The Power of Positive Thinking

The Power of Positive Thinking — Norman Vincent Peale

A business conference had just ended. The audience had dispersed. One man waited.

He was forty years old, and when he finally got Peale alone backstage, the words came out in a rush: tomorrow morning he had the most important deal of his career. If it succeeded, everything would be fine. If it failed, he was done. He slumped forward. "I have a terrible disbelief in myself," he said. "All my life I've been tormented by inferiority feelings, by self-doubt. I heard you speak tonight about positive thinking. I have one question: how do I get some faith in myself?"

Peale asked a few questions, then reached into his pocket and wrote a sentence on a small card. He handed it over. The sentence was from Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

"Say these words three times tonight before you sleep," Peale told him. "Three times when you wake up. Three more times on your way to the meeting. Say them with genuine faith, not as a recitation."

The man read the card. Then something small but visible happened. His shoulders came up. Not dramatically. Just up. "O.K., Doctor. O.K." He tucked the card away and walked into the night.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived. The deal had gone through. "It seems incredible that a few words from the Bible could do so much for a person."

This opening story is the purest distillation of everything Peale argues across 280 pages. Not that magic words produce results. That there is a mechanism connecting thought and reality, and this mechanism can be learned, practiced, and deployed. Positive thinking, in Peale's framework, is not optimistic self-delusion. It is a structured psychological and spiritual practice with a specific operating logic.