The Power of Positive Thinking

by Norman Vincent Peale

Of course many people are tired simply because they are not interested in anything. Nothing ever moves them deeply. To some people it makes no difference what’s going on or how things go. Their personal concerns are superior even to all crises in human history. Nothing makes any real difference to them except their own little worries, their desires, and their hates. They wear themselves out stewing around about a lot of inconsequential things that amount to nothing. So they become tired. They even become sick. The surest way not to become tired is to lose yourself in something in which you have a profound conviction.

you never lose energy and vitality in so doing. You only lose energy when life becomes dull in your mind. Your mind gets bored and therefore tired doing nothing. You don’t have to be tired. Get interested in something. Get absolutely enthralled in something. Throw yourself into it with abandon. Get out of yourself. Be somebody. Do something. Don’t sit around moaning about things, reading the papers, and saying: “Why don’t they do something?” The man who is out doing something isn’t tired. If you’re not getting into good causes, no wonder you’re tired. You’re disintegrating. You’re deteriorating. You’re dying on the vine. The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have. You don’t have time to think about yourself and get bogged down in your emotional difficulties. To live with constant energy it is important to get your emotional faults corrected. You will never have full energy until you do.

“I have to get the most energy out of a man,” he said, “and have discovered that it cannot be done if he hates another man. Hate blocks his energy and he isn’t up to par until he eliminates it and develops a friendly feeling.” People who lack energy are disorganised to one degree or another by their deep, fundamental emotional and psychological conflicts. Sometimes the results of this disorganisation are extreme, but healing is ever possible.

Energy drainage occasioned by fear and guilt is of such an amount as to leave little power to be applied to a person’s job. The result is that he tires quickly. Not being able to meet the full requirements of his responsibility, he retreats into an apathetic, dull, listless condition and is indeed even ready to give up and fall back sleepily in a state of enervation.

“You are trying to sleep every night between fear on one side and guilt on the other, and you are attempting an impossible feat. It makes no difference how many sleeping-pills you take, and you admit you have taken many such pills, but they have had no effect upon you. The reason they do not affect you is that they cannot reach the deeper levels of your mind where this sleeplessness originates and which is siphoning off your energy. You must eradicate fear and guilt before you will ever be able to sleep and regain your strength.”

One never does wrong by doing right.

A not infrequent case of diminishing energy is staleness. The pressure, monotony, and unceasing continuity of responsibilities dull the freshness of mind which a person must have to approach his work successfully. As an athlete goes stale, so does the individual, whatever his occupation, tend to come upon dry and arid periods. During such a condition of mind the expenditure of greater energy is required to do with difficulty what one formerly did with comparative ease. As a result the vital powers are hard put to it to supply the force required, and the individual often loses his grip and power.

“Every problem can be solved and solved right if you pray.”

Prayer power seems able even to normalise the ageing process, obviating or limiting infirmity and deterioration. You need not lose your basic energy or vital power or become weak and listless merely as a result of accumulating years. It is not necessary to allow your spirit to sag or grow stale or dull. Prayer can freshen you up every evening and send you out renewed each morning. You can receive guidance in problems if prayer is allowed to permeate your subconscious, the seat of the forces which determines whether you take right or wrong actions. Prayer has the power to keep your reactions correct and sound. Prayer driven deeply into your subconscious can remake you. It releases and keeps power flowing freely.

“According to your faith be it unto you.” (Matthew 9:29) “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”

faith and harmony are important factors in the prayer process.

The basic factor in physics is force. The basic factor in psychology is the realizable wish. The man who assumes success tends already to have success.

When either failure or success is picturised it strongly tends to actualise in terms equivalent to the mental image pictured.

The formula proved a powerful mechanism. She prayerised, she picturised, and the sought-for result was actualised.

Personally, I believe that prayer is a sending out of vibrations from one person to another and to God. All of the universe is in vibration. There are vibrations in the molecules of a table. The air is filled with vibrations. The reaction between human beings is also in vibration. When you send out a prayer for another person, you employ the force inherent in a spiritual universe. You transport from yourself to the other person a sense of love, helpfulness, support—a sympathetic, powerful understanding—and in this process you awaken vibrations in the universe through which God brings to pass the good objectives prayed for. Experiment with this principle and you will know its amazing results.

