The One Sentence That Fixed My Broken Chair (& Rewired My Reality)

Neville Goddard was right: “An assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.” Here’s how we proved it in a movie theater.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

First published on Medium

It was supposed to be a perfect, cozy afternoon.

We were at a fancy theater, the kind with big, electric recliners and seat warmers. It was Sophia’s birthday treat. She kicked back her chair, turned on the heat, and sighed with contentment.

I pressed the button on my chair. Nothing.
I tried again. Still nothing. No recline, no warmth.

The old me would have felt a flash of frustration. Of course my chair is broken. Typical. This always happens to me. That narrative was ready to roll, an automatic script written by a lifetime of conditioning.

But the new me — the one who has been immersed in Neville Goddard’s teachings and the power of assumption — paused.

This wasn’t just a broken chair. It was a test. And it was about to become one of the clearest, most mundane-yet-magical proofs of a life-changing principle we’ve ever experienced.

The Secret Ingredient Your Manifestation is Missing

In his book The Power of Awareness (affiliate link to book), Neville Goddard delivers a line so potent it can feel like a secret code for the universe:

“An assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.”

Let’s look at that in detail, starting with the dictionary: an assumption is something you accept as true without proof. Most of us are constantly assuming based on the “proof” our senses provide — the broken chair, the empty bank account, the silent phone. We are, as Neville teaches, merely reflecting our current, often unexamined, assumptions.

The radical work is to assume the wish fulfilled without any external evidence.

But here’s the part we often gloss over: it’s not about the wish. It’s about the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Meaning: feeling as if we already have what we want; not to be confused with “fake it until you make it” or other forms of “day-dreaming”.

This is where most of us get stuck. We visualize the new car, we affirm the perfect partner, but we’re still feeling the anxiety of not having it. We’re putting lipstick on the mirror and wondering why our own face doesn’t change.

The 3D world is the mirror. We are the source. To change the reflection, we must change the source first.

As Michael Jackson sang:

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

How I Applied This to a Cold, Upright Chair

So, back in the theater. The “proof” was clear: a broken chair.

My desire was also clear: a wonderfully relaxing and connected afternoon with my wife.

The old story would have been to fixate on the broken mechanism, letting it sour the entire experience. The new story? I chose to accept my desire as already fulfilled.

I didn’t try to “believe” the chair was fixed. That would have felt like a lie. Instead, I focused on the feeling of my wish fulfilled.

What does a “wonderful, relaxing afternoon” feel like?

It feels like peace. It feels like joy. It feels like ease and lightness.

So, I let go. I leaned back as best I could, propped my feet up on our bag, and turned my attention to the love-of-my-life company I was with and the movie we were about to see. I consciously dwelled in the feelings of peace and joy. I accepted that, regardless of the chair’s mechanics, my afternoon was already perfect. I persisted in that feeling-state.

Sophia, radiating the same energy, didn’t try to “fix” me or the situation. She was in her own state of fulfillment.

I had completely let go of the how. The “how” was the universe’s department. My department was to stay in the feeling.

The Word That Bridged the Realities

A little while later, toward the end of the previews and just before the movie started, I got up to use the restroom. When I returned, Sophia, without a second thought, intuitively said:

“Try it again. It is working now.”

She hadn’t touched the controls. She hadn’t flagged down a manager. She simply spoke from that place of aligned intuition, from the state of the wish fulfilled.

The old me would have scoffed. “I already tried, it’s broken.” But the new me, the one bathing in the feeling of a perfect afternoon, was open. I was in a state of allowing.

I smiled. “Okay, I’ll try.”

I pressed the button. The chair whirred to life, reclining smoothly. I pressed the heat button. A comforting warmth spread through the seat.

To my utmost, gleeful sense of wonder, the 3D reality had caught up. The assumption — the feeling of a perfect, relaxed afternoon — had hardened into fact.

A Practical Takeaway: The Feeling-First Framework

This isn’t about magic movie theater chairs (although the movie we saw was all about magic). It’s about the fundamental blueprint of creation.

1. Identify the Core Feeling: What do you really want? Strip away the object or situation. If you want a new car, is it for the feeling of freedom? Security? Success? If you want a partner, is it for the feeling of connection? Love? Belonging? Start with the feeling. For us, it’s a deep sense of ease and peace. What is it for you?

2. Assume the Feeling Now: The moment a contradictory “3D fact” arises (a broken chair, a rejected pitch, a negative bank statement), pause. Don’t argue with the fact, don’t deny it either. Instead, drop into your body and summon the feeling of your wish fulfilled. Breathe into it. For just 10 seconds, let the feeling of peace, or joy, or abundance be more real than the external circumstance. This is the “work.”

3. Let Go of the “How”: Your job is to be the person who is already experiencing that feeling. The universe’s job is to arrange the details. Trust that intuitive nudges — like Sophia’s words — will arrive at the perfect time, guiding your actions.

4. Mind Your Inner (and Outer) Speech: Your internal monologue must support your new feeling-state. Then, when you speak, let it come from that aligned place. Your words are the first vibrations of your new reality. Make them count.

The world will tell you to change your circumstances to change your feelings. We’re here to suggest the opposite, more powerful path: Change your feeling to change your circumstances.

Don’t get me wrong — sometimes a broken chair is just a broken chair, and you should call a technician. But the feeling of frustration and powerlessness? That’s the real glitch in the system. And the repair for that doesn’t require a tool belt; it requires a conscious return to the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

The ultimate fix wasn’t for the chair’s wiring, but for my state of being.

If this concept resonated with you and you’d like to go deeper with a community of like-minded people, you are welcome to join our free Skool community, Shift Your Identity (SYI). We continue these conversations there every day.

