> How you talk changes how you think.

When I started to learn Japanese I was given the advice to pick a persona from a movie or something to copy. This makes it much easier to mold your speech and become fluent faster. The strange thing was that I started to develop that personality in Japanese and before I knew it I had a completely different character when speaking Japanese than when speaking English. Even stranger, I liked myself a lot better in Japanese. It's one of the reasons I chose to stay in Japan.

Because I now have an English speaking job I'm slowly trying to learn how to be my Japanese self in English, but I find it difficult :-)

This happened to me without deliberately picking a persona to model.

My Japanese persona is chirpy with a rhythmic speed.

My English is cold, monotonous and logical with a dry sense of humour. I honestly feel like a totally different person when I'm speaking Japanese.

This is interesting. When I try to speak my second language (my parents' native language) as my regular self, I struggle. But when I am impersonating characters it flows so quickly I surprise myself.

I still remember one of my highschool English teacher's quoting Chaucer: "The mind is its own place, and in itself, Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven"

I've found this quote, and the generalization to personality traits in general, to be quite accurate. I've changed dramatically over the years.

It's important to note, though, that the biggest changes I've experienced occurred when I didn't have anyone around who knew the old me. Only then was I really free to explore who I could become. I think this is one of the beautiful things about anonymous online forums. They allow us to explore different mindsets in a way that wasn't possible prior to the internet.

That's John Milton's Paradise Lost, from the point of view of Lucifer:

  Farewell happy Fields

  Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail

  Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell

  Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings

  A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.

  The mind is its own place, and in it self

  Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/tex...

I am sympathetic to Lucifer's point of view.

My mistake, thanks for the correction!

I did something similar. I was going through a hard time personally and I found myself being negative about everything. I decided to start a "negativity jar" into which I put 20c everytime I said something negative. I promised my suffering work colleagues I would spend the proceeds taking out to dinner at the end of the year. It really work well and a few hundred dollars later I was out of my reflexive negativity rut. The only downside was the resident junkie at work stole all the money - at least everyone was understanding on why they missed out on dinner.

Whoah hold on, are you saying you had an actual known heroin addict at your place of work long enough for you to deposit hundreds of dollars in quarter increments? The casual delivery of this left turn is comedy gold.

Yes. When I started he was on methadone, but I guess like a lot of addicts he relapsed. The temptation of all that easy money must have been too great.

I have in my mind him paying his dealer in 20c pieces (I live in Australia so we don't have quarters). 20c pieces are actually quite large (11.2g) so a couple hundred dollars in 20c pieces is 11.2 x 5 x 200 = ~11kg (25 lbs). This was not some easy theft!

Ah, Australia, that explains it, I've live in both the US / UK, so I'm used to 25c or 20p, but not 20c.

Did you say negative things about the junkie?

I actually laughter about it at the time due to the irony. He was actually quite a nice person (apart from his drug habit). My problems were minor by comparison.

I have found very small financial rewards/penalties to have a massive ability to help me make changes in my life

It was the whole ritual that helped. My colleagues were also really helpful and would pull me up when I said something negative that also helped.

You must have really had a lot of negativity to save a few hundred dollars in 20c increments!

Yes. I really was in a bad way at the time. The important thing is I got out of the hole and the cost was minor in comparison.