. Without knowing what to
do about her, or what she wants me to do, or what to suggest to her,
I’ve been somewhat stymied. Now I see the way.
I could have it be a diary! (Or a journal.)

BEGIN: I’ve spent fourteen months and traveled all the way to
Russia twice preparing for this book! Finally, today, after many false
starts, 300 “pages” of computer notes, a bulging printed file, hun-
dreds of clippings, many books, detailed outlines, lengthy conversa-
tions with Bianca, and almost 500 separate subjects to write about, at
last it struck me how to organize this stuff and make a go of it.
I’ll simply tell the story of how I got involved in cardiology and
preventive medicine; how the principles I learned about caring for
one’s health led me to prepare this syllabus for “Bianca’s Summer
Hampton Psychic Makeover Class”—for that’s the startling break-
through concept I came up with, a few hours ago, that finally broke
the logjam of my uncertainty!
Thursday, December 4, 1997
Need to figure out how to use this book as a syllabus. I forgot
about that element. It has to be divided into days, as it were; topics to
be discussed that lead one to another.
Need to do this book as if it were my script for running a seminar
or a course in how to do “psychic makeovers.”
Dump the beginning. Don’t need it!

—December 1997

FAQ: How Many Calories Should I Eat

Every Day?
What “They” say:

 If you're a woman trying to lose weight, eat approximately

1,200-1,500 calories a day; men trying to lose weight should eat
1,500-1,800 calories a day. For proper nutrition, women should
eat at least 1,200 calories daily; men should consume no less
than 1,500 calories.

 In other words, to lose weight you have to reduce caloric levels

drastically. But it’s still possibly to eat a nutritionally balanced
diet even at starvation levels. All you have to do is figure out
which foods you can eat (which, as you know, means which
foods you can’t eat!).

245
 Therefore, if you’re trying to lose weight, it’s not unhealthy to
starve yourself for a while eating foods you don’t like until
you’ve lost all the weight you want to. From that point on,
“lotsa luck!”
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

It’s difficult (and it’s probably impossible) to compute how many
calories there should be in someone’s daily breakfast, lunch, and din-
ner based on a list of foods nobody’s bought yet; especially for a per-
son who changes menus day to day.
In other words, people simply don’t have enough time, informa-
tion, laboratory equipment, or mathematical skills to extrapolate a
sensible daily three-meal menu out of caloric health tips (or even diet
books), much less a list of foods that will enable them to lose a pound
or two a week, with or without considerable daily exercise.
Therefore, to determine what your constant 3-meal menu ought
to be in order to lose weight, measure your weight-loss (or gain) as a
result of your current constant 3-meal menu one or two weeks after
the fact (and then adjust accordingly), instead of trying to calculate
the number of calories in a theoretical list of foods you may or may
not decide to eat in the future. There’s simply no better way to do it!

FAQ: What’s the best diet to lose weight?

What Acting Well says:
It’s more important that you ingest the nutrients your body needs
than that you restrict your diet in order to lose weight.
If you exercise sufficiently (which means “touching the envelope”
every day), and don’t eat more than you need to keep from being
hungry, your body will gradually lose the excess weight that cur-
rently bothers or embarrasses you. (You should never lose more than
two pounds per month, however.)
Once people who are only slightly heavy reach their ideal weight,
they may need to add food in order to avoid becoming too thin. Most
people who have become more than slightly overweight, however,
probably love food a little too much, and may always have to eat a lit-
tle less than they would normally choose to eat in order to lose weight
and keep it off.
However, there’s no need to “go on a diet”—ever. You should
never starve yourself to become or stay thin.
In order to choose which foods to eat in order to stay normal,
consider the ancient Chinese saying: “Good health comes from cook-
ing your own food.” This medical directive means that after you’ve
been cooking for yourself for years, you’ll instinctively gather and
prepare exactly the right ingredients your body requires.
Experiments with cafeteria feeding of infants have revealed this
same “wisdom of the body.” Therefore, in order to create the ideal

246
menu for your three meals per day, you may need to experiment,
sometimes for months or years, until you know how to measure ex-
actly the right quantities of daily foods you love to eat and that will
keep you at your “normal” weight.
Everyone’s genes are slightly different (except for identical
twins), and so everyone’s ideal menu will be slightly—or sometimes
greatly—different.
When you get it right, don’t change! Avoid variety. Listen to your
“body wisdom.”
In other words, you know what to do.

Mucis
Mucis is the music you hum in place of thinking profound
thoughts. You hear it almost all the time during Morning Preparation
(at least until you start Listening). It’s the “over-and-over-again” the-
matic substance of popular songs (or, for some people, classical
pieces). It’s named in honor of Christopher Plummer, who, according
to my cousin Ruth Bierman, who used to work at Twentieth Century
Fox, used to refer to The Sound of Music, while he was starring in it
with Julie Andrews, as “The Sound of Mucus.” (He apparently didn’t
think much of the enduring quality of the movie.)
Mucis is ephemeral and imaginary, and doesn’t affect other hu-
man beings. It seems a little like sleepwalking, and indeed can take
the form of lolling about, as in: “Take it from the top and fake it!”
Its melodies always promise resolution but never deliver. They
seem never capable of finishing before losing all artistic quality and
point. Yet, they keep vying for attention, following no score, some-
times remembering how things used to be.
On the other hand, there often needs to be a “run of nonsense”
before something can begin. For example, a gene may express a re-
dundant string of 50 to 200 “nonsense” nucleotides before it starts to
transport a piece of messenger RNA into cytoplasm.
Thus, mucis can tell you much about your unconscious—but if
and only if (and when!) you become conscious of it—which you
should do at every opportunity. For one thing, becoming aware of
mucis can stop it from intruding on your thoughts (or, more accu-
rately, replacing them), thus making you more conscious.
Mucis can be like a dream. When you analyze it, you may ask
“Where did it come from?” and the answer may tell you, as in a
dream, the places where your unconscious was ruminating. Thus,
mucis can send interpretable messages. It’s there because it wants
something to be finished.
Like life.

247
 Autosuggestion
Many people are familiar with the works of Maxwell Maltz, par-
ticularly his best-selling book, Psycho-Cybernetics. His ideas weren’t
much different from those of Émile Coué (1857–1926), the French psy-
chotherapist proponent of autosuggestion, whose repeated formula
(“Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better”) became
the rage in England and America in the 1920s. (My own mother
taught the phrase to me when I was a child.)
Autosuggestion works, and Maltz’s suggestions work—to a
point! If you continually rehearse the same lie to yourself, regardless
of whether you ever come to believe what you’re saying, you’ll even-
tually start acting on what you constantly repeat. You can thereby be-
gin to perform actions that aren’t characteristic of your personality.
You can close a sale better, even with difficult customers; you can at-
tract more desirable sexual partners; and you can play a better game
of golf using this well-documented technique.
Actors practice autosuggestion all the time, yet no one thinks it
mysterious. After all, actors still know the difference between “real-
ity” and “fiction,” even if their convincing performances sometimes
make it appear that they don’t. However, anyone who practices auto-
suggestion also knows the difference between “truth” and “lies.”
They “know” they’re not really getting better and better. They only
perform as if they do; for the lies they tell themselves are averaged
against all of their experiences; and their “action system” (that is,
whatever controls their behavior) only counts the number of occur-
rences of what they say to themselves; it doesn’t adjudicate the truth
or falsity of what they say.
Thus, autosuggestion can create a new “reality” that helps people
achieve results they didn’t think possible.
Alas, such techniques only work for a while. An actor can be
Hamlet for two hours onstage; but when he goes home, he knows
he’s no longer Hamlet. Likewise, autosuggestions eventually fail; and
Coué’s works are gathering the dust.

