I could never have done this book without the enthusiastic cooperation and skilled work of my secretary, Sybil Light. Her suggestions, too, have always been valuable.

To Richard H. Schneider, Senior Editor of Guideposts magazine, I am indebted for important research, interesting and pertinent material, and editorial assistance. I am grateful for his valuable contribution to this book.

To Eric Fellman, Rocco Murano, and Ric Cox, executives of the Foundation for Christian Living and responsible for PLUS magazine, I wish to express grateful thanks for their advice and counsel.

To my son-in-law, John Milton Allen, and Elizabeth Peale Allen I say thanks for their support and wise advice all the way.

My wife, Ruth Stafford Peale, gave valuable editorial review and her belief in the book sustained me all the way through. I thank her sincerely.

Pat Kossmann, former Senior Editor of Doubleday Publishers and editor for this book, used her editorial skill, wise judgment, and positive enthusiasm to bring this project to fruition.

To these and all quoted in this book I extend grateful thanks.

But basically, I am a happy man, not dissatisfied or empty, and certainly not turned off. In fact, I’m very turned on. Sometimes I wonder if something is wrong with me. Can it be that in this day, when society’s patron saint seems to be St. Vitus, I’m the one not with it?

Another thing, I love my wife, truly. Permit me a flashback. I am talking with some students in the foyer of Syracuse University Methodist Church on a balmy October day way back in A.D. 1927. Suddenly the door is flung open and a beautiful blonde stands framed against the golden autumn afternoon. My heart catches. I have never seen her before, don’t know her name, but I know she is the girl for me.

It took me over two years to convince her, but now we have been married for sixty years, and despite the many stories one hears today of late-life separations and divorces, we are still in love. What’s the matter with me? With her?

Because I’m so happy is one of the main reasons I’m so concerned about people who are not. I’m also bothered by the fact that unhappy folks are not running on all cylinders; consequently they are not utilizing all their creativity, and society suffers for it.

So I decided to again try doing something about it. But what can I, just one man, do about it? Make speeches? I do still make speeches, all over the world, but I admit that any speech is gone with the wind when you step off the platform.

But I could write another book. It would last longer than a speech. And I know what a book can do, having written over thirty-five of them. They are like that old poem by Longfellow:

So in the pages that follow I shall simply describe what I discovered that helped me, turned my life around. And I am sure that the same wonderful thing can happen to you. I believe it will turn your life around also. If you find new meaning, enhanced fullness of life, and deeper happiness as a result of reading this book, my purpose in writing it shall be fulfilled. I hope that you may get all this and more out of it. With the power of positive living, I wish you the best in life.

You see, I was extremely shy. If you ever were as shy and shrinking as I was, you’ll understand my misery and unhappiness. With a low self-image and an equally low self-esteem, I had little self-confidence. “I can’t” was my characteristic way of reacting to any challenge. I went crawling through life figuratively on my hands and knees until this day when I discovered something so momentous that it revolutionized my life.

To my deep distress, the professor called on me to explain a point in the day’s lesson. I was always a hard worker, had studied diligently, and happened to be up on the subject matter. But I was also terrified of speaking in public. With shaking knees I stood to speak, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, finally slumping down, aware that I had not only handled the subject matter awkwardly but had made a spectacle of myself.

As the class came to a close, the professor made a few announcements, concluding with, “Peale, please remain after class. I want to talk with you.” Shaking in my shoes I waited until all the students had left, then quavered, “You wanted to see me, Professor?”

“Yes. Come up front and sit across from my desk,” said Dr. Arneson. He sat bouncing a round eraser up and down, looking at me with what I felt was a piercing gaze. The silence deepened.

“What in the world is the matter with you, Peale?” he asked. Then he continued, “You are doing good work in this class. You’ll probably get an A. But when I ask you to speak, you appear horribly embarrassed, mumble sort of incoherently, and then slump red-faced into your seat. What is the matter with you, son?”