Alert people everywhere are finding that by trying prayer power they feel better, work better, do better, sleep better, are better.

My greatest progress dates from the night you told me that ‘every day is good if you pray’. I began to put into practice the idea of affirming that this would be a good day the minute I woke up in the morning, and I can positively say that I have not had a bad or upsetting day since that time. The amazing thing is that my days actually haven’t been any smoother or any more free from petty annoyances than they ever were, but they just don’t seem to have the power to upset me any more. Every night I begin my prayers by listing all the things for which I am grateful, little things that happened during the day which added to the happiness of my day. I know that this habit had geared my mind to pick out the nice things and forget the unpleasant ones. The fact that for six weeks I have not had a single bad day and have refused to get downhearted with anyone is really marvellous to me.”

1. Set aside a few minutes every day. Do not say anything. Simply practise thinking about God. This will make your mind spiritually receptive. 2. Then pray orally, using simple, natural words. Tell God anything that is on your mind. Do not think you must use stereotyped pious phrases. Talk to God in your own language. He understands it. 3. Pray as you go about the business of the day, on the subway or bus or at your desk. Utilise minute prayers by closing your eyes to shut out the world and concentrating briefly on God’s presence. The more you do this every day the nearer you will feel God’s presence. 4. Do not always ask when you pray, but instead affirm that God’s blessings are being given, and spend most of your prayers giving thanks. 5. Pray with the belief that sincere prayers can reach out and surround your loved ones with God’s love and protection. 6. Never use a negative thought in prayer. Only positive thoughts get results. 7. Always express willingness to accept God’s will. Ask for what you want, but be willing to take what God gives you. It may be better than what you ask for. 8. Practise the attitude of putting everything in God’s hands. Ask for the ability to do your best and to leave the results confidently to God. 9. Pray for people you do not like or who have mistreated you. Resentment is blockade number one of spiritual power. 10. Make a list of people for whom to pray. The more you pray for other people, especially those not connected with you, the more p...

The adult who can carry the spirit of a child into middle and old age is a genius, for he will preserve the truly happy spirit with which God endowed the young.

To become a happy person have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in the commonplace, a child’s heart, and spiritual simplicity.

“Unhappiness is the most common state of mind.”

“They manufacture their own unhappiness.” It is a pity, too, for there are so many problems created by life itself that dilute our happiness that it is indeed most foolish to distill further unhappiness within your own mind. How foolish to manufacture personal unhappiness to add to all the other difficulties over which you have little or no control!

we manufacture our unhappiness by thinking unhappy thoughts, by the attitudes which we habitually take, such as the negative feeling that everything is going to turn out badly, or that other people are getting what they do not deserve and we are failing to get what we do deserve. Our unhappiness is further distilled by saturating the consciousness with feelings of resentment, ill-will, and hate. The unhappiness-producing process always makes important use of the ingredients of fear and worry.

“I make it a habit to be happy.” The statement is really very profound, for our happiness or unhappiness depends to an important degree upon the habit of mind we cultivate.

“...he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.”

The happiness habit is developed by simply practising happy thinking. Make a mental list of happy thoughts and pass them through your mind several times every day. If an unhappiness thought should enter your mind, immediately stop, consciously eject it, and substitute a happiness thought. Every morning before arising, lie relaxed in bed and deliberately drop happy thoughts into your conscious mind. Let a series of pictures pass across your mind of each happy experience you expect to have during the day. Savour their joy. Such thoughts will help cause events to turn out that way. Do not affirm that things will not go well that day. By merely saying that, you can actually help to make it so. You will draw to yourself every factor, large and small, that will contribute to unhappy conditions. As a result, you will find yourself asking: “Why does everything go badly for me? What is the matter with everything?”

Tomorrow try this plan instead. When you arise, say out loud three times this one sentence: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24) Only personalise it and say: “I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Repeat it in a strong, clear voice and with positive tone and emphasis. The statement, of course, is from the Bible and it is a good cure for unhappiness. If you repeat that one sentence three times before breakfast and meditate on the meaning of the words you will change the character of the day by starting off with a happiness psychology. While dressing or shaving or getting breakfast, say aloud a few such remarks as the following: “I believe this is going to be a wonderful day. I believe I can successfully handle all problems that will arise today. I feel good physically, mentally, emotionally. It is wonderful to be alive. I am grateful for all that I have had, for all that I now have, and for all that I shall have. Things aren’t going to fall apart. God is here and He is with me and He will see me through. I thank God for every good thing.”

if you visualise and affirm an unhappy outcome, you tend thereby to create just that type of condition. So affirm happy outcomes at the start of every day, and you will be surprised at how often things will turn out so.

