A Teacher
Dorothea Brande
Act as if you cannot fail: living from a decisive inner posture
The transmission
Dorothea Brande (January 12, 1892 – December 12, 1948) was an American writer and editor in New York, best known today for two enduring books: Becoming a Writer (1934), a guide to the creative process still in print, and Wake Up and Live! (1936), a self-help best-seller that sold more than a million copies and inspired a 1937 film.
Born Alice Dorothea Alden Thompson in Chicago, she studied at the University of Chicago, the Lewis Institute, and the University of Michigan, and worked as a newspaper reporter and as associate editor of The American Review.
Wake Up and Live! distilled a single practical idea, summarized in the maxim “Act as if it were impossible to fail.” Brande argued that most people sabotage themselves through a hidden “will to fail,” and that adopting a decisive, expectant inner posture, behaving as though success were assured, reorganizes habit, energy, and attention toward it.
This “act as if” teaching is a direct, secular cousin of the New Thought principle that identity and assumed inner conviction precede and shape outer circumstance, and it became a load-bearing formula in the success literature that followed.
What they gave
“Act as if it were impossible to fail”: crystallized the assume-the-feeling-of-success idea into a single memorable rule.
- The “will to fail”: named self-sabotage as an inner posture that can be deliberately reversed.
- Mass-market reach: Wake Up and Live! (1936) carried New Thought-style inner-conviction teaching to a million-plus general readers.
- Creative discipline: Becoming a Writer (1934) applied the same psychology of habit and inner attitude to creative work.
In their words
All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: will-and-habit ideas circulating in 1930s practical psychology; the New Thought “act as if” current; her own editorial and journalistic milieu.
- Influenced: mid-century success literature and the durable “act as if” strand of self-help teaching.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Becoming a Writer1934
- Wake Up and Live!1936