“I don’t know, Professor,” I mumbled miserably; “guess I’ve got an inferiority complex.”

“Do you want to get over it and act like a man?”

I nodded. “I’d give anything to get over being the way I am. But I don’t know how.”

The professor’s face softened. “You can get over it, Norman, by doing what I did to get over my inferiority feelings.”

“You?” I exclaimed. “You were the same way I am?”

“That’s why I noticed the same symptoms in you,” the professor said.

“But how did you get over being that way?” I asked.

His answer was quietly given, but I caught the positive undertones. “I just asked God to help me; I believed that He would; and . . . He did.”

The room was silent for a moment as the professor regarded me. “Get going, Peale,” he said, “and, never forget, be a believer in God and yourself.” So saying he waved me off and began gathering up his papers.

I walked along the hall and continued down the broad flight of steps on the outside of the college building. On the fourth step from the bottom I stopped. That same step is still there, as far as I know. On it I said a prayer. Even some seventy years later I remember it distinctly: “Lord, You can take a drunk and make him sober; You can change a thief into an honest person. Can’t You also take a poor mixed-up guy like me and make me normal? Please help me! Amen.”

As I stood on that step I experienced a strange feeling of peace. I expected a miracle to happen then and there, and a miracle did take place. But, as so often happens with a major change, it came about over a period of time.

A few days later another professor, one who supervised my major, called me into his office and handed me a book, The Sayings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Read Emerson,” he said, “and you will learn the great things that can come about by right thinking.” Later, another professor gave me the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, who did indeed teach that life becomes what we think. I’ll always thank those kindly college teachers for trying to make something of a young man who was headed for less than his best.

Oh, I was always a hard worker, and such a person achieves something due to his work habits. But I was a failure in my thoughts. And one’s thoughts determine one’s life, so that even diligent work cannot compensate for failure in the thinking process.

But through the help of such professors I was fortunate to take advantage of a system of ideas that in time helped me to master my feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. The sense of release which these ideas produced was so joyful and so wonderful that I had to tell others similarly afflicted that they, too, could be set free from their misery. The basic principle of these ideas was the almost incredible power of positive thinking.

I found by the application of these principles that even I, an ordinary and average person, could do much better in life than I had been doing. The release of personal potential was so amazing that I wanted all the other so-called ordinary people to know that they could become extra-ordinary.

But beyond positive thinking I have found there is a vital principle without which the former is of little avail. It is positive believing. Thinking is the body of the rocket. Believing is the propellant which carries it to the stars. Thinking is the birth of the deed. Believing makes it happen.

For example, I read a recent Harvard Business Review report in which a district manager of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company noted that insurance agents performed better in the challenging environment of outstanding agencies as opposed to lesser agencies. To prove his point, he set up his six top agents to work with his best assistant manager. He reported the following results:

“Shortly after this selection had been made, the people in the agency began referring to this select group as a ‘superstaff’ because of their high esprit de corps in operating so well as a unit. Their production efforts over the first twelve weeks far surpassed our most optimistic expectations . . .”

Why? It’s easy to see. Salespeople knowing they are regarded as “superstaff” believe they are tops and fight to live up to that image. In a way, it’s somewhat similar to the “self-fulfilling prophecy” theory, in which people—all people, children and grown-ups—tend to become what’s expected of them.

And look what happened to a group of agents in the same office considered “average.” Normally, they might have continued on producing an average number of sales. But a remarkable, dynamic assistant manager over this group believed that she and her agents were just as capable as the superstaff manager and his salespeople. In fact, she convinced her agents they could outsell the superstaff. Rising to the challenge, these “average” agents, believing they could do it, increased their sales by a greater percentage than the superstaff did. She made them fulfill her prophecy—by believing in them.

That’s what believing does.

Choose what you believe. Remember, those supposedly average agents would never have increased their sales if they continued believing they were average.

Examples like this make me realize how human thinking is such a strange and complicated mixture. Some people are steady and reliable from childhood to old age. Rarely are they in conflict with themselves.