“Where love is,” said Tolstoy, “God is,” and, we might add, where God and love are, there is happiness. So a practical principle in creating happiness is to practise love.

“The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.”

“they have got spirit all right, but it isn’t the kind that you get out of a bottle. They have got spirit in their hearts.”

“In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John i:4).

you are not the same, and what you are determines the world in which you live, so as you change, your world changes also.

when he began systematically to insert healthy spiritual thoughts into his mind as directed, he began first to want new life, then to realise the thrilling fact that he could have it, then the even more amazing fact that he was getting it. The result was that after some three weeks of a self-improvement process new happiness ‘burst’ upon him.

We need to stop fuming and fretting and get peaceful if we are to have power to live effectively.

A first step is to reduce your pace or at least the tempo of your pace. We do not realise how accelerated the rate of our lives has become, or the speed at which we are driving ourselves. Many people are destroying their physical bodies by this pace, but what is even more tragic, they are tearing their minds and souls to shreds as well. It is possible for a person to live a quiet existence physically and yet maintain a high tempo emotionally. Even an invalid can live at too high a pace from that standpoint. The character of our thoughts determines pace. When the mind goes rushing on pell-mell from one feverish attitude to another it becomes feverish and the result is a state bordering on petulance. The pace of modern life must be reduced if we are not to suffer profoundly from its debilitating over-stimulation and super-excitement. This over-stimulation produces toxic poisons in the body and creates emotional illness. It produces fatigue and a sense of frustration so that we fume and fret about everything from our personal troubles to the state of the nation and the world.

It is impossible to have peace of soul if the pace is so feverishly accelerated.

In a strict sense, the woods are never still. There is tremendous activity always in process, but nature makes no strident noises, regardless of the vastness of its operation. Nature’s sounds are quiet, harmonious.

“Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.”

we must everlastingly discipline ourselves to quietness if we expect its benefits in our lives.

To help reduce this tension which seems to dominate our people everywhere, you can start by reducing your own pace. To do that you will need to slow down, quiet down. Do not fume. Do not fret. Practise being peaceful. Practise “the peace of God which passeth all understanding.” (Philippians iv.7.) Then note the quiet power sense that wells up within you.

Meditate on the solemn fact that when you get there permanently the world will go on just the same and, as important as you are, others will be able to do the work you are now doing. I suggest that you sit on one of those tombstones and repeat this statement: ‘…a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.’”

It surely did start me off for the day minus the tension, and it helped me go through the day in a peaceful and relaxed manner.”

“To win this or any race, row slowly.” He pointed out that rapid rowing tends to break the stroke and when the stroke is broken it is with the greatest difficulty that a crew recovers the rhythm necessary to win. Meanwhile other crews pass the disorganised group. It is indeed wise advise—“To go fast, row slowly.”

Speak to your muscles every day and to your joints and to your nerves, saying: “Fret not thyself.” (Psalm xxxvii. I.) Relax on a couch or bed, think of each important muscle from head to feet, and say to each: “The peace of God is touching you.” Then practise ‘feeling’ that peace throughout your entire body. In due course your muscles and joints will take heed.

Slow down, for whatever you really want will be there when you get there if you work towards it without stress, without pressing.

Practise and preserve mental quiet. Learn the art of letting go all nervous excitement. To do this, stop at intervals and affirm. ‘I now relinquish nervous excitement—it is flowing from me. I am at peace.’ Do not fume. Do not fret. Practise being peaceful.

To attain this efficient state of living, I recommend the practise of thinking peaceful thoughts.

Every day we perform a series of acts designed to care for the body properly. We bathe, brush the teeth, take exercise. In similar fashion we should give time and planned effort to keeping the mind in a healthy state. One way to do this is to sit quietly and pass a series of peaceful thoughts through the mind. For example, pass through the thoughts the memor...

At least once in every twenty-four hours, preferably in the busiest part of the day, deliberately stop whatever you are doing for ten or fifteen minutes and practise serenity. There are times when it is essential resolutely to check our headlong pac...