How to Measure Portion Sizes

The idea sounds reasonable: the less volume you eat, the less
pounds you’ll put on (or the more you’ll take off) over the long run.
Therefore, reducing portion sizes will make you healthier. (One
friend claims that he regularly pushes 60% of his food away every
time. However, I’ve watched him, and he doesn’t!) The fact is, con-
trolling portion sizes doesn’t work—except on a temporary basis.
For example, if you’re on a liquid diet, and a bottle of fortified
milkshake is all you eat for every meal, the company that makes the

248
milkshake measures out the portion for you. As long as you’re on the
diet, you’ll lose weight. Once you go off the diet, you’ll revert to habit
and gain it all back.
There’s one solution that does work, however. It couldn’t be sim-
pler, and it’s 100% effective.
You do what the diet milkshake people do: you prepare and eat
the same menu time after time, always pre-measuring your portions
precisely (according to what will make you lose or maintain weight)
so that you never have to make an estimate.
For example, if you have pasta and tomato sauce every night (as
do I), weigh or measure and make sure that every night you boil no
more than two ounces of pasta (per person) in the water. After a
while, you’ll get used to eating only two ounces of pasta every night.
(The amount of sauce you pour over the pasta is bound to be ap-
proximately the same, as the pasta limits how much you can pour.)
Eventually, eating more than two ounces of pasta becomes unthink-
able. You’ve solved the problem!
But, you say, you need variety. Who can eat pasta every night?
The answer is, you can! It’s your only answer. However, your
dinners must be really fresh and really good; and that takes time and
lots of practice.

The Camera Obscura

Acting Well is something like punching a hole in a tent to create a
camera obscura.
A camera obscura (“a dark room”) can be created by punching a
small hole in a box or in an opaque tent. Reflected light beams coming
through the hole will focus into an inverted image of the outside
scene on the opposite side of the tent.
Ancient people viewed eclipses, and artists traced images of na-
ture, by exploiting this light-focusing phenomenon. In 1826, J. N.
Niepce converted a lensed lightproof box into the first photographic
camera by focusing an image on light-sensitive paper.
This metaphor is useful in understanding Morning Preparation; for
doing Morning Preparation punches a tiny opening in the world
through which truth is bent and sifted so that one may expand it, as
required.
Each day you do Morning Preparation you may punch a different
hole in the tent (they knit up overnight). However, the truth outside
the tent remains constant, although it will always appear somewhat
dimmed inside the tent no matter how many years you keep at it.
(Similarly, Acting Well isn’t something you “get better at.” There
are skills and techniques involved that are similar to techniques that
actors use. However, you can get pretty good at acting skills very
quickly. Otherwise, there could be no young skilled actors!)
If you punch too many holes in a tent, the camera obscura effect is
lost (the images overlap each other in a confusion of smeared light

249
beams). Thus, following the metaphor, a new student of the world is
able to glimpse as real an image of the world as an elderly master.
(An artist’s imagination—or ability to articulate it—may improve
over time; but not an artist’s perceptions.) The master may remember
more experiences of truth; but none will appear brighter than the day
the work began.

Listening
Listening is the simplest and the first thing you can do. It’s the
only action you have to worry about right now; and it’s the one action
you can always do to begin with.
It’s easy. You don’t need any “willpower” just to listen.
Do you think you can just listen for a moment to the world with-
out?
When you’re really Listening, you’re attaching meaning to things
you thought had no meaning. It’s a pleasurable revelation, and it’s the
first achievement you accomplish in your Morning Preparation.
Listening requires focusing. It also requires ignoring.
Try to hear beyond the whirring. (The whirring, by the way, is a
major reason why we discourage doing Morning Preparation in front
of a computer!)
Listen to what’s beyond the machines and pipes in your room.
Do you hear the traffic?
You can hear birds in the country. In the city are also sounds that
make up poetry and metaphors. It’s up to you to become a connois-
seur of those “inhuman echoes”—the way some people become con-
noisseurs of wines.
A wine can be fruity; a sound can be “throaty,” or all sorts of
things. Make a note to think about these things tomorrow—to listen
to the world outside your window as you begin Morning Preparation.
That’s your first “assignment.”
Listen! Listen to the traffic: it’s a parade. It’s in the sky. It’s in the
city. It’s on, over, and underneath the roads.
Listen!
Get close to those machines. They define your location. They fill
you up with where you are. They put you somewhere dear. They put
you in a “people location,” whether in the city or the country.
That’s the most important point. Sounds make you aware of how
much there is in the world—just outside your door—that you never
even thought about!
Keep Listening!

Asking Dr. Weill

Thinking I could get Dr. Weill’s famous 8-week prescription for
health free over the Internet, I clicked my way through his website to

250
a section called “Eight Weeks to a Healthy America.”
The first thing I read was Dr. Weill’s congratulations on my deci-
sion to embark on his “step-by-step process for achieving optimum
health.” He warned me that the program would be “challenging”; but
he also claimed that anyone committed to change could master it.
I clicked on each of the eight links to find out what I could expect
to be doing for the rest of the eight weeks.
There wasn’t much. Basically, there was one main tip offered per
week:

Week 1. Go into your pantry and throw out all your old and un-
healthy oils.

Week 2. Don’t drink tap water.

Week 3. Buy organic food.

Week 4. Shield your bed from clock radio radiation.

Week 5. Buy air filters for your house.

Week 6. Spend 20 minutes in a sauna one day per week.

Week 7. Spend 20 minutes in a sauna two days per week.

Week 8. Do volunteer service.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. True, if I’d paid for his book
I would have gotten many more tips per week. Even his television
programs, which are free, offer more exciting material. Nevertheless,
what excuse was there to provide such meager and dubious offerings
as to insult my intelligence?
Here was advice more worthy of a crank than a medical doctor.
What was “challenging” about it? Did fresh olive oil, bottled water,
organic food, air filters, and saunas constitute lifestyle changes? Was
there any kind of challenge that required willpower? Or were these
tips just parts of an exceedingly sloppy website section that only I and
I alone bothered to read all the way through?

—November 2000

The Real Me
(Excerpts from “The Magic Bullet,”
the Acting Well Videotape)

ROY SCHEIDER
But that’s how I convinced myself that the real character, the real per-
son who I am, just doesn’t smoke.

251
 INTERVIEWER
You said “the real me,” and “this character” does not smoke.

ROY SCHEIDER
(Agreeing)
Mm-hm.

INTERVIEWER
Is it the character or is it the real you? How do you decide what a
character is, and how do you decide what you are?

ROY SCHEIDER
Who is the person that I’m most comfortable with, that I don’t have to
feel guilty about this or that or overeating or doing anything over, or
doing anything under? Which is the character that contributes the
most to my health and to my well-being? And if I really stop and
think about that, then that’s the character I try to go with, that’s the
character that exercises, tries to eat responsibly, thinks healthy
thoughts, is not a cynic, and it goes on and on and on and on!

INTERVIEWER
Do you feel that you have a public persona, or do you think that this
is just the way you always are?

ROY SCHEIDER
Well, I cannot help but be a human being who has worked as a pro-
fessional for such a long time that when you put a camera on me or a
light on me I suddenly, I sort of rise to the occasion. I know that I
have to project a certain amount of energy. I have to be honest.
There’s a certain part of me that, if I’m not honest, with you right here
and now, it’s not going to sound very good, because the camera
doesn’t lie. So that same principle of being honest and not lying,
works in daily life as well.