They get good grades in school, later perform well in their work, and do well, some very well indeed. Others are less organized, dissipate their abilities to where we sadly speak of them: “Too bad, he once had a lot on the ball.”

Others, seeming highly organized mentally and emotionally, become disorganized and blow one opportunity after another, despite their native ability. Others, extraordinarily favored with admirable personality traits, do not seem to have a strong purpose or the capacity to make sound decisions. Ultimately they suffer a personality breakdown. You have heard of Wall Street figures going to jail, of dignitaries being denied top-level appointments due to their lack of ethical standards. The years are strewn with such wrecks, many of whom with proper self-control could have become leaders or top executives.

Why does one person succeed and another fail? Why does one individual favorably surprise and another disappoint? I think I have an answer.

As an example, let me tell you about a man I knew some years ago. I was reminded of him one night recently when I was in Columbus, Ohio, for a speaking engagement. My room on the hotel’s twenty-eighth floor offered a fairly complete panorama of the city. I noticed a group of ancient stone buildings which, as a former resident of Columbus, I recognized as the old Ohio State Penitentiary.

I think often of the boys and girls of my youth in the Ohio cities and towns where I lived—Cincinnati, Columbus, Bellefontaine, Delaware—and am happy to say that practically all of them turned out well, a few superlatively well. But as I looked down at the Ohio Penitentiary, I remembered one who didn’t. Gifted with a charming personality and a brain good enough to graduate from his college cum laude, he was the last person we expected to end up in jail. He had grown up in a pleasant small village, became a top officer of the local bank and a highly respected citizen. He was so engaging that people talked of him for Congress. Word had it that he would be a “shoo-in.”

Then he married a beautiful, wealthy girl from Chicago. The attractive couple became leaders of the local social set. He idolized his wife and gave her everything she wanted. Apparently she thought her husband had greater financial resources than he actually possessed. And as they began to indulge in expensive trips and cruises, his generous salary was strained.

One night when he was working alone in the bank, a thought crossed his mind: He could “borrow” some cash. The bank examiner wasn’t due for another month. It was a “bull” stock market just then, with buys that were bound to go up. He could make a killing, pressed the thought. Then he could restore the “borrowed” cash and have more money to use. But, being an honorable man, he rejected the thought.

In the words of Thomas Carlyle, the famed English writer, “The thought is ancestor to the deed.” What a powerful truth! On another night, alone in the bank, the same thought returned. This time the mental resistance was weaker and the hand crept forward and did the deed that the thought had suggested.

The market turned sour and the bank examiner came early for his examination. The “borrowing” was discovered and the great iron gates of the Ohio State Penitentiary clanged shut on a good man who thought wrong.

Years later the banker’s daughter made an appointment to see me in my New York office. “I’ve always suffered because of my father,” she said. “I admired and loved him. So what I want to know is, was my father a weak man? A bad man? You knew him. Tell me, please.”

“No, he wasn’t a bad man,” I replied. “Nor do I think his problem was weakness. He was an intelligent man. But he had a problem with his thinking.”

I was able to console the daughter and am happy to say that after paying his debt to society, the man and his family were reunited.

What I meant by a “problem with his thinking” was he was thinking negatively. He automatically thought of his wife as a soft, perfumed, beautiful fool. If he had thought positively about her, he would have seen her for what she actually was, an intelligent, strong woman. Her actions after his incarceration proved this. Thus he would have leveled with her about the true condition of their finances, and I’m sure the two of them would have worked it out. For they really loved each other. And nothing is impossible when two people are in love.

But that is the trouble with anyone who takes the wrong way. It may seem the easiest, most expedient way. But as Jesus Christ taught us: “. . . the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction . . .” (Matthew 7:13). Wrongdoers are often clever and sometimes they get away with their crookedness for a time. But basically they are stupid, for in the end they are caught up, as witness those recent Wall Street figures who were once considered among the shrewdest men on “the Street.”

