ABOUT THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING: This book is written to suggest techniques and to give you examples which demonstrate that you do not need to be defeated by anything, that you can have peace of mind, improved health, and never-ceasing flow of energy. In short, that your life can be full of joy and satisfaction.

THE PROBLEM: Too many people are defeated by the everyday problems of life. They go struggling, perhaps even whining, through their days with a sense of dull resentment at what they consider the ‘bad breaks’ life has given them. In a sense there may be such things as ‘the breaks’ in life, but there is also a spirit and method by which we can control and even determine those breaks. It is a pity that people should let themselves be defeated by the problems, cares, and difficulties of human existence, and it is also quite unnecessary 

SOLUTION: By learning to cast the obstacles from your mind, by refusing to become mentally subservient to them, and by channelling spiritual power through your thoughts, you can rise above obstacles which ordinarily might defeat you. You need be defeated only if you are willing to be. This book teaches you how to ‘will’ not to be.

William James, often called the Father of Psychology in the late 1800s, said: “the greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of mind”… “As you think, so shall you be”. SO – flush out all of your old, tired, worn-out thoughts. Fill your mind with fresh, new creative thoughts of faith, love and goodness. By this process, you can actually remake your life. You can think your way to failure, or you can think your way to success. The world in which you live is not primarily determined by outward conditions and circumstances, but by thoughts that habitually occupy your mind.

To change your circumstances, first start thinking differently. Do not passively accept unsatisfactory circumstances, but form a picture in your mind of circumstances as they SHOULD be. Hold that picture in your mind, develop it firmly in all details, believe in it, pray about it, work at it, and you can actualise it according to that mental image emphasised in your positive thinking. If you think negative things, you’ll get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you’ll achieve positive results 

In three words: BELIEVE AND SUCCEED. The secret of a better and more successful life is to cast out those old dead unhealthy thoughts. Substitute for them new vital dynamic thoughts. You can depend upon it – an inflow of new thoughts will remake you and your life.

Summary of The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

A bloke named Henry J Kaiser told ‘Big Norm’ (Norman Vincent Peale) about a time he was building a levee along a river-bank. There came a great storm and flood which buried all his earth-moving machinery and destroyed the work that had been done. As he walked up to check out the damage, he found his workers standing around glumly looking at their machinery buried in the mud. 

He asked them “why are you so glum?”. 

They said “dont you see what happened? our machinery is covered with mud” 

“What mud?” big Henry asked… “I don’t see any mud… I am looking up at the clear blue sky! there is no mud up there, only sunshine, and that sunshine will soon dry out all of the mud you’re looking down at and we can all get back to work”.

LESSON: always come up OVER your problems, never approach a problem from below 

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

“It is appalling to realise the number of pathetic people who are hampered and made miserable by the malady popularly called the inferiority complex”. 

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. A sense of inferiority and inadequacy interferes with the attainment of your hopes, but self-confidence leads to self-realization and successful achievement. Because of the importance of this mental attitude, this book will help you believe in yourself and release your inner power. But you need not suffer from this trouble. When the proper steps are taken, it can be overcome. You can develop creative faith in yourself – faith that is justified.

HOW? 

Step 1: Discover why you have these feelings of no power. It requires some analysis / introspection and can take time. We must approach the maladies of our emotional life as a physician probes to find something wrong physically.

Step 2: Replace these feelings of no power with positive thoughts. As you walk down the street, repeat these positive affirmations to yourself. While shaving and dressing in the morning, as you look in the mirror, tell yourself these positive statements. After you get into bed, tell yourself positive things about the day just gone and the things you’ll achieve tomorrow. On the way to an important meeting, say the phrase three times. Do this all with an attitude of faith and confidence, and you will receive sufficient strength and ability to deal with your problems 

A lack of self confidence apparently is one of the great problems besetting people today. In a university survey of psychology students, people were asked to state their most difficult personal problems: 75% listed “lack of confidence” as their #1 problem. In every area of of your life, you encounter people who are inwardly afraid, who shrink from life, who suffer from a deep sense of inadequacy and insecurity, who doubt their own powers. Deep within themselves, they mistrust their ability to meet responsibilities or to grasp opportunities. Always they are beset by the vague and sinister fear that something is not going to be quite right. They do not believe that they have it in them to be what they want to be, and so they try to make themselves content with something less than that of which they are capable. Thousands upon thousands go crawling through life on their hands and knees, defeated and afraid. And in most cases such frustration of power is unnecessary.

POSITIVE EXPECTATION

If you are thinking thoughts of defeat, you’ll tend to get it… adopt the “I don’t believe in defeat” attitude.

Norman Vincent Peale had a mate he called “the obstacle man”, because whatever the idea or the situation, he’d always look for the obstacles. As the director of his firm, whenever people brought him a new idea, his mind immediately think of all the things that could stand in the way of it working. He’d always say “now just a minute, let’s first think of all of the possible obstacles that might be involved…”. When a new person came to work for him, he said “why do you always think of only the obstacles and never the possibilities?”. Obstacle Man said “to be intelligent one must be realistic, and it is a fact that there are always obstacles in connection with any project”. What should he do instead? Ignore them? Pretend they don’t exist? Not think about them? The young man said – you should know about them, but then remove them: “I have never seen one obstacle that could not be overcome, provided you have enough faith and guts and were willing to do the work”.

So whenever you come across an obstacle, the first thing to do is stand up to it, not complain, don’t whine about it. Outright attack it! don’t crawl up to it, already half defeated and half-arsed – stand up to your obstacles and do something about them.you will find that once you get started, that don’t have anywhere near the amount of strength you imagined they’d have.

Be care of all of the “little negatives” that creep into your life. An effective method for making your subconscious positive in character is to eliminate certain expressions that may be classified as “little negatives”. These ‘little negatives’ clutter up the average person’s mind and spill out in their conversation. While each one is seemingly unimportant in itself, the total effect of these attitudes is to condition the mind negatively. You’ll be shocked how many of these you can let slip in to your mind and speech: 

• im afraid ill be late 
• i wonder if i have a flat tyre 
• i don’t think i can do that 
• ill never get through this project, there’s just so much to do 
• i just knew it was going to rain today 
• this is just what i expected… i know i wouldn’t be able to get this right 

While these seem so small and meaningless, remember that “mighty oaks grow from small acorns”. If you allow these acorns to be planted in your mind, and you allow them to grow, soon enough they may no longer be ‘little negatives’ but massive oaks. Before you know it, the ‘little negatives’ that you allow to slip into your speech will find their way into your mind, and soon enough be ‘big negatives’. Make a conscious effort to root out all of these little negatives from your mind and your speech – don’t allow them the opportunity to grow.

Expect the worst you will get the worst, but if you expect the best you will get the best. William James said: “our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that ensure the successful outcome of your venture”. To learn to believe is of primary importance. It is the basic factor of succeeding in any undertaking. When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you. But if you expect the worst, you release from your mind the power of repulsion which tends to force the best away from you. It is amazing how a sustained expectation of the best sets in motion forces which cause the best to materialise.