FAQ: How Much Fat Should I Include

in My Diet?
What “They” say:

 Eat no more than 30 percent of your total calories from fat:

about 40 grams in a 1,200-calorie diet.

 In other words, you’re going to have to calculate how many

grams of fat you’re likely to consume on a particular day, every
day from now on, then alter your menu accordingly. If there’s
going to be too much fat in Tuesday’s lunch, cut something out
from Tuesday’s dinner.

 Therefore, if you haven’t created a regularized three-meal menu

(that is, a list of foods you eat every single day, with only one

252
 meal’s exception per week), you’re going to have an awful lot
of figuring out to do every day for the rest of your life!
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Trying to solve these kinds of problems on a daily basis is com-
pletely unproductive. No one is going to do it. Some people may pre-
tend to do it, examining inadequately detailed labels on the sides of
packages, and feeling better about themselves. However, they can’t
possibly know the exact amount of fat in a particular piece of meat,
for example, without destroying the meat and calculating the amount
of fat in it. What’s the point? Of course, you could eliminate all fat
from your diet. However, you need a certain amount of fat for good
health!
In other words, there’s no point in worrying about how much fat
you’re getting in your diet. You can’t know for sure; and if you’ve set-
tled on a regularized three-meal menu after several months of ex-
perimentation, it’ll be highly unlikely that your diet will include too
much or too little fat according to anyone’s specifications.
Therefore, stop worrying about fat grams!

FAQ: Who are you?

What “They” say:

 We’re the doctors and masters with degrees in medicine, physi-

ology, and nutrition.

 We’ve published best-selling self-help books and videotapes

about diet and fitness, the titles of which are on everybody’s
lips.

 We lecture and appear on talk shows, and give interviews to in-

form the public what to do (and, incidentally, to promote what-
ever it is we’re selling).

 In other words, we’re the Lifestyle Specialists, and we know

more about your life and all your problems than you do!

 Since we’re the ultimate authorities on every subject, only we

can lead you to the truth.

 Therefore, you must do exactly as we say. (For we are never

wrong!)
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Many, if not all, of the health problems suffered in America are
due to the fact that doctors, teachers, writers, gurus, trainers, preach-

253
ers, coaches, and other self-appointed experts have been instructing
people what to do as if they were lecturing to students who were sit-
ting in an audience. This system is sometimes learned and intelligent,
and at other times incredibly stupid. Either way, it doesn’t often get
people to behave in healthier ways except temporarily.
In other words, “All the world’s a stage,” not a lecture hall. If
you’re going to change your life, you have to take a leading role and
change your actions; not be content to sit in the audience and expect
someone to tell you what to do.
Therefore, our job is not to prove our point on the blank screen of
your imagination, but, more simply, to direct your actions during a
few limited moments of your day. Your job is to become a “major
player” who improves the world by creating and taking charge of
your character.

An Unsuccessful Argument
Acting Well isn’t a “theory” (or someone’s idea), it’s a “tech-
nique,” which means that it’s something you practice, not something
you think about in order to get “inspired” to do.
To learn how to “act well,” you have to practice the technique so
often that you don’t have to think about it any more. In that regard,
it’s like roller-skating—but without the rink or the risk.
Acting Well is like practicing magic (that is, the slight-of-hand
type, not the “do it with mirrors” type). It requires a certain amount
of skill (acquired solely through repetition, not reading or talking
about it), and it requires a certain amount of planning. Then, when
you do it, people will wonder how you accomplish your effects.
“How did you lose so much weight?” they’ll ask. “You must have
great willpower!”
You don’t; and there’s nothing supernatural involved, even if real
nature isn’t easy to explain.
How do you explain juggling? It looks like magic, but it depends
on rehearsal.
If you fail to master any of the skills put forth in this book, you
won’t benefit from reading the book. Magic isn’t about imagining
rabbits. It’s about producing real rabbits out of real hats.
The illusion is in the eye of the beholder, not the magician; and
it’s a mistake. There can’t be mistakes in the brain of a magician.
If you’ve been skimming through the book before deciding
whether or not to do what the book suggests you do, then you might
as well close the book now and forget about it. It will be a waste of
time.
Nothing can be proved to you through argument.
Success only comes from what you do.

254
 FAQ: Is Yoga a Good Exercise?
What “They” say:

 Research on mind-body exercise programs such as yoga and tai

chi reveal that they have significant mental and physical value.

 In other words, incorporating approaches such as mind-body

exercise with existing health promotion and cardiac rehabilita-
tion services can improve self-efficacy and long-term adherence
to healthy behavior as well as improve personal stress man-
agement skills.

 Therefore, some experts recommend yoga or similar mind-body

exercises to stay healthy.
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Yoga is a serious Hindu religious practice that may take years to
master. It is at least 5,000 years old, and it was not invented in order
to extend physical or psychological health benefits to its practitioners.
Among other things, yoga and other mind-body exercises cannot be-
gin to affect your metabolism sufficiently to counterbalance a ten-
dency to gain weight.
In other words, if you’re overweight, don’t fool yourself into
thinking that practicing yoga (or any flexibility exercise) would be a
better single choice for you than any strong, daily, aerobic activity.
Therefore, you should probably not waste your time learning to
do yoga if you have only a limited opportunity, every day, to practice
a single serious fitness exercise.
If you do have plenty of time for additional physical or recrea-
tional activities, yoga is an excellent practice whose spiritual values
far transcend any weight loss, relaxation properties, or other practical
health benefits you may derive. As an Orthodox Jew would not lift a
Torah every day in order to stimulate endorphins or build stronger
arm muscles, Americans shouldn’t misuse esoteric spiritual practices
for secular purposes or because it makes them “feel good.” We insult
(or more often amuse) those who understand and take these religious
practices seriously.

Anxiety
Anxiety is part of a twisted cauldron of sensations. Just as back
problems can give you the sum total of many things going on in vari-
ous injured tissues in the back, anxiety is usually a kind of fallout
from childhood. Often it’s a fear of abandonment. If you ever got lost

255
in a department store or in a crowd on a city street and your parents
were nowhere around, you’ve felt “separation anxiety.”
Anxiety and fear can be a smoothing force, smoothing down the
rough edges that grate against you and “undignify” you.
To be afraid is to meet your responsibilities with courage. Thus,
fear is a unifying force. It’s always there, ready to be drawn on, ready
to be felt, but rarely fully felt (although it can be pulled into aware-
ness, as one of Morning Preparation’s techniques does).
Anxiety is like owning a reflection that you can’t see unless you
lean over to look into a mirror. Morning Preparation helps you lean
over.
Is it your connection to yourself you fear to lose? Is that what fear
of abandonment is all about? Is that what terrifies the confused, lost
child in the department store—the fear, always readily available, that
keeps watch over you, keeps you from straying too far and getting
lost?
Abandon the self, and the body will abandon the brain. How
would that feel? Is that the fear behind the fear of abandonment?
Remember that the ego is a surrogate parent, a substitute for
those who used to care for you. It was they who once abandoned you.
The function of free-floating fear may be to keep your inner child
afraid to stray and get lost.