Carlyle was so right: “The thought is ancestor to the deed.” That initial thought, if given residence in the mind, is the spark that ignites the action. And success or failure depends on whether that thought is positive or negative.

What follows that thought is just as important. And that is the “deliberating process,” how we handle the problem or opportunity.

On my office desk is a replica of Rodin’s great statue The Thinker. Whenever a problem comes up, I try to remind myself, “Now be a thinker. Think this through in a cool intellectual process. And Norman,” I tell myself, “for heaven’s sake, don’t decide this matter emotionally.”

Yes, that little statue has saved me from many a stupid action. Oh, sure, I have my unfortunate moments. Anyone who doesn’t admit this is headed for trouble. For even the smartest person can do astonishingly stupid things. The safeguard is to think, always think. And most important is to pray, which I believe is thinking in its highest form. For then your thoughts are in tune with God, Who sees a lot further down the road than you do.

Let me tell you of a time when this kind of thinking made all the difference in a man’s career.

His name is Lee Buck.

Probably one of the most critical days in his life began one April afternoon in 1974 when he was at his desk in the Manhattan home office of the New York Life Insurance Company.

“Mr. Buck,” said his secretary, “the chairman of the board wants to see you.”

Lee was excited. He had been waiting for this call a long time, for he was sure he was going to be offered the job he’d been striving for: senior vice president in charge of marketing.

It had been his goal ever since he joined the company as a sales agent twenty years previously. And he had worked hard, advancing to his present capacity as zone vice president in charge of sales in the eastern United States. In the new post he expected he would be in charge of all the firm’s ten thousand insurance salesmen throughout the United States, the most important phase of New York Life’s operations. He felt sure the chairman knew he was the best candidate.

The chairman’s office was on the next floor up and to save time he took the stairs. On the landing he stopped and did the most important thing anyone can do. He took a moment to think and to pray. He prayed that he would be given the wisdom and peace to accept whatever happened and to make the best of it.

In a few minutes he stepped into the chairman’s large, carpeted office, where heavy drapes muted the sound of Madison Avenue traffic. The gray-haired chairman shook hands, asked Lee to sit down, and then proceeded to give him shocking news.

“Lee,” he said, “George is going to be senior vice president in charge of marketing. And we’ll make you senior vice president over group marketing. Will you do it?”

The chairman was a bit nervous; he knew Lee Buck’s reputation for being feisty.

Lee stared at him in shock. To him the group department was a real comedown, considered by many to be a stepchild in the company. This division sold group policies to companies and organizations and did only a small percentage of the business that marketing accounted for.

Lee felt a surge of disappointment and anger. But only for a moment. For, thanks, I’m certain, to that prayer on the landing, he was able to lean back in his chair and say, “Okay.”

The chairman was surprised; then he and Lee talked about what could be done with the group department. Many men or women would have considered it a comedown, but Lee decided to make it an opportunity.

He remembered the advice he had been given by a veteran insurance agent when he was new in the business: “Jump at every opportunity, son,” said the veteran.

“How do I recognize the opportunities?” asked Lee.

“You can’t,” was the answer; “you have to keep jumping.”

And so Lee jumped. In studying the group division’s market potential, he found new prospects that had never been contacted. He inspired his sales force, and went out making hundreds of calls himself. By the first year he doubled the previous year’s volume. Within a few years his division was responsible for the largest single new premium ever written by New York Life.

Four years after he had taken over the “stepchild” division and made it one of the most important divisions of the company, he was promoted to senior vice president in charge of marketing.

What would have happened to Lee Buck if he hadn’t taken that moment on the staircase to think and pray? If he had obeyed his first impulse, that instantaneous anger we all suffer when we feel we’ve been treated unfairly, he could have easily estranged himself from top management. But he took that moment to pray and to think, and his resultant career in the insurance business should serve as a beacon for all young men and women striving to make careers today.

