Believe and succeed

Read this passage from The Power Of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale:

-------------------------------
Conditions are created by thoughts far more powerfully than conditions create thoughts.

Think positively, for example, and you set in motion positive forces which bring positive results to pass. Positive thoughts create around yourself an atmosphere propitious to the development of positive outcomes. On the contrary, think negative thoughts and you create around yourself an atmosphere propitious to the development of negative results.

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, develop it firmly in all details, believe in it, pray about it, work at it, and you can actualize it according to that mental image emphasized in your positive thinking.

This is one of the greatest laws in the universe. Fervently do I wish I had discovered it as a very young man. It dawned upon me much later in life and I have found it to be one of the greatest if not my greatest discovery, outside of my relationship to God....

This great law briefly and simply stated is that if you think in negative terms you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms you will achieve positive results. That is the simple fact which is at the basis of an astonishing law of prosperity and success. In three words: Believe and succeed.
[end quote]
-----------------------------------------------

[from The Power Of

Positive Thinking, by Norman

Vincent Peale. 1952.

Prentice-Hall, Inc. New

York, New York.]

There's a lot of literature of this type, most of it inspired by, or copied from, this book. If you don't read any other book this year, only one, read this one.

I don't read it often enough; it's time to work my way through it, again.

The problem with having such a powerful, and well-thought-through philosophy, as Peale did, is that it draws many imitators, so many in fact, that I wonder if all the hucksters who just try to make money off the idea, set to their own "spin" -- selling a billion books, tapes, infomercials, seminars, blah blah blah sort of cheapen the whole idea and make it seem less plausible. That would be unfortunate, because it's a hell of a good idea.

(There's actually a scene in the book Bridget Jones's Diary -- and it's in the movie, too -- where Bridget gets fed up with all the positive, focus, be your most enhanced self, blah blah blah -- it all starts to seem like bullshit, so she goes out to the garbage receptacle outside of her condo building and is tossing all of her "personal growth" etc. books out. Just as she's mashing them all down in the garbage container, the guy who likes her happens to come by, and she tries to seem all cool and casual, like she's not having a "meltdown" - !)

However, leaving Bridget Jones, happy and neurotically "busy" in her fictional British world, in all seriousness, The Power Of Positive Thinking is so helpful -- and accessible, entertaining -- brilliant, really, in a straightforward, down-to-earth way. It's like the Bible in that you can open it anywhere and just read some, and get something out of it that you can use.

-30-