Cover
Also by Norman Vincent Peale
Title Page
OLD TESTAMENT
Joshua 1:9
Job 3:25
Psalms 34:4
Psalms 46:1
Psalms 51:10
Psalms 55:22
Psalms 62:5
Psalms 73:24
Proverbs 16:20
Proverbs 3:5
Isaiah 26:3
Isaiah 28:12
Isaiah 40:31
Isaiah 55:3
NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew 5:44
Matthew 7:7
Matthew 11:28
Mark 11:23
Mark 11:24
Mark 11:25
Luke 17:21
Luke 18:27
I Corinthians 2:9
II Corinthians 5:17
Ephesians 3:20
Ephesians 6:13
Philippians 3:13, 14
Philippians 4:11
Philippians 4:13
John 1:12
John 7:37
John 10:10
John 14:27
Acts 17:28
Romans 8:31
Romans 8:37–39
Romans 12:2
II Timothy 1:7
James 5:16
Revelation 7:16–17
1. Learn to Relax Your Body
2. Techniques for Relaxing Your Mind
3. How to Get Help from the Bible
4. Learn How to Pray
5. How to Keep from Getting Mad
6. Method for Getting Over Hurt Feelings
7. Let's Actually Practise Forgiving
8. How to Break Your Worry Habit
9. Learn to Make Your Work Easy
10. Method for Making Important Decisions
11. Make an Inventory of Your Joys
12. How to Make Your Personality Attractive
13. Formula for Overcoming Your Inferiority Complex
14. What to Do When a Loved One Is Ill
15. Overcome Your Negative Attitudes
16. Handling Your Disappointments Skilfully
17. How to Get Along with People
18. How to Have a Christian Experience
I Am a Worrier
After Happy Years We Are Drifting Apart
I Have Been Warned I Must Slow Up—Or Else
Things Irritate Me
I Am Lonely
I Am So Tense
We Are Worried about Money
Resentment Is My Problem
There Is an Alcoholic in Our Family
I Find It Difficult to Adjust to Retirement
A Loved One Has Died
Our Son is Keeping Company with Someone of Whom We Disapprove
An Older Person Is Living with Us, How Can We All Be Happy?
My Children Are Not Doing Well in School
OLD TESTAMENT
Genesis 28:15
Psalms 3:5
Psalms 23:2
Psalms 27:1
Psalms 46:10
Psalms 91:11
Proverbs 15:1
Proverbs 17:22
Isaiah 40:29
Isaiah 41:10
Isaiah 57:20, 21
Jeremiah 29:13
NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew 6:33
Matthew 7:24
Matthew 18:20
Mark 6:56
Mark 9:23
Luke 11:9, 10
John 4:14
John 11:25
John 15:3
Acts 3:19
Romans 12:10
I Corinthians 10:13
I Corinthians 13:13
Ephesians 6:16, 17
Philippians 4:19
Hebrews 13:8
I Peter 3:10, 11
I Peter 5:6, 7
Revelation 21:7
Drain Your Mind
Relax Muscle Tensions
Don't Take Tomorrow to Bed with You
Practise the Presence
Tranquillise Your Thoughts
How to Spend the Hour before Bedtime
Relax by Positive Thinking
Don't Wear Yourself Out with Yourself
Memorised Peacefulness
Drop Relaxing Bible Passages into the Mind
The Benediction of the Darkness
Add Up Your Blessings
Become an Expert Forgetter
Rocked in the Everlasting Arms
How to Go to Church
How to Say Your Prayers
How to Solve a Problem
How to Make Your Work Easier
How to Break the Worry Habit
How to Relax
How to Overcome your Inferiority Complex
How to Meet Sorrow
How to Get People to Like You
How to Forgive
Copyright
Also by Norman Vincent Peale
The Power of Positive Thinking
The Power of Positive Living
The Amazing Results of Positive Thinking
The Positive Way to Change Your Life
The Power of Positive Thinking for Young People
Stay Alive All Your Life
Courage and Confidence
You Can if You Think You Can
The Power of Ethical Management
The techniques and principles contained in this book, to be completely effective, require regular attendance at church service.
The author takes pleasure in inviting you, should you ever be in New York, to worship in the Marble Collegiate Church, Fifth Avenue and 29th Street, of which he is the minister. He would like you to feel, when in that great city, that you have a church home where you will receive a sincere welcome.