All this ruminating leads up to what influenced me to write one of the most important books I have ever written, a book that was very powerful in helping others. And helping others find happiness and success in life is what I promised to do when I first decided to become a minister of the Gospel.

But writing that book came many years after that day when I was a timid, self-conscious sophomore at Ohio Wesleyan and Professor Arneson urged me to become a believer in God and myself.

After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan and Boston University, I went to work as a minister, and for short periods served in Berkeley (Rhode Island), Brooklyn, and Syracuse, and then in 1932 returned to New York City, where I have been ever since.

While I was minister of the Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue, one of my friends was Dr. John Langdale, a recognized scholar in the thirties, who had an editorial office on Fifth Avenue.

“Why don’t you write a book amplifying what you teach from the pulpit?” he suggested.

I stared at him blankly. The thought of writing such a book had never occurred to me. “I’m sorry, John,” I replied, “but only accredited scholars write books on religion and psychology. And I’m certainly no scholar.”

But that didn’t stop John Langdale. Every time we had a chance to talk, he pressed me on the subject.

Finally, I explained that I had no facility with the scientific language that such scholars used. “I’ve a great respect for learning,” I added, “but I’m interested only in communicating to the man on the street.”

I went on to tell him that I had once done some writing, yes, but it was when I worked as a newspaper reporter.

His eyes lighted up and he leaned forward. “Tell me about it, Norman.”

“Well, for three years I worked on the Findlay, Ohio, Morning Republican (later renamed The Courier). Then I went to the Detroit Journal, where I worked under Grove Patterson.”

John Langdale leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Yes, I know about him; he’s one of the greats in the history of American journalism.”

“Yes, he was quite a man,” I said. “I’ll never forget my first day on the job. When I told him of my work on the Findlay paper, he said, Trained by the Hemingers, were you? There are none better. You’ve had the best training possible.’

“Grove Patterson then proceeded to pull out a big sheet of yellow paper and with his pen put a dot in the center. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘A dot,’ I replied, wondering what he was driving at.

“‘No, that is a period,’ he barked, ‘the greatest literary device known to man. When a period is indicated, Peale, never write beyond it.’”

John Langdale, sitting across my study, laughed. “That sounds like Grove Patterson, all right. What else did he teach you?”

“Well, he taught me to use the simplest words possible, like instead of ‘procure’ to use the word ‘get.’ ‘Norman,’ he would say, ‘to whom are you going to write? Let’s say up here is a learned university professor and down there is a ditch digger. To which of them will you write?’

“‘The ditch digger,’ I answered. ‘The professor will understand and so will the day laborer.’

“Grove Patterson nodded. ‘The Hemingers of Findlay taught you well.’”

When I finished telling all this to Dr. Langdale, I was sure he’d give up on my writing a scholarly book. Instead, he reacted most unexpectedly.

Striding across the room, he clapped me on the shoulder and said enthusiastically. “That’s great, Norman. It’s time someone wrote to the masses, to the average man. And you can do it. Give them simple, straightforward American English, the greatest communicating language in the world, and I’ll publish what you write!”

I was surprised that a recognized scholar would talk as he did. But he got me enthused. I went to work writing, and sixty years later I’m still at it.

My first book was called The Art of Living, a literary kind of volume. It sold for the stupendous price of one dollar in hardcover.

My second was You Can Win, a motivational book. And I still believe that every person who thinks he or she can, can be a winner. Then came a bestseller, A Guide to Confident Living.

Then from 1950 to 1952 I tried to condense everything I had learned through the years into another book I entitled The Power of Faith. I showed the manuscript to an editor in New York, who read it and sniffed, “This won’t even sell ten thousand copies. My advice is to cut it down, add some other material, and maybe call it How to Live Twenty-four Hours a Day.”

That didn’t interest me much, and fed up with the whole thing, I put the manuscript on a closet shelf, where it reposed for a year.

Then Ruth, my wife, found it, dusted it off, and took it to Myron L. Boardman, then vice president of a publishing house. He liked it and a few days later Ruth and I sat in his office.

