Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success

by Jordan Belfort

Now, let me ask you another state management question, albeit from a slightly different angle. Let’s say you were in a depressed state right now, and I offered you $50,000 to act happy for the next sixty seconds. Could you do it? Yes, of course you could! It would be as simple as consciously making certain obvious changes to your physiology, ones that you had used countless times in your life, since you were a little boy or girl. However, what if I offered you $100,000—no, make that $1 million—and asked you to make the same changes to your physiology as last time, albeit with one important difference: this time, I need you to maintain a happy physiology for the next eighteen hours straight. Could you do it? No way. No matter how hard you tried, you simply couldn’t pull it off. It’s impossible. To be clear, this has nothing to do with you being weak or strong or anything of the sort. It’s simply the way human beings are built, as a species. You see, while it’s true that we can, in fact, make ourselves feel any way we want at any given moment, that moment is fleeting—giving us a window of opportunity that’s anywhere from five minutes to maybe an hour at most. After that, you’ll slowly start to settle back to whatever state you were in before.