Most of us believe an emotion, such as happiness, comes first.
Then we do whatever we do, in reaction to that particular emotion.

Not so. The emotion arises simultaneously with the act.
So if you want to be enthusiastic, you can get there by acting as if you were already enthusiastic! Sometimes it takes a while, but it always works if you stay with it, no matter how ridiculous you feel doing it.
If you want to feel happy, find the happiest song you know and sing it.

Zen monks do a ‘laughing meditation’, they all sit in a circle and get ready to laugh. When the teacher hits a gong, they all begin to laugh, forced at first and then genuine.
Children do it all the time, especially when traveling in the car or at a dinner table.
We say: ’Why are you laughing, you have no reason to be laughing?’

The secret of happiness: Laughter makes you laugh!
The next time you ask someone to dance and they say ‘I don’t feel like dancing’, you say, ‘That’s because you’re not dancing!’

‘Life a whole life today, life is now’! If we were asked if today could be used as a model to judge our entire life, most people would say ‘Oh no! It wasn’t one of my better days. Give me a year of two and then I’ll live a day that you can use to represent my life’.

Napoleon Hill in his book ‘The Master Key to Riches’ notes that ‘all’ we have to do is take full and complete possession of your own mind. The ‘only thing’ you have complete control of is your own mental attitude.