The Power of Positive Thinking

Many years ago, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who was a colleague of mine while he was still alive, wrote a book called the Power of Positive Thinking. It's still one of the most popular books on personal success and personal development ever written. And his basic message was, is if you think in a positive way, you'll have positive results and you'll be happy most of the time. So how do you use the power of positive thinking? Well, they did a study at the University of Pennsylvania. It was funded by some of the biggest companies in America. And over a 22 year period, they interviewed more than 350,000 people like you and I, and asked them a lot of questions about their lives and their attitudes and so on. And one of the questions they asked them is, what do you think about most of the time? Then they conducted a series of experiments is they would have graduate students who were working on their papers in psychology and sociology phone these people once a week at random during the week and just say, what are you thinking about right now? And they'd write it down. And the next week they'd call them on a different day at a different time. This is all prearranged that they would be expecting the call sometime and what are you thinking about right now? And they'd write it down. Then they began to sort these groups out in terms of deciles, which is 10 percents, the bottom 10%, the next 10%, all the way up to the top 10%. And they noticed that people in the top 10% thought very differently from people in the bottom 80%. What do top people think about most of the time? Can you guess? The answer was so simple, it was amazing. They think about what they want and how to get it. Most of the time they think about what they want and how to get. They think about their goals and they think about their priorities and they think about their actions and activities each day. They think about the number of people they need to call on and the number of proposals they need to put together, and the number of things they need to read and to study. They're always thinking about what they want. And when you think about what you want, it makes you happy, it makes you positive, makes you feel in control of your whole life. And then they think about how to get it. So in my seminars, I'll say that the most important word for leadership and success is the word how. Whenever you have a goal, the only question you ask is, how can you I achieve this goal if I have a problem, how can I solve this problem? If you have an obstacle? How can I overcome the obstacle? Top People think about what they want and how to get it most of the time. And as a result, they're thinking about their goal and they're thinking about the actions that they can take every single minute of every day to move faster toward achieving that goal. Earl Nightingale once said that happiness is the progressive, step by step realization of a worthy ideal or goal. When you feel yourself moving step by step, each hour, each day toward achieving something that's important to you, you feel positive and happy most of the time. By the way, do you know what unsuccessful people think about most of the time? They think about what they don't want, the things that make them angry or sad, usually past events that they can't change, and they think about who's to blame for all their problems. So whenever you see people talking and complaining about things that they can't change, things in their life that are their responsibility, and then blaming others for their problems, you know you're dealing with a negative, unhappy person with a very limited future and a very unhappy present. So the way you take control of your mind, like grabbing the wheel of a vehicle, you start to think about what you want and how to get it all day long and you automatically become positive and start to feel in complete control of your life. If you like this video, please leave a comment below. And don't forget to subscribe to get new videos like this in the future.