Sound Pollution
Most often, while listening, you’ll be in a room with windows
through which you can hear audible sounds from the city or country.
The windows may be opened if the sounds aren’t too noisy. Closed is
usually best. The sounds should blend with each other, but you
should be able to discern car horns, birds, etc.
Avoid “sensible” sounds. If you can repeat the words that a radio
or television announcer is saying from somewhere in the distance, or
if the lyrics of a song on the radio are familiar, or if you can identify
the melody of radio or phonograph music, then you should insert
simple earplugs while doing Morning Preparation (or find a different
room in which to work).
The problem with understanding words is that you’ll usually be
subjecting yourself, in one way or another, to the message “Buy, buy,
buy!” More than any other source, it will be sales messages that
bother you with “sound pollution.”
Sometimes the sound of a radio or television is so distant that it
blends with the sounds of the city; and that’s fine.
You can make earplugs out of squares of toilet paper soaked in a
little bit of water. Drugstore models usually restrict too much
sound—you don’t want to go deaf to everything!
Use as little water as possible since the more water you use the
more sound you exclude. It’s important that you be able to hear
enough sound through the earplugs to interpret.

256
 Sometimes dry toilet paper, alone, inserted in the ears will suffice.
“Interpreting the sound,” means to be able to imagine its origin.
Accuracy of interpretation is neither necessary nor desirable.
Be imaginative!

Theoretical Considerations
Acting Well isn’t a “theory” (or someone’s idea), it’s a “tech-
nique,” which means that it’s something you practice, not something
you think about in order to get “inspired” to do.
To learn how to “act well,” you have to practice the technique so
often that you don’t have to think about it any more. In that regard,
it’s like roller-skating—but without the rink or the risk.
Acting Well is like practicing magic (that is, the slight-of-hand
type, not the “do it with mirrors” type). It requires a certain amount
of skill (acquired solely through repetition, not reading or talking
about it), and it requires a certain amount of planning. Then, when
you do it, people will wonder how you accomplish your effects.
“How did you lose so much weight?” they’ll ask. “You must have
great willpower!”
You don’t; and there’s nothing supernatural involved, even if real
nature isn’t easy to explain.
How do you explain juggling? It looks like magic, but it depends
on rehearsal.
If you fail to master any of the skills put forth in this book, you
won’t benefit from reading the book. Magic isn’t about imagining
rabbits. It’s about producing real rabbits out of real hats.
The illusion is in the eye of the beholder, and it’s a mistake. There
can’t be mistakes in the brain of a magician.
If you intend to skim through the book before you decide
whether to do what the book says you should, you may as well put
the book down now and forget about it. It will be a waste of time.
Nothing can be proved through argument.
Success only comes from what you do.

FAQ: Shall I Accept Myself as a Fat Per-

son?
What “They” say:

 Some people are constitutionally fat. The healthiest thing they

can do for themselves is accept being overweight for the rest of
their life.

 In other words, there may be (and the implication is, there

probably are in your case) hormonal, physiological, ethnic, ra-

257
 cial, genetic, psychological, or even astrological reasons why it’s
futile for you to try to be thin.

 Therefore, stop beating yourself up over what you can’t change!

Don’t bother to do anything to get thinner.
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

There’s no theoretical or physiological reason why most over-
weight people can’t lose all of their excess weight and keep it off.
In other words, the experts don’t know what to tell some of you
to do. Therefore, they expect you to accept their failure as your own.
Nevertheless, weight problems have created a $100 billion industry.
That figure, together with the fact that more than half of Americans
are overweight, suggests that many fat specialists are selling worth-
less products, or giving incomplete, misleading, or incorrect advice
that causes untold numbers of people to experience humiliating de-
feat. Meanwhile, some fat specialists, who fail to help people—and
worse, are nevertheless becoming obscenely rich.
Therefore, you don’t have to accept yourself as a fat person!
However, you do have to accept responsibility for having created the
fat person you are! If you wish to be a thin person, you have to create
the thin person you want to be.
It’s an acting problem, not a food problem; and it can only be
solved through acting techniques, not starvation diets.

An Example of How People Change

If you begin practicing Acting Well over the next six-weeks, your
experience may be similar to the following when it comes to choosing
a regular dessert:

Week 1: You refuse offers of dessert to see what happens.

Week 2: You find you miss desserts after lunch and dinner, and so
you try eating fruit as a substitute dessert.

Week 3: You find that fruit doesn’t satisfy you as a “reward.” In

other words, you’d rather eat fruit as part of your breakfast
and lunch, and a real dessert as a “reward” at the end of
lunch and dinner.

Week 4: You try to eliminate desserts altogether!

Week 5: You discover a low-fat substitute dessert and plan to try it

out.

Week 6: At last, you’ve found something you really love—in your

very own supermarket! Furthermore, it works for an entire

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 week! Therefore, you stock up on this new item and eat it
after every lunch and dinner. It’s so good that nothing else
tempts you. It’s your regular dessert from now on.

The point is that a new, “healthier” habit won’t form unless

you’re willing to make a progression of honest attempts. Think of
them as scientific experiments. No scientist expects to know the an-
swers in advance.
Therefore, no book that lists “The 100 Best Low-Fat Desserts” can
help you deal with the slow rate of change that most people experi-
ence. Nor is such a book likely to deliver even a single dessert you’ll
want to eat regularly.

Acting Well at Work

Success in the workplace depends on luck and circumstances.
Acting Well won’t change your luck, but it will stop your self-
destructive tendencies. You’re sure to work more efficiently, probably
longer hours, enjoy your travels, hobbies, or whatever you do for a
living more than you ever have. You’ll feel as though you only have
to work only at those tasks you really like to do (which doesn’t mean
you’ll slough off the rest; only that you’ll learn to enjoy some things
you thought you hated).
You’ll persist in struggling with tough problems longer than you
thought you could; and you’ll have no doubt that one of these days
you’ll meet success in a really big, prestigious way!
There won’t be such a difference between your work life and the
rest of your life. You’ll enjoy both parts, and you’ll stop dividing your
days between the hours when you “have” to do things and the breaks
when you can do the things you “want” to do.
You’ll look forward to the dawn’s red streaks that wake you as
well as to the twilight gold that marks the transition to whatever en-
tertains you.
Sometimes you’ll mix things up. Maybe you’ll read the newspa-
per after lunch instead of during breakfast; and maybe you’ll immerse
yourself better in those elective activities when you schedule them
differently.
Throughout the day, you’ll feel the way you used to in your
childhood when no one forced you to do a thing.

FAQ: Should I Walk More?

What “They” say:

 If you want to lose weight, you should become physically ac-

259
 tive. Try walking 30 minutes a day most days of the week.

 In other words, just regular walking and exercising four days a

week have been proven beneficial to people’s health.

 Therefore, just regular walking four days a week is all you need
to do.
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

It may be true that walking as a regular exercise is beneficial
physiologically; but psychologically speaking, in order to burn
enough calories to lose weight, you would have to walk for such a
long time (for example, ten miles, or several hours a day) that you’re
likely to reverse the hormonal benefits of exercise (such as an increase
in testosterone), which will make you feel depressed and unhappy.
Within a matter of weeks, these psychological side effects may force
you to stop performing regular walking as an exercise.
In other words, although it might appear that “anything is better
than nothing,” simply walking (whether fast or slow doesn’t affect
the outcome) will eventually be counterproductive as a “fat-burning”
activity.
Therefore, you must be able to accomplish the equivalent of fast
running (or biking uphill, for example) for an average of one minute,
without getting “winded,” six times over a half-hour period, every
single day without fail, except for illnesses, emergencies, extreme
weather, etc. Simple walking cannot play any role in such daily rou-
tines.

