The Power of Positive “Feeling”

You’ve no doubt heard of the classic book by Norman Vincent Peale,  “The Power of Positive Thinking”, first published in 1952. Although the book was successful in its own right, it also helped to popularize the catch-phrase, positive thinking. For decades that followed, we heard that phrase everywhere. “You’ve gotta think positive”, “be a positive thinker”, “be sure to keep thinking positive”. I’m sure you’ve heard these or similar phrases numerous times.

I was a big believer in “positive thinking” for many years, until I realized there’s more to it than just thinking. I still believe in positive thinking, as opposed to negative thinking. After all, you have to have positive thoughts and always try to see the positive side of things as opposed to the negative side. But after further studying the subject of the Law of Attraction, and why some people seem to attract positive circumstances, and some seem to attract nothing but negative experiences, I discovered the true secret.

The secret starts with positive thinking, but it’s our feelings that will ultimately determine our circumstances in life. You can think positive thoughts all you want, but if you don’t believe those thoughts and feel good about those thoughts, then nothing happens. I recall a Tony Robbins quote that echoes this idea: “If all we needed were ideas and positive thinking, then we all would have had ponies when we were kids and we would all be living our ‘dream life’ now.”

No, it’s not just “thinking”, but it does start with thinking. Let’s say, you want a new car (I’m just using “car” as an example – it could be anything – a new house, a new job, a new relationship, to lose weight, get in shape…whatever). So you want a new car, and you decide to THINK POSITIVE about getting this car. You recite affirmations about having this car. You are constantly thinking about getting this car, you even think about (as you should) already having it. Great. But, if there is any doubt in your mind about you being able to get this car, it won’t manifest itself in your life. You need to believe — no, you need to know without a doubt that this car is yours! AND…. this is the biggie, you need to feel good when you think about the car. If you don’t feel good when you think about your goal (car, etc.), that means there is doubt in your mind that you will get it, and you won’t get it.

So if you don’t feel absolutely great, and excited and happy about the goal you’re thinking about, you probably need to change your goal to something a little smaller or more achievable. Choose a goal that gets you super excited and that you absolutely believe you will achieve, and focus on it daily, and you will achieve it. Then you can move on to bigger goals, and so on, and so on.

I could write volumes on this topic, but this is intended to be a quick blog post, so suffice it to say, positive thinking is great, but it’s only the beginning. Use the power of positive feeling!

Until next time, I remain,

Yours in Success,

Jim