Affirmation · “The Subconscious Says Yes”
Choosing Joy
To deliberately choose and affirm a joyous, expectant feeling-state — by doing joy before you feel it, declaring ‘I AM happy,’ and reckoning yourself one with the Life Power — until the felt mood actually shifts upward.
Catch the dip and refuse it: “I’m not blue — I’m NOT — I am HAPPY; I AM happy — I AM.” Don’t wait to feel it — DO joy: smile, straighten, move, say “will” with a will. Claim the identity: “I AM what I desire to be.” Reckon yourself one with the Power, and rejoice in the felt good now. Repeat whenever the mood sinks. (For everyday moods, not real depression or grief.)
What it is
Elizabeth Towne’s Joy Philosophy (1903) treats joy not as a mood that happens to you but as a state you can choose, enact, and affirm into being.
Her bluntest instruction is to act first and let feeling follow: “Oh, but you can’t feel so? Nobody asked you to feel it. Just Do it, DO it, DO IT!” The affirmation is a flat refusal of the low mood followed by a present-tense claim of the new one — “I’m not blue — I’m NOT — I am HAPPY; I AM happy — I AM” — anchored in an identity statement: “I AM what I desire to be.
ALL Things work together for the manifestation of what I AM.” For Towne the joy is also a connection: in joy and love “you are radiating love; and love, you know, is God, the only power.”
The Method
Faithful to Joy Philosophy:
- Catch the dip, refuse it out loud. The moment you notice “blue,” do not analyse it — contradict it: “I’m not blue — I’m NOT — I am HAPPY; I AM happy — I AM.” Said plainly, with a little force.
- Do joy before you feel it. Don’t wait for the mood. “Nobody asked you to feel it. Just Do it, DO it, DO IT!” Smile, straighten, move, speak as a joyful person would — let the act prime the feeling.
- Use the body — smile and say “will.” Towne has you generate state physically: a deliberate smile so that, in her words, your “solar center will expand and let in more God-feeling”; and “Say ‘will’ with a will, and you can actually feel power radiate through your entire body.”
- Claim the identity, not the request. Affirm in the present as already-so: “I AM what I desire to be” — well, joyous, capable — rather than begging for it later. Identity first; the state follows the claim.
- Reckon yourself one with the Power. Towne frames joy as taking the Infinite into your reckoning: whenever you reckon yourself power, wisdom or love, you “take in God”; in joy and love you are “radiating love. the only power.” Feel the connection, not just the cheer.
- Rejoice in the felt good, now. Land it in the body and the present: “You are rejoicing in the glorious feeling of health and courage and freedom which comes to you.”
- Repeat until it turns. It is a habit, not a one-shot. Do it each time the mood dips, and hold a generally joyous, expectant attitude through the day. (Sourcing note: quoted lines are Towne’s; the numbered structure is attributed paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Elizabeth Towne (1865–1960), New Thought publisher and editor of The Nautilus, wrote Joy Philosophy (1903) as a short, exuberant manual on cultivating happiness as a discipline.
It belongs to the New Thought family that treated feeling-state as the operative force (cf. Trine, Wattles, later Neville). Towne’s signature is the playful, willed, almost physical quality — “DO IT!”, stamp, smile, say “will” with a will — joy as something you crank up on purpose. → Contrast (don’t duplicate):
- Marden’s affirmation habit / victorious attitude build a general optimistic stance; Towne’s drill is specifically a rapid mood-flip on the spot (“I’m NOT blue”).
- Coué’s autosuggestion drills a neutral formula by mechanical repetition; Towne demands enacted feeling and will, not flat recitation.
- Salzberg / Kornfield lovingkindness cultivate warmth toward beings through meditation; Towne is about self-generated joy and identity, declared and acted, not contemplative phrases.
Common refinements
Suppressing real distress. “Doing joy” is for everyday dips, not a command to paper over grief, trauma, or depression. Forced positivity over genuine pain backfires (and can shame the sufferer).
- Reciting flatly. Towne’s whole point is enactment — the smile, the “DO IT!”, the “will” felt in the body. Dead repetition does little.
- Expecting circumstance to obey the mood. The reliable change is in you; treat outer results as downstream of changed behaviour, not as proof the affirmation “manifested.”
- One-and-done. It is a repeated habit keyed to mood dips, not a single declaration.