Why I think it’s actually possible to do the “nifty little Mormon trick” for real: Brains are funny. With cognitive dissonance and creating narratives post hoc after having irrational emotions there’s a lot of leeway to create what you want to be true about your own emotional state.
Much older notes that make the idea sound stupid even though I think there’s something practical to be extracted from all this somehow:
I’m very fond of brain hacks, such as the self-binding idea at the heart of Beeminder. Here’s another example: the act-as-if principle. I wish more people appreciated the uncanny power of this hack. Take being irritable, for example, or bitter, angry, jealous — any negative emotion that you wish you didn’t feel. So easily solved: just pretend not to feel that way! It’s only pretending at first because faking it makes it. (There are psychology papers purporting to establish this, though the ones I know of are from deep in the replication crisis so who knows.) “Acting as if” seems disingenuous until you appreciate just how malleable one’s own emotions really are. You can even profoundly influence your perception of physical pain with this trick (anecdote: a couple times I’ve had a totally unsedated [medical procedure I’ll spare you the mental imagery of], flabbergasting the nurses).
Training one’s intuitions and emotions to match one’s considered determination of what’s best is so huge to me. I work hard all the time to do that, like training myself not to feel irrational pangs of regret, say at missing a TagTime ping.
PS: Huge problem with conveying this: It’s an inherently offensive suggestion. I guess that’s why the song made it a joke, come to think of it. It’s the epitome of denying someone’s lived experience and doing the exact opposite of validating someone’s feelings.