When Scarlett was three, we were on a holiday in Port Douglas (Queensland, Australia … not that this detail has any bearing at all on the story).

Scarlett decided to play a make-believe game, as she often did at that time.

“Let’s pretend my real parents have gone away, and you’re looking after me.”

The game went swimmingly until it was time for bed. Suddenly Scarlett completely freaked out. She wanted her real parents to put her to bed.

And this wasn’t a little freak out. She was completely hysterical. (As you would be if you were three years old, and your parents had left you with no expectation of when they would be back.)

My first thought was “thank god this is happening here, and not in the supermarket.”

(In the end we went outside to wait for her real parents, which calmed her down. We then did something else, and by then she’d forgotten about the game and happily went to bed.)

Turns out our brain is not that good at distinguishing between something we believe and something we’re pretending.

This is really useful. If you want to change a belief, a great place to start is just pretend the new belief is true. Don’t actually believe it, just pretend.

So, if you believe you’re a shy person, but want to change that to believing you like meeting new people, just pretend you like meeting new people. Then when you’re playing this game of pretend, you’ll act like someone who likes meeting new people. Then you’ll meet some new people and like it. And before you know it, your game of make-believe will become your reality.