Louis XIV
One of the State policies of the “Sun King” was to make it fash-
ionable to wear extremely expensive clothing in Court. Consequently,
many of the 17th Century French nobility gathered around Louis XIV
went bankrupt in order to keep up appearances. These poor nobles
were forced to borrow money from the crown. Their financial de-
pendency made them submissive—which was the point.
Such displays of the King’s fashionable “taste” extended to mat-
ters of food. One reason why French cuisine is so exquisite is its heri-
tage from the days when 100 dishes might be served for dinner at
Versailles. The peasant class, of course, had to be content with eating
the same things every day. “Variety” (in food, as well as in clothing)
was reserved for kings to display their power—not commoners who
had no power.
When the European and American middle classes emerged gen-
erations later, “manners” were established based on the earlier con-
spicuous consumption of royalty (one of whose functions was to es-
tablish the best example of how to live). Therefore, if you could afford

260
it, you would naturally wear different fashions for different seasons.
You would also observe the customary “variety” at the dinner table.
There’s nothing essentially healthy about eating different meals
for dinner every night of the week. All such explanations (for exam-
ple, “getting a better balance of nutrients”) are rationalizations for
poor imitations of noble power. Nutritionists and others who provide
such rationalizations are mainly selling self-serving recommenda-
tions.

FAQ: How Fast Can I Lose Weight?

What “They” say:

 People who lose weight gradually are more likely to keep the
weight off.

 In other words, don’t try to diet too fast or you’re likely to gain
back the weight.

 Therefore, beware of quick weight loss diets.

_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Most experts don’t define what they mean by “gradual.” They
can mean anywhere from two pounds a week to nothing at all for
several weeks, then another pound or two a few weeks later. Of
course it’s much easier to go on a two-week starvation diet in order to
lose a lot of weight quickly than to deny yourself for months at a
time, losing only a few ounces a week. No one should be expected to
suffer for such a long time, and no one ever does.
In other words, avoid quick weight-loss diets, at least until you’ve
established extremely healthy eating habits. On the other hand, don’t
even think about going on a long-term starvation diet that will take
you months or years to lose weight slowly enough for your body to
adjust to the loss of weight.
Therefore, find a system that allows you to eat only slightly less
than a normal person should eat; but exercise strenuously daily so
that you lose four to eight ounces per week until you’ve reached your
normal weight. Then eat normally, continue to exercise daily, and
you’ll never gain back the weight.

Orange Juice
Many American students encounter an educational system that
tries to extract (or “abstract,” which may be worse) the essential in-
formation or techniques that constitute the essence of a particular sub-
ject.

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 This process is like selling concentrated orange juice to a public
that prefers sweetness, convenience, and speed of ingestion to the
more complicated process of peeling and eating slices of orange.
If you consider that drinking a glass of reconstituted orange juice
is less interesting than peeling an orange, you may taste the flavorless
reasons that American higher education is less interesting than it
should be.
Every orange is slightly different. Not so, with reconstituted or-
ange juice!
If concentrated results are all that is desirable, why not take vita-
min C and fiber pills instead of drinking orange juice in the morning?
On the other hand, if people really care about convenience, why not
inject cellulose and sucrose into their arms with an intravenous nee-
dle so they won’t have to swallow anything?
In other words: If you only go for results, you can wind up far
from your original intention, which should have been to savor the
taste of an orange at breakfast.
(By the way, concentrated orange juice probably has far too much
concentrated sugar in it to be healthy to drink every morning. Many
people get so tired during the morning, after drinking orange juice for
breakfast, that they desperately want to take a nap!)

The Magic Bullet

(Excerpts from “The Magic Bullet,”
the Acting Well Videotape)

DR. SHAKNOVICH
I think it is exceedingly important for patients to become full-fledged
partners in the lifelong effort of health maintenance. Discipline, con-
sistency, awareness, resourcefulness, being realistic and opportunis-
tic, being able to partner effectively with others who may be of assis-
tance, physicians and non-physicians alike. All of those go a very long
way, in my opinion, in improving outcomes of chronic conditions—
certainly, in cardiology.

INTERVIEWER
From your standpoint as a doctor, do you think that Acting Well is
on the right track?

DR. SHAKNOVICH
With exercise, there is no equivalent of the medications that lower
your cholesterol. There is no—to my knowledge—program that al-
lows a physician to reassure the patient that if this program is fol-
lowed, the patient would be able to change his lifestyle and now in-
corporate regular exercise. Acting Well, then, offers an interesting
possibility of being an instrument, then, that does allow physicians to
change their approach to exercise and make it more like their current
approach to cholesterol. So let’s say this is the “Magic Bullet”; this is

262
something that allows everyone to then somehow miraculously exer-
cise on a regular basis. Terrific! Then this becomes what is recom-
mended; and then there is insistence that it be followed, because there
are data to suggest that this translates into better compliance and bet-
ter performance on the part of the patient.

Colossal Blunders
A few years ago, while working on a fundraising project for a
heart clinic in St. Petersburg, Russia, I started researching some of the
literature and facilities devoted to preventive cardiology. While re-
viewing current practices concerning weight loss, exercise, smoking
cessation, and stress reduction (which are the four main areas involv-
ing prevention about which cardiologists are concerned), I began to
sense that some of the recommendations were not only inconsistent
and contradictory; they were demonstrably wrong! I started calling
these flawed recommendations “Colossal Blunders.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture “pyramid scheme” (which is
my irreverent name for a pyramid of food recommendations that puts
grain foods on a wide bottom and sparse meat condiments at a nar-
row top) provides an example of one of the worst of these flawed rec-
ommendations. When I discovered that the USDA recommended that
someone of my height and weight consume the equivalent of four
loaves of bread per week, I knew I had uncovered a Colossal Blunder!
Not surprisingly, one of the main functions of the USDA is to
support the American food industry. Sometimes government support
runs counter to the health needs of the nation. Subsidizing tobacco
farmers is a good example of counterproductive government med-
dling supported by lobbying groups of questionable ethics and sense.
Many Colossal Blunders are scattered throughout this edition. I
hope that Acting Well will help suppress the worst examples.

Why This Book Is Needed

“Despite the mountains of articles, books, lectures, and theses
that have been written about the art of acting, we have nothing that
can practically assist the actor at the moment he needs to realize his
creativity; or that can help the teacher at the moment he confronts his
pupil. Everything written about the theatre has been philosophical—
quite interesting, quite deep, to be sure; and beautifully expressed
about the desirable results one ought to attain in art, or critiquing the
successes and failures that others have already reached. All these
writings are valuable and useful; but as practical guides for artists in
the theatre, they offer no directions on how to attain those results, on
what one needs to do first, second, third, and so on, with an actor
who is a mere beginner, or for one who is experienced and even
spoiled.

263
 “What kind of exercises analogous to the solfeggi used by singers
should be practiced by an actor? What kind of scales, what arpeggi can
the actor use to develop the necessary creative feelings and experi-
ences? We must give them numbers in order to systematize these ex-
ercises so that they may be practiced in the school and in the home.
All books and theoretical works about the theatre are silent on these
issues. There isn’t a single, useful textbook!”

—Konstantin Stanislavski, My Life in Art

FAQ: Does your system really work?

What “They” say:

 It’s important that you never let yourself get hungry, because if
you do, you might get out of control and go off your diet.

 We have testimonials up the gazork by people who don’t be-

long to the Screen Actors Guild and therefore aren’t paid to lie
through their teeth about our wonderful system that they have
been following for at least a day and a night and sometimes
even longer!

 In other words, if they tell you their system “works,” beware!

 Therefore, you know what to do.