CHANGE YOUR THOUGHTS and you can change anything. The world in which you live is not determined by outward circumstances nearly so much as by the thoughts which habitually occupy your mind. Even as air conditioners keep the atmosphere of a room fresh and healthful, so THOUGHT CONDITIONERS will give clarity and power to your thoughts, peace to your mind, health to your body and vitality to your life. Since happiness and effectiveness depend upon the kind of thoughts we think, it is absolutely impossible to be happy if we think unhappiness-producing thoughts. One of the wisest men who ever lived was Marcus Aurelius, who said, “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”
If you put into your mind thoughts of fear, you will get thoughts of fear out of your mind. Fill your mind with resentment thoughts and resentment attitudes will emerge. And in neither case, of course, can you find happiness-inducing thoughts. Whatever the condition of your mind, the THOUGHT CONDITIONERS which I am going to suggest are so powerful that they will displace unhealthy thoughts. Indeed, displacement is the only way you can drive a thought from the mind.
In my experience through a good many years in working with people, I have discovered that the most vital, creative and positive thoughts are those stated in the Bible. Its words are alive. The Bible itself states what its spiritual words will do. “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”
This means simply that if you fill your mind with spiritual words so that they sink from your conscious to your unconscious mind by a process of spiritual osmosis, you will so condition your personality with spiritual power and sensitivity that God’s will can operate in you, and every great value of this life, the ones that really matter, shall be yours. The words of the Bible are powerful THOUGHT CONDITIONERS. They are capable of revolutionising the entire personality.
OVER THE YEARS I had noticed that certain passages from the Scriptures had particularly potent effects on human beings. I began, therefore, to list the life-creating words from the Scriptures which had done me the most good. Many of these I had recommended to others. Some of them had been called to my attention by people in whom there had occurred the most astonishing demonstration of new life and joy. When I applied them to myself I found they did indeed possess tremendous effectiveness.
The process which I have used both personally and in counselling, which has accomplished most impressive results, is simply that of committing these great passages to memory. One puts them in the mind as in a sort of spiritual medicine cabinet, each to be drawn out as needed for specific ills or maladies of the personality, or to meet life’s situations as they develop.
As suggested above, the method is also to conceive of these thoughts as having displacement value, crowding out injurious thought patterns.
The best results are gained by utilising spare minutes to say these scripture passages or THOUGHT CONDITIONERS over and over. As you are riding on a bus or train, or washing the dishes, or waiting for an appointment, utilise fractional moments to dwell and meditate upon the meaning of these texts. As you do so, there will flash out from them new insights, new perceptions of truth. Gradually, by a deep therapy, they will drive into the mind, until presently your life will become a living demonstration of God’s power.
Part One contains forty creative and vital passages. Why forty? Primarily because in His own deepest spiritual experience Jesus spent forty days. There is no magic in the number forty, but it so happened that when I finished my list it totalled forty. There are many more vital passages. In fact, you can read and commit the Bible for a lifetime and never exhaust it.
This is my forty, and when you complete these and feel that they are your permanent possession, I suggest that you explore the Scriptures further and find the many others that will have the same health-giving effect in your life.
Now, the method of using this part of this book:
1. I suggest that you read it through quickly at one reading to get the all-over impact of forty of the greatest gems of thought ever spoken.
2. Start at the beginning and memorise one verse a day. Meditate upon the brief message given with each. Definitely practise the simple techniques suggested.
3. It may be that one or two or more of these will have a particularly strong effect upon you. In that case I suggest that you copy it, put it in your pocket, under the glass of your desk or on your dressing-table, so that you can see it every day and thus it can become your dominating thought.
They are not arranged according to problems or categories or days. Neither are they selected on any basis of relative importance. I have listed them just as they have come out of my own mind, one after the other. Perhaps God sorted them for this particular purpose. I give them to you with the prayer that these brief spiritual THOUGHT CONDITIONERS may add to the happiness and usefulness of your life.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Without a deep inner state of quietness, one becomes prey to tension, worry and ill health. A song, a sunset, moonlight, the sea washing on a sandy shore, these administer a healing balm. But they lack power to penetrate the inner recesses of the soul.
A profound depth therapy is required to attain healing quietness. An habitual repetition of this one text will, in time, permeate your personality with a complete sense of peace.
When tense or restless sit quietly and allow these words to pass unhindered through your thoughts. Conceive of them as spreading a healing balm throughout your mind.
