To question the premise of the quote as well, an approach that I've found to be helpful to address procrastination/negative moods is to start with action if I can, rather than trying to motivate myself or change my thoughts.

Psychiatrist David Burns summarized this [1]: "Most procrastinators think that motivation comes first, followed by productive action, but this is an illusion, because you’ll probably NEVER feel motivated to do some awful task you’ve been putting off. If you’re waiting for motivation, you’ll be waiting forever! [...] highly productive people know that ACTION comes first, followed by motivation. In other words, you have to get started on some task before you’ll feel motivated."

A more liberal and charitable interpretation of the quote could be to classify starting with action as a way to correct the mind, though I figured it could be helpful to provide a less thoughts-centred approach to living a better life.

[1] https://feelinggood.com/2018/02/12/075-the-second-simple-way...

An interesting corollary is that passion does not precede action. Action (and seeing positive results) leads to passion.

This aligns with prof. pychyl's "motivation follows action" and "just get started" https://www.procrastination.ca/

I think the historically correct quote is:

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

I used to verify all my quotes but it's really not clear in many cases because there's a lot of misattribution. I resign myself to thinking it's the thought that counts. Otherwise I'd be all day fact checking.

I can't find it on quote investigator so someone probably made it up. I have experience that it is true and that's what counts for me

https://quoteinvestigator.com