The Childhood Memory That Programmed Me to Self-Sabotage

…And How I’m Rewriting the Code

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

I (Sophia) couldn’t understand why I kept abandoning my dreams. The answer was 30 years old, hiding in a hallway, listening to my mom on the phone.

I thought my problem was time management.

I’d devoured every book, every blog post. I’d tried every productivity hack. For years, I’d cycle through the same pattern: I’d start a project with fiery passion. For three, maybe four days, I’d feel incredible—aligned, purposeful, and satisfied.

Then, without fail, I’d abandon it.

Something “more important” would pop up. A website bug that had to be fixed. An inbox that needed to be zeroed out. I’d tell myself a very logical story: “Let me just tie up all these loose ends. I need a clear mind and a clean slate to do my real work.”

But by the time the slate was clean, my energy was gone. My real work—the writing, the recording, the creating—never happened.

I blamed my willpower. I thought I was lazy, undisciplined, a dreamer who couldn’t execute.

I was wrong. My willpower was fine. It was being held hostage by a story written decades ago. It took a 100-year-old book by Émile Coué to make me look for the puppeteer. He introduced me to the ruthless power of the subconscious mind, which he called the imagination:

“Not only does the unconscious self preside over the functions of our organism, but also over all our actions. It is this that we call imagination and it is this which contrary to accepted opinion always makes us act even and above all against our will when there is antagonism between these two forces.”

My will wanted to create. But a stronger force was making me act against it.

It took a moment of deep honesty to find the source of that force: a young girl, standing in a hallway, listening to her mom on the phone.

I was that girl. I had ranked second in my class for years, and I was proud. I worked hard. I knew who was first, and I was genuinely happy being second. It felt like my place.

Then I heard my mom’s voice, tinged with a disappointment I’d never heard directed at me: “Oh yes, she again has only ranked second.”

The air left my lungs.

The message my heart received was catastrophic: Your best will never be good enough. The highest effort you can possibly muster will still be a disappointment.

So, my brilliant, young mind made a survival decision: If you can’t win, don’t play the game. If your best is a failure, never give your best.

It created a saboteur, a protector, whose sole job was to ensure I never put my whole heart into anything ever again. That way, I could never feel the crushing pain of my “best” being found wanting.

For 30 years, I didn’t know this protector existed. But she’s been running the show ever since that day in the hallway. She made me a puppet, and I never even saw the strings. Coué saw them clearly:

“We who are so proud of our will, who believe that we are free to act as we like, are in reality, nothing but wretched puppets of which our imagination holds all the strings.”

Her strategy is genius: Productive Procrastination.

When I start getting too close to my heart-work—the work that matters so much it could be deemed “my best”—she swings into action. She doesn’t tell me to be lazy. That would be too obvious.

Instead, she makes me productive. She creates a compelling, logical, and urgent case for doing everything except the important thing.

• “You can’t write an article with a messy website! Fix it first!”

• “How can you record a video with unorganized files? Organize them first!”

• “Your inbox is full! You can’t possibly focus with that hanging over you.”

She is the ultimate Streamliner. Her justification is always about creating the “perfect conditions” for genius to strike.

But her real mission is to run out the clock. To ensure I never, ever put myself in a position where I risk giving my best effort and having it be “only second.” Because if I don’t truly try, I can’t truly fail. I had believed so proudly in my free will, but Coué was right:

“If we open a dictionary and look up the word ‘will’ we find this definition: ‘The faculty of freely determining certain acts’. We accept this definition as true and unattackable, although nothing could be more false, this will which we reclaim so proudly yields to the imagination. It is an absolute rule that admits of no exception.”

How I’m Learning to Fire the Protector

You don’t defeat this kind of deep programming with a new planner. You defeat it with compassion and conscious reprogramming. The goal is not to fight the imagination, but to guide it.

“We only cease to be puppets when we have learned to guide our imagination.”

1. Acknowledge the Protector with Love. I don’t fight her anymore. When I feel the urge to suddenly reorganize my entire life, I stop. I say, “Thank you. I see you. I know you’re trying to protect me from that old hurt. Your job is done now. I’ve got this.” Acknowledging her presence disarms her.

2. Redefine “Winning.” The child’s definition was: Winning = Being The Best (First Rank). My new definition is: Winning = Showing Up Authentically. My worth is not tied to an outcome—a ranking, a viral article, a number of subscribers. It is tied to the courage of creating and sharing. This reframes the entire game.

3. The “Good Enough” Rule. I actively practice doing things “good enough.” I send the email with a typo. I post the video with imperfect lighting. I publish the article that feels 80% there. This is direct action against the old program. It’s a rebellion against the need for a flawless “best.” It proves to my subconscious that the world doesn’t end when things aren’t perfect.

4. The New Autosuggestion. My Coué mantra is no longer about time or joy. It’s about identity and safety. I repeat, every morning and night: “My best is more than enough. I am safe to share my voice with the world.”

This is how we rewrite the code. Not with force, but with a gentle, persistent persuasion of our deepest selves. We thank the old protector for her service, and we finally, gently, take back the strings.

What’s a story from your past that you know is still running your present? Sharing it, even just in the comments, can be a first step in rewriting it.

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All indented quotes in this article are from Coué’s book Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion*. If you’d like to read up on Coué’s wisdom yourself, feel free to explore it. It’s quick to read, a true classic, a treasure for life!

(*Amazon.com affiliate link: If you choose to click it and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.)

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This journey of untangling our past from our present is what we explore in the Simple and Aligned Newsletter. It’s about building a life and business that feels good because it’s run by the adult you, not the child who got hurt. Join us here for more.