The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
This text shows how to do an “impossible” thing. Size up your problem, pray about it, do all you can about it. If it seems impossible, don’t give up, but affirm, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”
Keep relaxed. Don’t worry. Avoid getting panicky. Never think, “This can’t be done.” Declare, “It can be done, it is being done because God is doing it through me.” Affirm that the process is in operation. The final outcome may not be entirely what you now desire. But, handled in this manner, the solution will be what God wants it to be.
Renew a right spirit within me.
Here is a fragment of a verse which will bring you friends, health, happiness and success. It can improve your disposition.
The word disposition refers to the manner in which you are disposed to react to situations and people. If your automatic emotional reaction is irritable, crabby, selfish, haughty, it impairs or even destroys your relationships.
The quality of your disposition depends upon your inner spirit. This thought conditioner, by the use of the word “renew”, implies that when you were created you had a good disposition.
If you have allowed it to deteriorate, Almighty God, who created you, can recreate and renew in you the fine balance, the controlled spirit. He can restore that vital factor in a good disposition, inner quiet control. Let no day pass after today that you do not say many times, “Renew a right spirit within me.”
Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Perhaps the strain and burden of life have made you tired. If so, maybe you are carrying life too heavily.
Primarily we do not get tired in our muscles, but in our mind. We develop that “I’m swamped” feeling.
Allow this text to dissolve in your thoughts as a kind of spiritual lozenge. As you turn to Jesus in your thoughts, He will give you rest. And how does He do that? One way is by showing you how to work.
“Learn of Me,” He says. In other words, work by My method. “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” That is to say, easy does it. Don’t strain, don’t tug, relax. Do one job at a time, using the light touch, the easy stroke.
What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
To pray successfully you must employ affirmation and visualisation. Form a picture in your mind, not of lack or denial or frustration or illness, but of prosperity, abundance, attainment, health. Always remember you will receive as a result of prayer exactly what you think, not what you say. If you pray for achievement but think defeat, your words are idle because your heart has already accepted defeat.
Therefore practise believing that even as you pray you are receiving God’s boundless blessings, and they will come to you.
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
This text will help you avoid a nervous breakdown. It will stimulate your recovery if you have had one.
A famous neurologist, specialist in nervous breakdowns, often “prescribes” this text for his patients. He writes the words on a card and instructs his patient to commit them to memory and repeat them until they are indelibly printed on the subconscious mind.
The cause of much nervous trouble is frustration. And the antidote to frustration is a calm faith, not in your own cleverness, or in hard toil, but in God’s guidance. The cure of frustration is the belief that God will help you obtain your heart’s desire. Trust in God with all your heart, and you will be able to keep on working in health and happiness for long years to come.
I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
Many people are lacking in energy. Their vitality is low. They are filled with inner conflicts which dissipate energy They are dull and apathetic.
What is the secret of energised life? Christ is the answer. It is said of Him, “In Him was life.” Fill your mind with Christ, fill your heart with Him, and inevitably energy, vitality, exuberance, delight and eagerness will well up within you.
Every day as you repeat this text make it read: Christ has come that I (fill in your own name) might have life and might have it more abundantly.
Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
God does heal. He does it in two ways, through science and through faith.
In healing, confession is important, for much illness results from buried resentments and guilt. Confession to a competent counsellor releases these poisons, cleanses the mind and soul, thus stopping the passing on of diseased thoughts to the body. Effectual prayer, that is scientific prayer, is very powerful.
The essence of the technique is confess your faults, pray with kindred spirits even if separated by distance, and enthusiastically (fervently) believe.
If God be for us, who can be against us?
Imagine yourself as actually looking at all your difficulties like an army lined up against you.
Then realise you have a backing that can overcome them all. As you face these enemies of yours—discouragement, frustration, disappointment, hostility, weakness—ask yourself, “What shall I say to these things?” And the answer is, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
Now spend a minute realising that God is for you and say this affirmation, “God is with me. God is for me. God is greater than all these things.”
Then visualise these enemies of your peace and happiness as retreating, giving way before God’s power.
Personalise the text by saying: “If God be for me, who can be against me?”
The repetitive use of this text will give you an enormous sense of God’s presence and a powerful feeling of victory.
The kingdom of God is within you.
When you are filled with self-doubt and in the grip of your inferiority complex, don’t give up, saying, “I can’t do it, I haven’t it in me.” You do have a very big “it” within you. You have the Kingdom of God within you.
