Sunday Reflections — The power of positive thinking with Norman Vincent Peale
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This week, Sunday Reflections brings you select quotes on the power of positive thinking from Norman Vincent Peale, best known for popularizing this concept, especially through his best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking:
“Deep within the individual is a vast reservoir of untapped power awaiting to be used. No person can have the use of all this potential until he learns to know his or her own self. The trouble with many people is that they got through life thinking and writing themselves off as ordinary commonplace persons. Having no proper belief in themselves they live aimless and erratic lives largely because they never realize what their lives really can be or what they can become.”
“Remember, there is no situation so completely hopeless that something constructive cannot be done about it. When faced with a minus, ask yourself what you can do to make it a plus. A person practicing this attitude will extract undreamed-of outcomes from the most unpromising situations. Realize that there are no hopeless situations; there are only people who take hopeless attitudes.”
“The positive thinker, on the contrary, constantly sends out positive thoughts, together with vital mental images of hope, optimism and creativity. He therefore activates the world around him positively and strongly tends to draw back to himself positive results. This, too, is a basic law of mind action.”
“The positive thinker is a hard-headed, tough-minded, and factual realist. He sees all the difficulties clearly… which is more than can be said for the average negative thinker. But he sees more than difficulties — he tries to see the solutions of those difficulties.”
“A positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the negative; he refuses to dwell on it. Positive thinking is a form of thought which habitually looks for the best results from the worst conditions.”
“Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities — always see them, for they’re always there.”
“Believe you can, and you can. Belief is one of the most powerful of all problem dissolvers. When you believe that a difficulty can be overcome, you are more than halfway to victory over it already.”
“Positive Thinkers get positive results because they appreciate the inestimable value of a day, this day, not the next day, but this day, and every day. Today offers at least sixteen waking hours that may be crammed FULL of opportunity, joy, excitement, and achievement.”
“Today remind yourself that nothing is too good to be true. Your great hopes can be realized. Your most wonderful dreams can come true. All that you really need, you can have. An incredible goodness is operating on your behalf. If you are living a paltry life, resolve to stop it today. Expect great things to happen.”
“Expecting the best means that you put your whole heart (i.e. the central essence of your personality) into what you want to accomplish. People are defeated in life not because of lack of ability, but for lack of wholeheartedness. They do not wholeheartedly expect to succeed. Their heart isn’t in it, which is to say, they themselves are not fully given.”
“When you keep asserting that things are going to work out well, that you can do the job, that you will not have a flat tire, that you will get there on time, by talking up good results you invoke the law of positive effects and good results occur. Things do turn out well.”
This selection is from online resources in the public domain.