_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Acting Well has not been subjected to double blind clinical trials
yet, but it will be. In the meantime, so far, it’s worked for everyone
who’s done the “logs” for at least three weeks, which is the minimum
to which you have to commit.
In other words, although Acting Well doesn’t yet have an objec-
tive, scientific stamp of approval, the Stanislavski system on which
it’s based has been in operation for more than a century. The main
feature of the Stanislavski system is that when actors commit to doing
it, no matter what kind of role they’re playing, the system always
produces results. Audiences may not like the results, but the actors
don’t have problems getting them.
Therefore, there’s no theoretical reason why the system shouldn’t
work for you to produce the results you want, over time. Don’t worry
about what your “audiences” think, unless, of course, you’re a profes-
sional.

264
 FAQ: Food Logs
“Do I keep a food log on your system?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 If you’re really serious about losing weight, you must not only
record the time and date of the ingestion of every morsel of
food you eat or drink, but you must determine the exact num-
ber of calories and fat grams of everything on your plate before
it enters your mouth.

 You must file these records with us periodically for mysterious

reasons known only to us.

 Eventually we issue a report that’s virtually identical for every-

one and that has nothing to do with your particular case, but
we’d like you to think it does.

 In the meantime, keeping a food log is good for you because it

raises your consciousness about eating.

 In other words, busy hands are happy hands.

 Therefore, it couldn’t hurt.

_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

The proper method of controlling weight has nothing to do with
raising your consciousness about food. It’s more like the opposite: to
neutralize your obsession about eating. Therefore, keeping a food log
isn’t just useless, it’s counterproductive.
In other words, a food log is a manipulative technique that only
benefits the person or company that commissions the log.
Therefore, while you’re Acting Well, you will keep a daily log.
However, you will never be asked to report what foods you ate.
No one’s interested!

FAQ: Is It My Genes?
“Can you help me despite my genetic tendency to be fat?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 Some fat people just can’t lose more than 15% of their weight no

265
 matter what they do. These people should be content to be
mildly obese or at least pleasantly plump for the rest of their
life.

 In other words, if you have bad genes, forget about getting thin.

 Therefore, get used to it.

_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Why scientists blame genetics or hormones for weight problems
is anyone’s guess. There’s no evidence that more than a slim percent-
age of obesity is caused by genetic or hormonal malfunctions. The
cruel and terrible advice to simply give up is terrible science probably
based on clinical trials in which people were expected to take off a
pound a week or more instead of losing weight at a significantly
lower rate, such as a pound or two per month.
In other words, the results of many trials, and the advice based on
them, might have been very different if the experimenters and their
subjects hadn’t been impatient.
Therefore, “learn the virtue of patience!” It’s highly probable that
your ability to control your weight will have more to do with tech-
nique than it will with genes, hormones, or other unique factors be-
yond your control.

The Morning Track

To make a train work, heavy labor points two immutable,
smooth, steel ribbons straight into the distance, converging, vanish-
ing, belying the hard labor that drove the spikes in beams to support,
with careful regularity, the burden of the weight of speeding cars, one
by one by one, over and upon them.
Did men lay the line? Or gods?
Once laid, the track can only change through renewed labor, plac-
ing mutant steel elsewhere, the older spikes torn up. Then appears
another immutable testament to untidy, vanished work, producing
straight or gently curving, regularly spaced, twin arrows of steel, go-
ing somewhere mysterious.
Thus, on your “Morning Track,” create your itinerary; then ob-
serve it ever after, religiously like ritual, which it is: following, like
real geography, the stopping points that precede, and those that fol-
low.
Don’t change anything. If you change one day, next day, why not
change again? Every day will waste your time deciding better choices.
For what reason? What gain?
The liturgies of all religions evolve through many generations.
Changes come but carefully and slow. If you insist on alterations you
will either abandon the regular itinerary altogether (having spent

266
your choices plowing through unknown and unworkable territories),
or will found a new religion, whose endurance will depend on how
many followers survive your inevitable demise.

FAQ: Are Aerobics Classes Good?

What “They” say:

 These fitness classes utilize exercises set in patterns to music to

promote muscle strength, improve muscle tone, strengthen
heart, lungs, and blood vessels, and develop greater flexibility,
coordination, and agility.

 In other words, we promise that you’ll have more fun while ex-
ercising than you ever thought possible! In fact, you’ll enjoy the
exercises so much after completing one of our aerobics classes
that you'll probably enroll in all the others, whether Dance,
Step, Slide, or our other wellness classes.

 Therefore, be well! Sign up today!

_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Virtually all exercise classes, from aerobics to “spinning” to Army
“Basic Training,” are the same. A leader (or “puppetmaster”) stands
before a group of initiates and demonstrates rhythmic movements.
Members of the class are expected to mimic these movements.
In other words, there’s never any “training” in these classes. Since
no skills are taught, there’s nothing to take away.
Therefore, these classes do nothing to encourage or help people
develop lifelong fitness habits. (There’s simply no way you can get
better and better at mimicry!) Whatever benefits accrue from them are
more suitable for kindergarten children than they are for adults seri-
ously concerned about making adjustments in their lives to compen-
sate for a sedentary lifestyle.

FAQ: Is This System Just Another Diet?

What “They” say:

 Everyone knows that diets don’t work!

 In other words, we know you’ve probably tried all the diets by

now, and you’re still overweight. So, who’s going to believe us
if we claim we invented a diet that works?

 Therefore, we’re going to call our invention a “system” (or “a

267
 program,” or a “plan,” or “a method,” or “Acting Well,” or
whatever). As long as it isn’t a diet, you can be sure it’ll work!

 Our system is different, of course. It’s instantaneous. You can

eat all the fats and sugars you like and watch the pounds melt
away. You only have to exercise five minutes a year, and you
can still develop the abs (and/or pecs) of death. Now how’s
that?
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

You don’t have to go on a diet in order to lose a quarter of a
pound a week. You just have to control what you eat and “touch the
exercise envelope” during a 30-minute per day routine.
That’s all there is to it.
In other words, losing weight is truly simple, and our system isn’t
a diet!
Therefore, if you create the right exercise habit, the rest falls into
place.

Touching the Envelope

It isn’t that you have to push the envelope every day when you
exercise for fitness. (That’s not a great idea!) It’s that you need to touch
the envelope every day, and thereby—over several months and
years—push the envelope farther than you think you can push it
now.
You’ll never come close to touching the envelope by walking, do-
ing housework, or raking leaves (typical activities that puppetmasters
recommend for daily fitness).
Don’t try to kill two birds with one stone by combining fitness
with recreation or chores. You’ll kill yourself, not the birds, in the
process!
How many times a year can you rake leaves? How many days of
the week do you need to do strenuous housework? Since these activi-
ties can never become meaningful, daily, enjoyable habits, they’re
useless as fitness exercises.
Doctors who say that “most days of the week” is a sufficient fit-
ness schedule should be held accountable for killing people! Their
timetable misses the point completely, and therefore people die of
heart disease. Many lives are lost because people take this kind of
authoritative nonsense seriously. “Most days of the week” is the
worst!
It isn’t that exercise does you good; it’s doing the same exercise
every day that makes a crucial difference.
What meaningful fitness exercise you do daily doesn’t matter as
much as that you do it daily.

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 Making Life an Art
Life is a work of art, and we must all be scientists and creative
people to live well. No one can tell you how, but you can watch out
for good examples.
Art is perfection. What seems like monotony to the nonprofes-
sional, for the scientist is attention to detail, repetition of experiments,
verification of truth, or just the perfectionism of the artist.
You don’t have to be a professional to “perfect your days.” How-
ever, you can discover how to fix the perfect meal.
It takes a long time (months or years) to be able to create one per-
fect day. You begin earlier by keeping track of how many hours you
spent on “meaningful work,” how many on “office duties,” and how
many (during the workday) on rest periods, including breakfast,
lunch, and so on.
What was your impression during the day? Was it a happy day or
a stressed-out one? Did you use a routine to get going on meaningful
work? Is life getting easier?
Check the answers against the numbers you record while keeping
track of time. The correlations may confirm what you already suspect
but don’t want to admit. Everything’s getting better and better!

