Chapter 5-7

Chapter 5 

Create Your Own Happiness

Who decides whether you shall be happy or unhappy? You do.

When I get up in the morning I have two choices-to be happy or unhappy. You can be unhappy if you want to be. It is the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. Just choose unhappiness. Go around telling yourself that things aren’t going well, that nothing is satisfactory, and you can be quite sure of being unhappy. But say to yourself, “Things are going nicely. Life is good. I choose happiness,” and you can be quite certain of having your choice. To become a happy person, have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in the commonplace, a child’s heart and spiritual simplicity.

Many of us manufacture our own unhappiness. Of course not all unhappiness is self-created, for social conditions are responsible for not a few of our woes. Yet, to a large extent, by our thoughts and attitudes we distill out of the ingredients of life either happiness or unhappiness for ourselves. Anyone who desires it, who wills it and who learns and applies the right formula may become a happy person.

If happiness is determined by our thoughts, it is necessary to drive off the thoughts which make for depression and discouragement. This can be done first  by simply determining to do it, and second by utilizing an easily employed technique which I suggested to a businessman.

The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your live with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.

            As you read these words you may say “there is nothing new in that”. Indeed, there is something new in it if you never tried it. When you start to practice it you will find it the most astonishing method of happy and successful living you have ever used. What is the value of having known these principles all your life if you have never made use of them? Such inefficiency in living is tragic.

            Of course in order to give power to these principles of happiness and make them with a dynamic quality of mind. You are not likely to secure effective results even with spiritual principles without spiritual power. When one experiences a dynamic spiritual change inwardly, success with happiness producing ideas becomes extraordinarily easy. If you begin to use spiritual principles, however awkwardly, you will gradually experience spiritual power inwardly. This will give you the greatest surge of happiness you have ever known. It will stay with you, too, as long as you live a God-centered life.

Chapter 6

Expect The Best And Get It

When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you. “throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow”. Copy that sentence. Write it on a card and put it in your pocket. Better still, write it on your mind, you who really want to do something with life. It’s packed with power.

Heart is the symbol of creative activity. Fire the heart with where you want to go and what you want to be. Get it so deeply fixed in your subconscious that you will not take no for an answer, then your entire personality will follow where your heart leads.

EXPECT THE BEST, NOT THE WORST, AND YOU WILL ATTAIN YOUR HEART’S DESIRE.

           

“If you expect failure, you will get failure, but if you expect to succeed, I am sure you will succeed”. Repeat this formula before every call. Believe in it and then marvel at what it will do for you.

            It is a well-defined and authentic principle that what the mind profoundly expects it tends to receive. Perhaps this is true because what you really expect is what you actually want. Unless you really want something sufficiently to create an atmosphere of positive factors by your dynamic desire, it is likely to elude you. “if with all your heart”-that is the secret. “if with all your heart”, that is to say, if with the full complement of your personality, you reach out creatively toward your heart’s desire, your reach will not be in vain.

            At least 10 times every day affirm “I expect the best and God’s help will attain the best.” In so doing your thoughts will turn toward the best and become conditioned to its realization. This practice will bring all of your powers to focus upon the attainment of the best. It will bring the best to you.

Chapter 7

I Don’t Believe In Defeat

            There is no difficulty you cannot overcome. An effective method for making your mind positive in character is to eliminate certain expressions of thought and speech, which we may call the “little negative”. These are “little negative” to be sure, and a big thoughts is of course more powerful than a little one. I determined to root those “little negatives” out of my conversation. I found that the best way to eliminate them was deliberately to say a positive word about everything. When you keep asserting that things are going to work out well, good results do occur. “a clean engine always delivers power”.

            I played golf with a man who was not only an excellent golfer but a philosopher as well. As we went around the golf course the game itself drew out of him a gem of wisdom for which I shall ever be grateful.

            In your mind you have decided that here is the obstacle which will cause you difficulty. The power of overcome this obstacle is in your mind. If you visualize yourself lifting the ball out of the rough believing you can do it, your mind will transfer flexibility, rhythm, and power to your muscles and you will handle that club in such a manner that the ball will rise right out of there in a beautiful shot.   

            All you need to do is to keep your eye on that ball and tell yourself that you are going to lift it out of the grass with a lovely stroke. Let the stiffness and tension go out of you. Hit it with exhilaration and power. Remember, the roughs only mental.

            Believe that Almighty God has put in you the power to lift yourself out the rough by keeping your eye firmly fixed on the source of your power. Affirm to yourself that rough this power you can do anything you have to do. Believe that this power is taking the tension out of you, that this power is flowing through you. Believe this, and a sense of victory will come.

Source : Norman Vincent Peale, 1987. The Power of  Positive Thinking. Ballantine Books.