“Norman, I have a suggestion for another title. It’s a phrase I have found repeated again and again throughout your manuscript.”

I looked at him quizzically. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Myron.”

“No,” he answered, “I don’t think you were actually aware of it, but you have unconsciously repeated it again and again in your book. I think it should be the title.”

Ruth and I looked at each other questioningly. Then I turned to Myron. “Well, what should it be called?”

He looked at me for a long moment, then said, “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

That was the first time I had heard that phrase. That afternoon I reread the manuscript and, sure enough, there it was many times.

Both Myron and Ruth agreed that this new title said the same thing as my old one, The Power of Faith, which Myron thought would interest only a limited audience.

I agreed to the change; the book came out, and today, after thirty-eight years, it is still selling to an ever new audience. It has sold upward of twenty million copies worldwide, making it, I am told, one of the most phenomenal selling books of all time.

At first I worried about the title. Could I have read this phrase somewhere and it stuck in my subconscious? So I had it meticulously researched. But many months of study showed that The Power of Positive Thinking had never before been used.

In my simple faith I concluded that Almighty God, the universe’s greatest expert on timing, had given it to me to pass on to the world’s reading public. Why to me of all people? Couldn’t He have selected a much better agent? Of course. But I have noted that often God picks the most unlikely candidate to do His will. Maybe He chooses people of only average ability with thick skins who can take criticism. For, believe me, I had plenty of that.

Seemingly every erudite person I had heard of, and many I hadn’t, pounced upon it. It was ridiculed as “too simple,” “mind over matter,” “a tool to get rich.” The more popular the book became, the more it was denounced. A noted scholarly commentator wrote a scathing review in a fashionable literary magazine. Some ministers denounced it from their pulpits. One called it “a perversion of the Christian religion.” And a well-known political figure quipped, “St. Paul is appealing, but Peale is appalling.”

Naturally, I winced. But it turned out that for every adverse critic, there were hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women who wrote me that the book changed their lives for the better. Most important, many said it helped them find God.

Gradually the phrase “the power of positive thinking” pervaded the language, then the total culture of America, and finally the world. For the book had been translated into forty-eight languages.

The letters still come. Here are some samples which the writers have allowed me to use.

And the early criticism of my book is understandable. Most new concepts were discounted when first introduced. Such is the story of all scientific progress, indeed, any form of progress. First comes opposition, ridicule, and heated criticism, then gradual acceptance followed by universal usage and finally commendation. Having lived through the advent of the telephone, automobile, radio, and television, I can understand how human nature reacts to something totally new.

The speed of a twenty-five-mile-per-hour passenger train would disorient passengers, eighteenth-century experts predicted. That the newly introduced telephone would, under certain circumstances, electrocute the user, was a common fear. And not many years ago, many people were afraid of using a microwave oven because of “dangerous electronic rays.”

Of course, the importance of the role thinking plays in our lives is not all that new. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he . . .” Centuries ago Gautama Buddha said, “Mind is everything. We become what we think.” And the Roman Emperor philosopher Marcus Aurelius declared, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

William James, turn-of-the-century professor of philosophy, psychology, and anatomy at Harvard University, said, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”

But what has really amazed me is how today’s scientific community is reporting the proven workability of positive thinking.

Dr. Christopher Peterson at the University of Michigan reports that a confirmed pessimist is twice as likely to experience minor illnesses, the flu or sore throat for instance, as an unabashed optimist.

Dr. Martin Seligman, psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, says that optimism can pay dividends as wide-ranging as health, longevity, job success, and higher scores on achievement tests. Pessimism, he says, not only has the opposite effect, but also seems to be at play in such mental disorders as extreme shyness and depression.

“Our expectations not only affect how we see reality, but also affect the reality itself,” says Dr. Edward Jones, a psychologist at Princeton University.

