Norman Vincent Peale

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) and A Guide to Confident Living (1948).

Applied faith

Norman Vincent Peale teaches what he calls applied Christianity: the promises of the Bible taken up as working tools for everyday trouble, worry, fear, failure and fatigue. Faith, in his teaching, is a power. A person who believes in God, and so believes in themselves as God's creature, releases a strength they did not know they had; a person sunk in feelings of inferiority, often learned in childhood, wastes that strength in doubt. His method is to replace the habit of defeat with the habit of faith.

The picture of success

His first rule is to form a picture of oneself succeeding and to hold it firmly, never letting it fade, since the mind tends to bring about what it pictures. Others follow from it. When a thought of failure comes, cancel it at once by saying a hopeful one aloud. Do not build obstacles in imagination, and do not stand in awe of other people or copy them. Make a fair estimate of your own ability, and then raise it a little. Put yourself in God's hands, and say often through the day: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” and “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

Emptying the mind

Worry, he teaches, is a habit, and a habit can be broken. Twice a day the student empties the mind: deliberately lets go of fears, resentments and regrets, picturing them drained away, and then fills the emptied mind at once with thoughts of faith and calm, since an empty mind does not stay empty. The same is done before sleep. He asks too for a time of silence each day, a quarter of an hour of sitting still, picturing peaceful scenes and saying over slowly words of quietness and lines of scripture.

Thought conditioners

For the hours between he gives what he calls thought conditioners: short sayings, most of them from the Bible, written on cards and carried, read at odd moments and repeated until they colour the mind's habits as dye colours cloth. Each is chosen for a trouble: a promise of strength for weariness, of peace for anxiety, of courage for fear. The repetition is the method. The mind, he holds, comes to think what it is often told.

Prayer power

Prayer, for him, is a power as natural as electricity, and best when simple: plain words, spoken as to a friend who is present. He teaches praying for others, above all for people one dislikes, which changes the one who prays; sending brief silent prayers toward the people one passes in the street or sits beside on a train; and the formula of three words, prayerize, picturize, actualize, taught in the branch Where it comes from: pray about the aim, picture it achieved, and act as the way opens.

Expect the best

Expectation, he teaches, tends to fulfil itself. The student is to expect the best and to think in terms of success, to break a large obstacle into parts and meet each in turn, and when defeat comes, to refuse to call it final. Enthusiasm is a discipline rather than a mood: act with enthusiasm, he advises, and the feeling follows.

Pastor and physician

Peale did not set faith against medicine. His clinic beside the church joined a pastor and a psychiatrist, because, he held, the troubles of the mind and the troubles of the soul are often one trouble, and the two callings meet it best together. The house teaches his habits as he taught them and holds his promises lightly: his proofs are stories, and hope serves best beside a plan that expects the obstacles, as the branch From wish to plan teaches.