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Author Insight
Act as Though and Make It So!
More often than not, “acting as though” makes no conventional sense. That was certainly the case for me in late 2021, when I learned that the lease on my Sedona condo would not be renewed. It was hard not to panic. The unregulated proliferation of Airbnbs had stripped my tourist town of much of its housing stock, and neither the local paper nor the usual online listings had more than a handful of offerings…when they had any. Friends online and off urged me to give up on Sedona and look elsewhere. My logical mind was hard-pressed to disagree. Yet every time I meditated on whether to consider non-Sedona options, the answer never varied: “Act as though you’re staying.” I confess that I was a bit skeptical, but I did (act as though)…and I did (stay)! How? A neighbor happened to mention a never-advertised rental around the corner from my old place that would be available within days of when I would need to move. I checked it out, it was perfect. I applied, and I got it. Act as though: It worked for Anthony Hopkins, it worked for me...and it’s still working!
Book Excerpt
The Way of the Abundant Fool
The Way of the Acting Fool
It’s hard to think of Sir Anthony Hopkins as a kid with poor grades who grew up, as he told The New York Times in 2002, “absolutely convinced that I was stupid.” It didn’t help that no one disputed this self-characterization. “I was regarded as rather backward,” he said.
Yet something shifted when he was seventeen. Perhaps it was willful adolescence. Perhaps it was the nascent spark of the great actor he was destined to become. But that Easter, Hopkins decided to act as though he was bright, capable and deserving.
It worked.
By the end of the year, he had been awarded a scholarship to the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff. And within a decade, as he put it, “extraordinary things happened in my life.”
Today, the Oscar-winning actor says, “I act as if everything is possible. I act as if I believe.” Or, as he advises the rest of us, “Act as if it is impossible to fail.”
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