Out of these discoveries on positive thinking being made every day has emerged a new young science known by the tongue-twisting name of “psychoneuroimmunology.” It studies how our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs govern our susceptibility to illness. It seems the scientists have as much trouble as I do in pronouncing psychoneuroimmunology so, thankfully, they refer to it as “P.N.I.”

Happily, this new science also reports on the value of humor. Of course, they are finally catching up to the Bible, in which Proverbs tells us: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” In this regard, Dr. William Fry, a psychiatrist with Stanford University, says that laughing stimulates the production of the alertness hormones which release endorphins in the brain. Not only do these foster a sense of relaxation and well-being, but they even dull the perception of pain.

Imagine that!

And who wouldn’t like to be a patient at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, where the nuns make a practice of telling each patient a funny story every day.

And I understand an increasing number of cancer patients are taking part in laughter therapy groups which seem to lessen the burden of their illness and, by building their P.N.I., possibly even help in their recovery.

And so I am astonished and humbled that a workable method for a better, happier life that I have been preaching and writing about for close to forty years is now an accepted, scientific principle advocated by illustrious minds of our time.

It makes all of the ninety-two years I have lived in this wonderful country eminently worthwhile.

Belief comes easy when it involves the commonplace. We push a switch, believing the light will turn on. We make a hotel reservation, believing our room will be waiting. We order a product through the mail, believing it will be delivered.

It’s the important things with which we seem to have trouble. The dictionary tells us that the word believe means “To have faith or confidence;—usually with in or on; as, to believe in a person.”

So simply accepting something is not the same dynamic thing as believing it. All of the early American colonists appreciated liberty. But it was those who believed in it who fought for it.

Yes, truly believing in something makes all the difference. As the philosopher F. W. Robertson wrote: “To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched. To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do anything that is worth the doing.”

And most dynamic is the promise of Jesus: “All things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23).

Just recently on an airliner I found myself sitting beside a young actor who had been struggling to launch a career in New York City. He was absolutely thrilled that he and his wife had just had their first child. A little girl, he told me, six weeks old. “You know,” he said, “we’ve decided to move back to Minnesota, where we come from. I’ll never be a big-time actor there, but I’ll get by. There’s something there, something . . .”

His voice trailed off, but I knew what he meant. Values were there. The ones he himself had grown up with. They were so important that he was willing to sacrifice a promising career so that his child could grow up with them.

Just a straw in the wind, you say? Maybe. But there are other straws. There is an upsurge of faith in this country. One leading newsmagazine says, “From the smallest hamlet to the largest city, on television and in private, belief is a growing, moving force.” Why? Because people are turning once more to the stability that only values provide. They need it. Their children need it.

In education nowadays permissiveness is on the wane. Old standards are coming back. Marva Collins is one extraordinary schoolteacher in Chicago who took a handful of underprivileged children from the slums and turned them into superachievers by appealing to their pride, by insisting that they could handle any task set before them, by telling them constantly, “I will not let you fail.” Today all over the land, educators are raising standards, teaching accountability to their students, demanding hard work—and getting it.

Believing is the power of positive living. It gets things done. It reverses failure into success. Believers are achievers.

Take Ron Guidry of the New York Yankees, for instance. He was one of the greatest pitchers in big-league baseball. But he had to become a believer in himself to reach this athletic pinnacle.

Guidry retired in July 1989 as one of the all-time greats, but early in his career he passed through a time of deep discouragement. His confidence was so shattered that he decided to quit.

In 1976, Guidry was sent back to the minor leagues. When he found out about the decision, he was crushed. He told his wife, Bonnie, “We’re going home to Louisiana.”

Guidry was serious. So they packed and headed south. But you know, it’s a wonderful thing to have the right kind of wife. Mrs. Guidry didn’t nag her husband or complain. Instead, she filled him with positive attitudes. As they drove south, she would simply say something like this: “You’re a great man. You’ve got what it takes to be the best.”

Finally, they were pretty far south and stopped at a gas station. “Honey,” Mrs. Guidry said, “it’s going to bother me to think that you will never know whether you could have made it in the big leagues.”