Norman Vincent Peale - Positive Imaging: The Powerful Way to Change Your Life

Positive Imaging

The Powerful Way to Change Your Life

Norman Vincent Peale

Gratefully and affectionately dedicated to longtime friend and associate Arthur Gordon, skilled editor and writer, with thanks for the helpful assistance he has given in the preparation of this book

Contents

Introduction

1 ImagingWhat It Is and How It Works

2 How the Imaging Idea Grew

3 The Concept That Conquers Problems

4 How Imaging Helps to Bolster a Shaky Ego

5 How to Manage Money Problems

6 Use Imaging to Outwit Worry

7 Image Yourself No Longer Lonely

8 The Three Biggest Steps on the Road to Success

9 ImagingKey to Health?

10 The Word That Undermines Marriage

11 The Healing Power of Forgiveness

12 Imaging the Tenseness out of Tension

13 How to Deepen Your Faith

14 Imaging in Everyday Life

15 The Imaging Process in Making and Keeping Friends

16 The Most Important Image of All

About the Author

A Special Note to the Reader

The pages that follow are written in the first person because to have a single narrator is said to lend clarity and unity to a book. But it is misleading because this book is the product of two minds, one masculine and one feminine. My wife, Ruth, and I have worked together for so long that neither of us can function without the other. This is as much her book as mine. It is a team effort all the way through, and I hope the reader will be conscious of that and bestow credit where it is due.

NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

Joel 2:28

Introduction

Suppose a trusted friend came to you and said, Theres a powerful new-old idea that people are talking about, one I think you should be aware of. Its a concept available to all of us that can shape and change human lives for the better in an astonishing way. What would you say?

Youd say, Tell me about it! wouldnt you?

Thats what I want to do in this booktell you about it.

The concept is a form of mental activity called imaging. It consists of vividly picturing, in your conscious mind, a desired goal or objective, and holding that image until it sinks into your unconscious mind, where it releases great, untapped energies. It works best when it is combined with a strong religious faith, backed by prayer and the seemingly illogical technique of giving thanks for benefits before they are received. When the imaging concept is applied steadily and systematically, it solves problems, strengthens personalities, improves health, and greatly enhances the chances for success in any kind of endeavor.

The idea of imaging has been around for a long time, and it has been implicit in all the speaking and writing I have done in the past. But only recently has it begun to emerge clearly and be recognized by scientists and medical authorities as additional proof that mind and body and spirit are one indivisible unit, as the Bible has been telling us all along.

Jesus Christ Himself said, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them (Mark 11:24). That is the great promise that lies behind the theme of this book. Please keep it in mind as you turn the page and start reading Positive Imaging .

Imaging What It Is and How It Works

There is a powerful and mysterious force in human nature that is capable of bringing about dramatic improvement in our lives. It is a kind of mental engineering that works best when supported by a strong religious faith. Its not difficult to practice; anyone can do it. Recently it has caught the attention of doctors, psychologists, and thinkers everywhere, and a new word has been coined to describe it. That word is imaging , derived from imagination .

Imaging, the forming of mental pictures or images, is based on the principle that there is a deep tendency in human nature to ultimately become precisely like that which we imagine or image ourselves as being. An image formed and held tenaciously in the conscious mind will pass presently, by a process of mental osmosis, into the unconscious mind. And when it is accepted firmly in the unconscious, the individual will strongly tend to have it, for then it has you. So powerful is the imaging effect on thought and performance that a long-held visualization of an objective or goal can become determinative.

Imaging is positive thinking carried one step further. In imaging, one does not merely think about a hoped-for goal; one sees or visualizes it with tremendous intensity, reinforced by prayer. Imaging is a kind of laser beam of the imagination, a shaft of mental energy in which the desired goal or outcome is pictured so vividly by the conscious mind that the unconscious mind accepts it and is activated by it. This releases powerful internal forces that can bring about astonishing changes in the life of the person who is doing the imaging.

To illustrate, right here at the beginning, let me tell you four true stories. As you read them, I think youll see very clearly the imaging principle at work. Here is the first one:

Its wintertime in Cincinnati a generation ago. A cold wind chills the crowds hurrying along the busy street. A young boymaybe eleven, maybe twelvehas stopped outside the building that houses the citys newspaper, the powerful and respected Cincinnati Enquirer . The youngster is not too warmly dressed; his clothes are obviously hand-me-downs. Shivering a bit, he is staring through the big plate-glass window, watching the feverish journalistic activity inside.

One figure in particular has caught his eye: a burly man in shirtsleeves seated at a central desk. A green eyeshade shields his eyes from the glare of a light bulb dangling above his head. An unlighted cigar is clamped between his teeth. His desk bristles with scraps of typescript impaled on spikes. Papers overflow from wire baskets. The black headlines of various editions spill onto the floor around him. Activity. Confusion. Chaos. But power emanates from that desk, and the boy in the street can sense it. He knows that this man is in command.

The man spins around in his swivel chair, twists a sheet of yellowish paper into an ancient typewriter, hammers out a few staccato lines. He rips it out, stares at it, takes a black copy pencil from behind his ear, makes a few lightning-swift corrections. He raises his head, barks an order. A copyboy darts forward, snatches the paper, disappears. The shivering witness in the street watches, transfixed.

A huge policeman saunters past, twirling his nightstick. Impulsively, the boy turns to him. Officer, who is that man in therethe one with the eyeshade and the cigar?

Him? The blue giant looks down indulgently. Hes the editor, sonny. The editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer , thats who he is.

The policeman moves on. Finally the boy goes down the street, looking just as he did before. But he is not the same as before. He is changed. Hes no longer aware of the cold wind or the hurrying crowds around him. Inside his head a scene is formingnot just a vague or casual daydream, but a vision of the future that has all the reality, all the intensity of the present. Intuitively, the boy knows that sooner or later what he is visualizing will come to pass. He is sure of it. The scene in his head is a replica of the scene he has just witnessed behind the plate-glass window, with one all-important change. The occupant of the editors chair, thirty years hence, is himself. Himself, Roger Ferger, a poor youngster with no connections, no advantages, nothing except an image so powerful that it will bend all the laws of probability until they conform to an even stronger, though hidden law.

He goes home with that image fixed in his head. When he says his prayers that night, he relives his dream and asks for help in achieving it. Night after night he does this, unaware that by imaging himself so intensely in that editorial chair, and by reinforcing that image with prayer, he is touching the kingdom of God within himself and releasing forces more powerful than he knows.