The Power of Positive Thinking

In fact, the former President Donald Trump attended Peale's church as a kid, and was strongly influenced by Peale's ideas.

You know, the greatest speaker I think I've ever witnessed was Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, and he would speak the power of positive thinking.

Another influential leader in the space was Louise Hay, a popular self-help writer who popularized some of the core tenets of manifesting through her books, affirmations, and public speaking.

If you do a good general positive statement for yourself, the universe will figure out how to manifest that, how to bring that about in your life.

Hay was a strong believer in the power of the mind to overcome illness and trauma.

Now, Norman Vincent Peale, who I'm convinced is not a Christian, based on the evidence, even though he was a pastor, but just because your pastor don't make you a Christian, I could tell you stories, so I'm blue in the face with that.

But anyway, but Norman Vincent Peale, he wrote The Power of Positive Thinking.

Right.

And basically, you just think positive, nothing negative, and you don't speak anything negative because you just got to think positive, only positive.

And then you could you could.

Create the positive life that you want, the power of positive thinking.

So that's a false teaching.

It's not biblical.

And I went up to the library because we didn't really have internet available in those days.

And the first books that I found were The Power of Positive Thinking and it was a book about psychology.

And they're where I started on this 35 year journey of trying to fix myself.

And yeah, so the next big turning point I carried on my life and I'll talk about the spiritual side a wee bit here.

His mind conjured up the belief that he was freezing in the refrigerated car.

In 1952, there was a minister by the name of Norman Vincent Peale He wrote The Power of Positive Thinking.

He told a struggling salesman to write success images on a card and read them 50 times daily.

Three months later, the man had tripled his income.

It's important that you know how I got there so that you could have some trust that there's something to it.

When I was a kid, I was influenced, as was my mother, by the book The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale.

They suggested that you could somehow change your life or maybe you were changing reality if you could simply think positively.

Think positively.

Norman Vincent Peale was, in the 1950s, one of the most famous men in America.

Radio show, newspaper column, and in 1952, a book, The Power of Positive Thinking.

186 weeks on the bestseller list, 5 million copies, and for two years, it outsold everything in America except the Bible.

Fred Trump loved him.

He said you could listen to the man all day.

When the service ended, you were sorry it was over.

So, what was Peale actually teaching? The power of positive thinking opens with two lines.

Believe in yourself.