God has placed in your personality all the ability you need. You have only to believe in yourself, and strength within you will be released.
In saying the text try it this way, “God’s abundance, peace and power are within me. I lack for nothing.”
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
Your fears can be healed by this text. It tell us first that fear is overcome by power. What power? There is only one force more powerful than fear, and that is faith. When fear comes to your mind counter it with an affirmation of faith.
Second, love overcomes fear. By love is meant trust, confidence, complete dependence upon God. Practise this attitude and fear will diminish.
The third element is to attain a sound mind in which there are no complexes, quirks and obsessions. Live with the thought of God and you will develop a sound mind where no shadowy fear can lurk.
Whenever you are afraid, verbalise against the thing that you fear, using the words of this text.
Thou shaft guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.
Perhaps today you have a problem which has baffled you. Try allowing this text to penetrate your mind until it becomes a dominating conception, and it will do some important things for you.
It will make you understand that there is an answer to every problem and that God is thinking along with you. It will bring to bear upon your problem that keen and sharp perception of wisdom called insight.
If you put every problem in God’s hands, ask Him to give you the right answer, believe that He is doing just that, and will take the guidance that comes, your decisions will turn out right.
Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
This is one of the greatest of all techniques of mental health. It teaches that when we have done all that we can do about a given matter, we are not to get worried or in a panic or be filled with anxiety, but take a calm, philosophical attitude concerning it.
When you have done all that you can do, don’t try to do any more, just “stand”. Relax, stop, be quiet, don’t fuss about it; you have done everything possible; leave the results to God.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
When trouble strikes, what you want is comfort and protection. You want strength to stand up to it and meet it.
You can have both. This text contains the answer. Frequently remind yourself that God is with you, that He will never fail you, that you can count upon Him. Say these words, “God is with me, helping me.”
This will give you a sense of comfort. New hope will flood your mind. New ideas will come. A new sense of power will be felt. As a result you will rise above your trouble.
When a particular trouble arises, before you do anything else about it, sit down quietly, repeat this text a half-dozen times, and put your full faith in it.
He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he.
To live successfully one must overcome blundering ineptness, the tendency to do and say the wrong thing. One must develop the deft and skilful touch that makes things turn out right.
A thing does not go wrong because of some perverse fate. It is more than likely that you lack the right slant, the proper approach.
If such is the case, what you need is wisdom. If you let today’s text seep from your conscious to your unconscious mind, it will correct the error pattern within you and gradually endow you with wisdom.
Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall live.
Most people live on the surface. They miss the most astonishing things. They see and yet they do not see. And the reason is they aren’t really looking.
The same is true about what they hear. They listen with the outer ear only. For example, people go to church, and the Gospel never penetrates beyond the outer consciousness. That is because people do not listen with all their faculties. They do not lose themselves in it.
But when a man inclines his ear and hears, listening as though his life depended upon it, getting every word, letting it sink into his mind by a deep and powerful penetration, then the message falls like a healing potency upon him. Every spiritual disease germ is killed, and he lives with new health and strength.
Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.
Today remind yourself that nothing is too good to be true. Your great hopes can be realised. Your most wonderful dreams can come true. All that you really need you can have. An incredible goodness is operating in your behalf.
If you are living a paltry life, resolve to stop it today. Expect great things to happen. Confidently receive God’s abundant blessings. Do not think lack. Instead, think prosperity, abundance, the best of everything. God wants to give to you, His child, every good thing. Don’t hinder His generosity.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
This is a very practical technique of prayer. It works amazingly. One reason we do not get answers to our prayers is that we ask, but do not really expect to receive. We are expert askers, but inexpert receivers.
This spiritual formula tells us to ask and then immediately conceive of ourselves as receiving. For example, to be free from fear, ask the Lord to free you. Then believe that He has immediately done so. The minute you express your faith by sincerely asking Him for a blessing, and believe your prayer is answered, your prayer is answered.
I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.
Your present situation may not be to your liking. Perhaps you are dissatisfied and discouraged. Put the matter in God’s hands. If He wants you elsewhere, He will lead you there, providing you are amenable to His will.
But perhaps He wants you where you are. In that case He will help you to adjust to the situation. He will make you content, even grateful for present opportunities. Learn the great art of doing the best you can, with what you have, where you are.
When you do this, you learn how to reach the better condition or how to make your present situation a better one.
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