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To bring positive changes in our life, we must change our thoughts. One of the most important and powerful facts about you is expressed in the following statement by William James, who was one of the very few wise men America has produced. William James said: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” As you think, so shall you be. So flush out all 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.
It has been said that the wisest man who ever lived in America was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Concord. Emerson declared: “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”
(Content credit to ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ by Norman Vincent Peale)
Dynamic Power of Thoughts
A famous psychologist says: “There is a deep tendency in human nature to become precisely like that which you habitually imagine yourself to be.” It has been said that thoughts are things, that they actually possess dynamic power. Judged by the power they exercise one can readily accept such an appraisal. You can actually think yourself into or out of situations. You can make yourself ill with your thoughts and by the same token you can make yourself well by the use of a different and healing type of thought. Think one way and you attract the conditions which that type of thinking indicates. Think another way and you can create an entirely different set of conditions. Conditions are created by thoughts far more powerfully than thoughts create conditions.
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.
Change Mental Attitude (Negative to Positive)
With the following practical steps change your mental attitudes from negative to positive. Try them—keep on trying them. They will work.
- For the next twenty-four hours, deliberately speak hopefully about everything, about your job, about your health, about your future. Go out of your way to talk optimistically about everything. This will be difficult, for possibly it is your habit to talk pessimistically. From this negative habit, you must restrain yourself even if it requires an act of will.
- After speaking hopefully for twenty-four hours, continue the practice for one week, then you can be permitted to be ‘realistic’ for a day or two. You will discover that what you meant by ‘realistic’ a week ago was actually pessimistic, but what you now mean by ‘realistic’ is something, entirely different; it is the dawning of the positive outlook.
- You must feed your mind even as you feed your body, and to make your mind healthy you must feed it nourishing, wholesome thoughts. Therefore, today start to shift your mind from negative to positive thinking.
- Make a list of your friends to determine who is the most positive thinker among them and deliberately cultivate his society.
- Avoid argument, but whenever a negative attitude is expressed, counter with a positive and optimistic opinion.
- Pray a great deal and always let your prayer take the form of thanksgiving on the assumption that God is giving you great and wonderful things. God will not give you any greater blessing than you can believe in.
Power of Single Sentence
The secret of a better and more successful life is to cast out those old, dead, unhealthy thoughts. Substitute for them new vital, dynamic faith thoughts. You can depend upon it—an inflow of new thoughts will remake you and your life.
The writer knows a business executive, a modest man, but the type of individual who is never defeated. No problem, no setback, no opposition ever gets him down. He simply attacks each difficulty with an optimistic attitude and a sure confidence that it will work outright, and, in some strange way, it always does for him. He seems to have a magic touch on life—a touch that never fails.
One day when he was in the mood he told the writer his secret, an amazingly simple but effective secret.
He narrated his story to the writer. “When I went to college, my good Christian mother gave me that Bible with the suggestion that if I would read and practice its teachings, I would learn how to get through life successfully. But I thought she was just a nice old lady”—he chuckled—“at my age, she seemed old—she wasn’t real, and to humor her, I took the Bible, but for years practically never looked at it. I thought I didn’t need it. Years later, I got my life in a terrific mess.
“Everything went wrong primarily because I was wrong. I was thinking wrong, acting wrong, doing wrong. I succeeded at nothing, failed at everything. Now I realize that my principal trouble was wrong thinking. I was negative, resentful, cocky, opinionated. Nobody could tell me anything. I thought I knew everything. I was filled with gripes at everybody. Little wonder nobody liked me. I certainly was a ‘washout’.
One night in going through some papers,” he continued, “I came across the long-forgotten Bible. It brought up old memories and I started aimlessly to read it. Do you know it is strange how things happen; how in just a flashing moment of time everything becomes different. Well, as I read, a sentence leaped up at me, a sentence that changed my life—and when I say changed, I mean changed. From the minute I read that sentence everything has been different, tremendously different.”
“What is this wonderful sentence?” the writer wanted to know, and he quoted it slowly, “‘The Lord is the strength of my life…in this will I be confident.’
“If you are positive, you’ll see opportunities instead of obstacles.” – Confucious