A Fountain of Youth
“Youth is a wonderful thing,” said George Bernard Shaw. “What
a crime to waste it on children!”
This bitter observation contradicts the benefits that Acting Well
makes possible. For one of Jonathan Swift’s Thoughts on Various Sub-
jects was: “No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
Acting Well helps you understand that right now is the best time
of your life. Right here is the best place to be. You are the best charac-
ter to play. Therefore, waste nothing!
Train yourself to listen and watch carefully (for example, during
your Morning Preparation and World Walk) in order to miss less of the
life that normally passes by. The wasted youth that youth appears to
countenance is the same waste a person at any age experiences who’s
inattentive to life’s benefits.
Life extends its tendrils every moment we’re awake. Most people
ignore and waste those moments. Acting Well helps waste less of
them. That extra dividend, though small, is the youthfulness that is
otherwise lost, but that can be regained and retained while Acting
Well—which can be like discovering a fountain of youth whose wa-
ters flow until one’s last day on earth.

269
 FAQ: Why Should I Lose Weight?
What “They” say:

 Since it’s easy for thin people to stay thin, it’s obvious that once
you slim down, it’s going to be much easier for you to continue
to be thin.

 In other words, “thinness” carries within it the virtue of being

easy to maintain.

 Therefore, there’s no logical reason why you can’t lose a lot of

weight as fast as you want and keep it off.
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

Let’s say you used to weigh 200 pounds, and you’ve managed to
get yourself down to 175 pounds. It will take you as much determina-
tion (and maybe more!) to stay where you are than it took you to lose
the 25 pounds!
In other words, it doesn’t get easier to maintain weight once you
lose it; it can get much harder!
Therefore, you may need a lifelong set of new habits that will take
you slowly and methodically to your ideal weight, then keep you
there.
However, after months or years of being thin, it does become eas-
ier to stay thin. Just don’t expect it, or be impatient.

FAQ: Diets
“Do I have to be on a diet for the rest of my life?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 Didn’t you know? Life is a diet!

 In other words, stick with us, kiddo! We (and a lot of others)

will tell you what you can eat and what you can’t eat from now
on!

 Therefore, if you want to lose weight, you must be eternally

vigilant! Life is a diet, and food is the baddie. If anything goes
wrong, you’re the one who’s punished!
_______________________________________________________

270
 What Acting Well says:
“Diet” can mean two things: either a permitted group of foods
that you regularly eat (what should properly be called a “menu”); or a
prohibited group of foods that you must avoid. Every healthy person
should be able to define his or her diet in the first sense. No one
should have to define a list of prohibited foods—ever.
In other words, while Acting Well, you will always eat so many
different kinds of healthy foods in permitted quantities on a daily ba-
sis that you won’t ever crave more.
Therefore, the rest of your life can be diet-free.

FAQ: How Can I Exercise More?

What “They” say:

 Walk to work, don’t ride!

 Climb stairs instead of taking elevators!

 Rake leaves or shovel snow instead of paying the neighborhood kids to

do these chores!
_______________________________________________________

What Acting Well says:

These nostrums sound like sensible advice. However, these op-
tional activities won’t work because they’re not regular. Only regu-
larly practiced fitness exercises can keep you fit.
It doesn’t matter if you rake leaves once a month or shovel snow
four times a year. What good will it do if you’re sedentary all the
other days of the year? In fact, it’s dangerous to shovel snow if you’re
not used to strenuous exercise!
Thus, you can’t keep looking for chores to do around the house or
the yard and thereby lose weight. The thinking behind such advice is
ridiculous. The only safe way you can become used to getting enough
exercise every day is through daily practice of the same routine. Make
it a habit and you’ll get to the point where you can’t do without it.
Only then will you get enough exercise.

FAQ: Are You an Atheist?

What the author says:
That’s a fair question about which no one should equivocate.
There’s no question that the Western community’s collective be-
lief in God has been a major catalyst in our civilization. Christianity,
for example, was a great “fertilizer” in inspiring such magnificent ex-
amples of human creativity as the “The St. Matthew Passion” and the
Sistine Chapel. From an anthropologist’s point of view, however,

271
such “fertilizer” can only be viewed as the “intellectual remains” of
“honorable ancestors” whose legends metamorphosed into the stories
of immortal gods.
Although the decomposing matter in actual fertilizer contributes
great value when properly spread on gardens and farms, no one be-
lieves that the value of the nitrogen in manure is equal to the value of
the lilies it may nurture. Thus, for me, a pound of bullshit is worth
less than a pound of cotton.
Therefore, although I respect the helpful intentions and literary
achievements of all religions, I can’t take their fairy tales seriously ex-
cept to the extent that they can be miraculously transformed into the
works of a Bach or Michelangelo.

What I Should Do
I should start my new life! I should start taking care of myself! I
should start a new diet (that I’ll continue)! I should start an exercise
class! I should start a yoga class! I should start meditating twice a day!
I should start a jogging program! I should start getting annual physi-
cals and doing what the doctor says! I should start going to the den-
tist every six months! I should start being more social! I should start
making people like me! I should start being a better parent or a nicer
child!
Or I should stop smoking! I should stop eating between meals! I
should stop putting so much sugar and salt on everything! I should
stop eating three egg omelets every morning! I should stop ordering
thick steaks with all the fat left on! I should stop whoring! I should
stop worrying! I should stop hating the person I love! I should stop
hating myself!
But when push comes to shove, I don’t really want to start or stop
any of it! Therefore, everything will always stays the same!

FAQ: Chromium Picolinate

“Will chromium picolinate help me lose weight?”
_______________________________________________________

What “They” say:

 Chromium inhibits the synthesis of new fat from carbohy-

drates; thus freeing the mitochondria to burn already stored fat.

 In addition, chromium increases the effectiveness of insulin and

optimizes glucose metabolism.

 In other words, chromium is important for fat metabolism, en-

zyme activation, and the regulation of cholesterol.

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 Therefore, chromium picolinate, which is a highly utilizable
form of chromium, promotes optimal regulation of cholesterol,
as well as glucose and fat metabolism. You can take it to lose
weight quickly and without dieting.
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What Acting Well says:

Jane Brody, in The New York Times on October 26, 1995, reported
that when hamster cells were exposed to reasonable doses of chro-
mium picolinate, the cells suffered chromosomal damage as high as
18 times the amount that occurred in cells exposed to other chromium
compounds. Such damage is considered an indicator of a substance’s
cancer-causing potential.
In other words, chromium picolinate appears to be one of those
quick-weight-loss panaceas that offer fat-burning abilities while
threatening your life.
Therefore, maybe you’d better steer clear of this stuff!

Quarantines
You should try to practice Acting Well in a communal atmos-
phere.
One of the worst problems with most quick weight loss diets is
that they create quarantine situations at the dinner table for those on
diets. That is, most people on diets assume that they can’t “safely” eat
at the same table as people who might be indulging in a variety of
new “taste treats” in whatever quantities they please.
The main “disease” those who are quarantined are trying to avoid
isn’t obesity but guilt.
Quarantine situations are for sick people, not healthy people.
Therefore, you should strive to create as healthy and normal a life as
possible while losing weight. In addition, your diet should be as close
to eating normal amounts of satisfying food as possible.
Never deny! (You won’t have to lie!)
One of the worst things you can do is to isolate yourself from
other people while undergoing rigorous dietary prohibitions. The
temptation to cast all dietary sense aside when the “goal weight” is
finally reached can overwhelm the strongest individual.

