The Jesus Habit #053

How a man transformed his life

Hello and welcome back to every Dawn. Today I want to tell you one story that I found very impressive about how habits, like Aristotle says, can actually change our lives. This is a real story.

There is a man called Ted Neeley. Perhaps you have heard about him. He's a singer, a performer, and an actor. He played in a musical from the 1970s called Jesus Christ Superstar. You might think whatever you want of the musical itself; I personally like it very much. However, it has been a little bit controversial because of its topic—this person impersonating Jesus. But this is not the point.

The point here is that Ted Neeley, who plays Jesus, has been performing this role for many years—decades, in fact. The musical is still being performed, or at least it was a few years ago. In interviews, Ted Neeley said that he has played this role thousands of times. He gave a precise number, but I don't remember if it was 2,000 or 5,000—something like this, a small number of thousands.

This man has been going on stage to play this role thousands of times, and I think this is exactly what Aristotle means by habit. He obviously had a habit of playing this role. He did it every day; he cultivated this skill. The interesting thing is that in interviews, he said he increasingly felt like he was becoming the role—not that he is becoming Jesus necessarily, but that the role is changing him. He becomes more and more like the person he is presenting.

Many audience members think he is something like a priest, someone with some divine quality about him when he is performing. He himself feels like he is in the role of a missionary, using this role to promote Christian ideas. It is not only using the role to promote the ideas; he feels that he is touched by something in playing this role. He, like the ancients say, is inspired. Inspired comes from "in" and "spirit," so he has a spirit inside him. He is inspired; he has this holiness or this Holy Spirit that is now part of him.

It's really fun to read some of these interviews, and he freely admits how this role has changed him, how it has made him a different man than he was before—a better man, in his opinion. We can learn something from this about the power of habits to change our personality. Aristotle said that if you do something long enough, it doesn't matter even if it's a performance. The man is not crazy; he knows he is performing, but still, it works.

This reminds me of the slogan of young people today who start businesses on the internet: "Fake it until you make it." I think this is also very Aristotelian. The idea is that if you repeatedly fake it, if you repeatedly pretend something, then slowly your reality will adapt. You will be more and more like that, and others will perceive you that way, whether it is as a successful businessman or a successful sportsman. In the end, things will come your way, and your life will start rearranging itself around that thing that you pretend to be.

This is a very interesting case to look at, but there are many other cases of "fake it until you make it." For your own life, think about it: instead of just looking at your goal and seeing how far away it is, start by pretending to be in the situation where you want to be. Start making these videos as if you were successful, and start writing your book as if you were a successful author. In time, you will become this thing that you want to be.

Look at your life and see if there are things where you want to change in a particular way. Perhaps you can try repeatedly pretending this. But it doesn’t help to do it just one time. According to Aristotle, it has to be repeated very often; it has to be a skill that is automatic. You just automatically do it. Ted Neeley had to play this role 5,000 times to get there, or however many it was. If you do it 5,000 times, then you will be it.

This is the theory. See if it works for you. Thank you, and see you next time.