Have you ever said something to someone that you didn't believe, with the hope that stating it would help you believe it?

Yes, many times I have reminded people who were despairing that tomorrow is another day, with new possibilities. Hope is a very powerful thing. Hope keeps patients alive when nothing else is working.

Hope keeps love alive when soldiers go off to war. Hope stems off despair for the unemployed and the unmarried. Even if we have just a tiny bit of hope, it is our duty I think, to share it with those who need it.

Hope only becomes cruel when it really is a lie. We should not be stringing anyone along, telling them there is hope when really there is none. In a case like that our duty is to break it to them that we never intend to marry them or to give them that promotion or whatnot.

Release them and let them find someone or something else.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was telling my ex "I love you" so that I would believe it. I thought that if we were in love, that would somehow fix everything. Of course, it wouldn't have, even if it had been true, but I was desperate to believe it.

I have also told my sister that I didn't think our grandfather was going to die. I really, really didn't want to believe we had seen him for the last time.

All the time! Sometimes it's the root of my therapy style with a client. It's a part of "Fake it 'til you make it."

Also... as a magician/mentalist, I have to act and... if *I* believe it, my audience will believe it...

Yes and I think everyone who has sat next to a dying person in a Hospital or at home has told them they will get better. And you also want to believe it.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.