FAQ: Should I Eat Special Foods?

What “They” say:

 I want you to eat broccoli, because there’s a chemical in broccoli

that protects you against cancer.

 In addition, cooked tomatoes protect against prostate cancer.

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 Etc.
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What Acting Well says:

So what? If you don’t eat these “health” foods every single day
(and in sufficient quantities), their chemical properties against dis-
eases are irrelevant.
To recommend foods that have demonstrated some health benefit
in laboratory experiments on rats is foolish—unless you’re part of the
food industry that benefits from marketing specific foods by frighten-
ing the public (“you might get cancer!”), then offering salvation (“but
here’s a way out!”), in which case you’re more clever than we!
You should not create a three-meal daily menu based on current
health claims attaching to particular foods. If you’re a man who loves
cooked tomatoes, lucky you! (Maybe.) However, you should pay
more attention to your attraction to the tomatoes than to their healing
or preventative qualities, which science may change from year to
year.

Kinesthesia
Kinesthesia comprises the “subliminal” sensations in the body that
you normally ignore, particularly the sensations of muscular move-
ments and tension.
It’s disturbing when any bodily sensations rise to the level of pain
where they can’t be ignored. Usually these twinges, itches—or just the
feeling of blood coursing through the veins that accompanies life—
erupt from all sections, surfaces, and interior organs of the body and
disappear as swiftly.
Although at every moment, many sensations are happening, you
can only select one or two at a time to raise above the level of the sub-
liminal.
Sometimes, when you concentrate on one of these sensations it
may shock your consciousness into a better kind of awareness. The
best time to try this technique is following Listening.
For example, you may suddenly realize that you want to itch; but
you also realize that you don’t really have to scratch. There’s no real
need for relief when you’re totally aware; there’s only a need for more
consciousness.
You’ve “become your character.”

Stanley’s Diet
We met up with Stanley again (still fat), and asked him what
happened to the diet on which he claimed he’d lost 20 pounds. He
sort of shrugged and turned away. Then he turned back and bright-

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ened: “But...!”
Pointing his finger in the air he said, “My doctor says, the new
theory is: it’s not about fats, it’s about calories!”
At last, he found the answer to why he couldn’t lose weight. He
was thinking wrong! He was following the wrong theory! Now he fi-
nally got it right!
Nevertheless, he gained back all the weight he lost.
What did he mean by calories? “You mean it’s about quantity, not
quality?” we asked him. “That’s obvious,” we continued. “You can
eat all the right foods and avoid all the wrong ones; but if you eat too
much of a good thing you’re still going to gain. Most Americans take
in too large portions. That’s why we’re an overweight nation.”
Stanley agreed.
Of course!

The Log
As other important parts of the day occur, you may extend your
record keeping so that eventually you can quantify the value of each
day.
That is, you will know how much time you spent that day doing
what you wanted to do, how much time you spent doing what you had
to do, how much time you rested, and what were the proportions be-
tween them. (The ideal proportion is 1/3, 1/3, and 1/3.) Keeping
track with a computer program simplifies the task to the extent that
you will find yourself automatically recording the times you spend
during the day.
Do not continue recording after “quitting time”—such as 6 PM—
unless you are doing serious work.
“Keeping score” aids self-discipline, especially for artists and
other self-employed workers. It acts as a reward system for those who
need or appreciate recognition for jobs well done.

The First Closure

In my childhood, I acquired new ideas, the names of things, the
world. These old adventures offer closures to me now, when I explore
the unknown tunnels, walls, doors, and windows behind closed eyes,
through bloody shadows confronting fear, the dread emotions return-
ing to me from that warm afternoon (or cooler morning) when it star-
tled me to learn what was a wall.
What was a wall? Along the baseboard of our dining room, the
false, stone, more likely plaster, grainy surface, painted golden cream,
hard, cold, I crawled along the floor, probably using the side, the
edge, to prop myself against what was a “wall.” And when I hit the
thing with the flat of my hand (unable yet to close it otherwise), it
struck me back: cold, indifferent, unyielding. This obstacle had a

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name: Wall.

Sound
You can replay the startling, random, unexpected sounds of Lis-
tening in your brain as often as you like. You can relive the moment,
making yourself increasingly conscious of the sound.
Sounds have textures and components, and you can amplify
them. You have within yourself an automatic amplifier.
This phenomenon may be repeated while listening to music.
Then, instead of reproducing exactly what went before, there are con-
stant changes, which are pleasing, in the same timbre, so that in clas-
sical music, many things can happen, each following a different
memory path. The “repeated differences” are what make music art.
Listening also includes analyzing sound into textural compo-
nents, not just remembering it.
The city’s sounds can raise consciousness to the level of an incipi-
ent art.
Sounds can retain deliciousness when you rehear them. The expe-
rience should be pleasurable.

Essays
For almost any person, including a professional writer, it would
be impossible to write an essay in the morning by just sitting down
“to write something.” But for almost anyone, after writing 300 words
as notes, a theme will always emerge that will provide plenty of inspi-
ration to write an essay—providing you know that no one else will
ever have to read it; and thus, you won’t feel intimidated.
The day following this writing you may decide whether to copy
anything written previously before you destroy your notes for the
writing.
You should not intend to keep your notes or essays in their “raw”
form for long. Then you’ll always be convinced that, when you do
Morning Preparation, what you write will be impermanent and will
never be judged by anyone other than yourself.

The Hormonal Effects of Acting Well

Acting Well can accomplish much of what proponents of mela-
tonin, testosterone, DHEA, and human growth hormone promise
from their trendy anti-aging potions.
Included in their claims are: increased cardiovascular capacity,
skin firmness, and muscle mass; enhanced memory and sex-drive;
faster healing, glowing skin, elevated mood, sharper mental acuity,

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and “the whiz-bang metabolism of an 18-year-old.”
Most of these goals can also be achieved from Acting Well—but
without the swollen ankles, aching joints, accelerated cancers, carpal
tunnel syndrome, or heart and bone enlargements that sometimes re-
sult from daily doses of exotic hormones, enzymes, and vitamins in-
jected, inserted, rubbed into, or ingested in pill, capsule, or powder
form.

Seeing Yourself
When you close your eyes, what you “see” through the bloody
shadows of your eyelids looks like self-consciousness itself—if self-
consciousness could “look” like something.
Another way to put it is: when you try to see with your eyes
closed you become most self-conscious.
If you think, “I’m looking at myself” you hook into whatever cir-
cuit it is that makes you feel like a separate entity—which is “your-
self.”
That entity tends to disappear in those moments when your eyes
are open, consciousness becomes tied to perception, and the sense of
self may be “forgotten” for a while.

Self-Help
The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to
gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung
wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with de-
sire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not
need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him,
because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The
gods love him because men hated him. “To the persevering mortal,”
said Zoroaster, “the blessed Immortals are swift.

—Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

Moreover...
Doctors who dispense medications for obesity surrender to your
problems instead of solving them.
Nutritionists who encourage variable menus and snacking mag-
nify your problems instead of solving them.
Physical trainers who teach you a variety of occasional exercises,
instead of helping you to do a regular, daily exercise, intensify your
problems instead of solving them.
Becoming thin is an acting problem not a weight problem. You

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can’t be thin unless you act thin.

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