Chapter 8-10

Chapter 8

How To Break The Worry Habit

            You do not need to be a victim of worry. Reduced to its simplest form, what is worry? It is simply an unhealthy and destructive mental habit. You were not born with the worry habit. You acquired it. And because you can change any habit and any acquired attitude, you can cast worry from your mind.

            To break the worry habit, try this worry-breaking formula:

1.      Say to yourself “worry is just a very bad mental habit. And I can change any habit with God’s help”.

2.      First thing every morning before you arise say out loud “I believe”, three times.

3.      Never participate a worry conversation.

4.      Cultivate friendships with hopeful people. Surround yourself with friends who think positive, faith-producing thoughts and who contribute to a creative atmosphere. This will keep you re-stimulated with faith attitude.

5.      See how many people you can help to cure their own worry habit. In helping another to overcome worry you get greater power over it within yourself.

Chapter 9

Power to Solve Personal Problems

One of the most effective techniques in problem solving is the simple device of conceiving of God as partner. Practically everybody believes in a general way that his is true, and many have experienced the reality of this faith. In getting correct solutions to your solutions to your problems, however, it is necessary to go a step further than believing this, for one most actually practice the idea of presence. Practice believing that God is as real as your spouse, or your business partner, or your closest friend. Practice talking matters over with Him. Believe that He hears and gives thought to your problems. Assume that He impresses upon your mind the ideas and insights necessary to solve your problems. Definitely believe that in these solutions there will be no error, but that you will be guided to actions according to truth which results in right outcomes.

Chapter 10

When Vitality sags, Try This Health Formula

            If you are under par, honestly ask yourself if you are harboring any ill will or resentment or grudges, and if so cast them out without delay. They do no harm to the person against whom you hold these feelings, but every day and every night of your life they are eating at you. Many people suffer poor health not because of what they eat but from what is eating them. Emotional ills turn your body against itself, sapping your energy, reducing your efficiency, causing deterioration in your health. And of course they siphon off your happiness.

Following are some practical suggestions. They have been used successfully by many in counterattacking especially the emotion of anger. A consistent application of these suggestions can produce feelings of well-being:

1.      Remember that anger is an emotion, and an emotion is always warm, even hot. When a person gets angry, the fists tend to clench, the voice rises in stridency, muscles tense, the body becomes rigid. Hold your fingers out straight. Deliberately reduce your tone. Bring it down to a whisper. Remember that it is difficult to argue in a whisper. Slump in a chair, or even lie down if possible. It is difficult to get mad lying down.

2.      Anger expresses the accumulated vehemence of a multitude of minor irritations. These irritations, each rather small in itself, having gathered force by reason of the one being added to the other, finally blaze forth in a fury that often leaves us abashed at ourselves. Therefore, make a list of everything that irritates you. No matter how inconsequential it may be or how silly each is, list it just the same. This will dry up the tiny rivulets that feed the great river of anger.

3.      Every time you feel anger say, ”it isn’t worth it to spend one thousand dollars’ worth of emotion on a five-cent irritation”.

4.      When a hurt-feeling situation arises, get is straightened out as quickly as possible. Go to someone you trust and pour it out to him until not a vestige of it remains within you. Then forget it.

5.      Pray for the person who has hurt your feelings. Continue this until you feel the malice fading away. Sometime you have to pray for quite a while to get a result. A man who tried this method told me that he kept account of the times he needed to pray until the grievance left and peace came. It was exactly 64 times. He literally prayed it out of his system. This is positively guaranteed to work.

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