Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
I Will Greet This Day With Love in My Heart
Open each day by deliberately generating love in the heart and then carry that state into every encounter — silently affirming love toward each person and thing you meet — so love becomes the lens and manner through which you act all day.
On waking, deliberately fill the heart with love and vow: “I will greet this day with love in my heart.” Carry it into every encounter — silently say I love you to each person you meet, the difficult ones most of all. Let love show as your manner: patient, warm, un-provoked. When you lose the state, return to it. Keep it genuine and keep your boundaries; the gain is in your composure and warmth, not in controlling others. Repeat daily until it’s your default.
What it is
Scroll II is Mandino’s state-setting principle: it asks the reader to begin the day by deliberately filling the heart with love and then to meet everyone and everything from that state. Its opening line — “I will greet this day with love in my heart” — is a daily vow, not a passing wish.
The scroll names love as “the greatest secret” and the most powerful “weapon” the salesman carries, the thing that disarms resistance: “My love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest clay.” It is sweeping — “Henceforth will I love all mankind” — and it includes a concrete tactic Mandino threads through the scroll: silently say “I love you” to each person you meet, even (especially) those who would reject or oppose you.
Where Scroll I (habit) is the engine of installation, Scroll II is about the felt state you operate from. It is less a creed to believe than a mood to embody on purpose, each morning, and to re-enter all day.
The Method
- Set the state on waking. Before the day’s demands begin, deliberately generate love in the heart — make “I will greet this day with love in my heart” the first stance you take, not a reaction to how the morning goes.
- Widen it deliberately. Mandino expands love outward in turn — toward the sun and elements, toward enemies as well as friends, toward all people. Pass attention over the circle of who and what you will meet and meet each with goodwill.
- Use the silent “I love you.” His operational tactic: with each person you encounter, silently say I love you. To the hostile and difficult most of all — Mandino frames this as the practical way to “melt” opposition and stay un-provoked.
- Let love govern your manner, not just your feeling. The state is meant to show in conduct — patience, warmth, the refusal to meet hostility with hostility. Love is the how of every dealing that day.
- Re-enter the state when you lose it. It will slip under pressure; the practice is to return to “love in my heart” again and again rather than to feel it perfectly.
- Repeat daily. Like every scroll, it is installed by the three-times-a-day, thirty-day reading until greeting the day with love becomes the default rather than an effort.
Source & Lineage
The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Scroll II. The principle sits in the New Thought line that treats love/goodwill as both an ethic and a practical force (e.g. Fersen’s “Law of Love,” Trine’s outflowing love), and it parallels the much older contemplative practice of deliberately generated lovingkindness. Its installation runs on Mandino’s Scroll-Reading Method.
Common refinements
Faking warmth as performance. Love manufactured purely to win the sale curdles into manipulation and reads as false. Aim for genuine goodwill; if you can’t summon love, summon non-hostility and curiosity as a starting point.
- Love without boundaries. “Love all mankind” is a stance of goodwill, not a duty to tolerate abuse or suspend judgment. You can hold goodwill and protect yourself — the two are not in conflict.
- Expecting it to control others. The practice changes your state and manner; it does not guarantee the other person softens. Hold it as your stance regardless of their response.
- Only on good days. Mandino directs the silent “I love you” especially at the hostile and the difficult — that is where it does its work. Skipping it under stress drops the most useful application.
- Reciting without feeling. As state-work, it depends on actually entering the felt sense of love (The Inner Creates the Outer), not just reading the words.