The Power of Positive Thinking

"There is nothing on earth that you cannot have-once you have mentally accepted the fact that you can have it."

-Robert Collier

Perhaps the most important mental and spiritual principle ever discovered is that you become what you think about most of the time. Your outer world reflects your inner world. You can tell the inner condition of a person by looking at the outer conditions of his or her life. And it cannot be otherwise.

Your mind is extraordinarily powerful. Your thoughts control and determine almost everything that happens to you.

You are a complex bundle of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, desires, images, fears, hopes, doubts, opinions and ambitions, each of them constantly changing, sometimes from second to second. Your entire life is the result of the intertwining and interconnecting of these factors.

Your thoughts trigger images and pictures, and the emotions that go with them. These images and emotions trigger attitudes and actions. Your actions then have consequences and results that determine what happens to you.

If you think about success and confidence, you will feel strong and competent, and you will perform better at whatever you attempt. If you think about making mistakes and being embarrassed, you will perform poorly, no matter how good you really are.

Your attitudes lead to corresponding images, emotions and actions that affect your life and relationships. Your attitudes are based on your previous experiences and your basic premises about how things are supposed to be.

Your actions trigger the emotions and attitudes that go with them. By law of reversibility, you can actually act your way into feeling in a manner consistent with the action. By acting as if you were already happy, positive and confident, you soon begin to feel that way on the inside. And your actions are under your direct control, whereas your emotions are not.

The outer aspects of your life are neutral. It is the meaning that you give to them that determines your attitudes, emotions, opinions and reactions to them. If you change your thinking about a certain part of your life, you will change how you feel and behave in that area. And since only you can decide what to think, you have the ability to take complete control of your life.

The Law of Belief says: Whatever you believe, with conviction, becomes your reality.

You always act in accordance with your most intensely held beliefs, whether they are true or not. Your beliefs once did not exist, so they are learned.

You do not believe what you see, but rather you see what you already believe.

The most harmful beliefs that you can have are your self-limiting beliefs. These are beliefs about you and your potential that hold you back. Most of them are not true. Most of them are the result of information you have accepted without question, often from when you were young. If you believe yourself to be limited in an area then that will become your truth.

The Law of Attraction says that you invariably attract into your life the people, ideas, opportunities, and circumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts.

This law explains why it is that you don't have to be concerned where your good is going to come from.

If you can keep your mind clearly focused

on what you want, and refrain from thinking about what you don't want, you will attract everything you need to achieve your goals, exactly when you are ready. Change your thinking and you change your life.

Bertrand Russell, the English philosopher, once said, "The very best proof that something can be done is that others have already done it."

In the New Testament, Jesus taught the way to measure the truth of any principle: "By their fruits, ye shall know them."

The only question you need to ask about any idea is, "Does it work?" does it bring about the results that you desire?

Successful people are those who think more effectively than unsuccessful people. They approach their lives, relationships, goals, problems and experiences differently from others. They sow better seeds and as a result they reap better lives.

There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.

-William James

Perhaps the greatest breakthrough in the field of human potential in the twentieth century was the discovery of the self-concept. Each person beginning, at birth, develops a bundle of beliefs regarding one self. Your self-concept then becomes the master program of your subconscious computer, determining everything you think, say, feel and do. For this reason all change in your outer life begins with a change in your self-concept.

When you believe something to be true, it becomes true for you, whatever the fact may be. "You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are."

You are born unafraid, except from loud noises and falling. We learn 2 major fears in life:

(1) failure or Loss

(2) Rejection or Criticism

We learn the fear of failure when we are criticized upon trying something new or different. "No", "get away from there", "put that down", "stop that."

We soon begin to believe that we are incapable of doing anything new and different. We react as if we're afraid of getting a spanking; we keep saying "I can't."

Fear of failure is the main reason for failure in adult life. We sell ourselves short, we quit even before we try the first time. Instead of using our amazing minds to figure out how to get what we want, we use our reasoning ability to create reasons why we can't, and why things we want are not possible for us.

The 2nd fear is the fear of rejection, in the form of criticism. For a child, the fear of being unloved and alone is so traumatic that they soon conform their behavior to whatever the parents approve of. Spontaneity and