Preface to Peale Center's Golden Anniversary Edition

As one might imagine, many significant experiences and events occurred in my life before I first wrote this book. Among the most dear to me, personally, were the years spent as the minister at Marble Collegiate Church and the establishment of Peale Center for Christina Living, which was started to print and distribute the messages delivered at the church.

Marble Collegiate Church and Peale Center became the laboratory for testing the principles I would later fashion into The Power of Positive Thinking.

In 1990, Peale Center for Christian Living celebrates 50 years of sharing the faith that overcomes life's problems. To me, it is astounding that nearly two million people read each issue of Plus: The Magazine of Positive Thinking. Plus carries the simple message, written by me and others, that positive thinking, coupled with deep faith, can profoundly change the life of any person.

Of course, the most widely distributed medium for that simple message has been this book. The working title of the book was "The Power of Positive Faith." But I wanted the book to go out into the whole world of people beyond the walls of the church, so the title was changed to The Power of Positive Thinking. I am truly grateful that God blessed that title by letting it reach millions of people to help them live more constructive, more victorious lives.

Naturally, I am pleased that now, after almost 40 years, the book is still reaching people in the 44 languages into which it has been translated. Particularly gratifying is the large number of letters received daily at Peale Center from young people, in their teens and twenties, who were not born when the book first appeared. They write that the principles described in The Power of Positive Thinking are proving applicable in their lives today, just as they did for their elders back in 1952.

Recently, I have been truly amazed by the evidence of how far the concept of positive thinking has permeated every aspect of our culture. One branch of Peale Center is the Center for Positive Thinking, where a researcher has uncovered thousands of articles showing the use of these concepts in business, sports, medicine, education, and so forth. Before me, on my desk, is a clipping from no less than the New York Times. Titled "Research Affirms Power of Positive Thinking," the article quotes professors from Princeton University, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Another clipping, entitled "Helping Students Accentuate Positive Thoughts," comes from the esteemed Education Digest.

As I browse through this material, I am struck that while the concept of positive thinking is becoming accepted, and even celebrated, one of its elements I found to be most important is often being neglected. As I've often said, these principles work when you work them, but they work best when supported by a deep, growing, and abiding faith in God.

Since this book was first published, its success and the work of Peale Center have been inseparably intertwined. It is both fitting and gratifying that Peale Center for Christian Living has decided to prepare this new edition for future generations. But I would not want any edition to be circulated that did not contain the very personal and practical history behind its writing.

As a child, I was inordinately shy and shrinking. Actually, I was what used to be called bashful. I had the most highly developed inferiority complex one could possibly imagine.

I constantly minimized myself, thinking that I had no ability, very few brains, and would probably never amount to anything. This I glumly told myself. Then I became aware that people were agreeing with me, for it is a fact that others intuitively tend to take you at your own self-evaluation. But no one who has not had feelings of inferiority and inadequacy can possibly be aware of the acute misery of one thus afflicted.

This state of personality suffering continued through boyhood years and until well along in my college days. In class, when called upon by the professor, while I knew the material under discussion, I was so terribly self-conscious and shy that I could not express myself adequately, and therefore gave the impression of not being prepared. Only when writing answers on examination papers could I prove my knowledge and so get a passing grade.

Yet strangely enough, despite these in-depth inferiority feelings and this excruciating shyness, I had a goal, and that was to be a public speaker. In my dreams, I saw myself moving big crowds with eloquence and assurance. Thus I lived and suffered in an inconsistency between what I wanted to be and what I actually was.

Then, one day, a professor really let me have it: "Norman," he asked in a private after-class meeting, "what is the matter with you? Why do you go skulking through life like a sacred rabbit? You've got enough brains and native ability to do something in this world. Haven't you got any faith either in God or yourself?" The comments were pretty devastating, though designed to be friendly - a teacher wanting to help a boy to find himself. And he did just that. And to this day I revere the memory of that professor.

I stumbled out of his classroom and down the steps of the college building, angry, tearful, hopeless. Then I stopped short. I recall the exact spot - the fourth step from the bottom - for a thought had pierced my mind. It was the exciting, almost incredible thought, "I don't need to be this way any longer!"

Being the son of religious parents, my father a minister, I had been taught where to turn for help, though to this point had failed to do so. So, there on that fourth step, I asked the Lord to take over my life. Sincerely, I committed myself to Jesus Christ, believing that what I could not do with myself could be done through the grace of God.

I was not suddenly changed, but what I did do from that moment was to start down a new road of thinking. As I read and studied, I learned a great truth enunciated so well by William James, who said, "The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can change his life by changing his attitude of mind." I was a negative thinker, but I knew it was fatal to remain so. Gradually, my thinking became more positive. I had read somewhere a statement ascribed to an ancient thinker, "Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them." So, gradually, I built a system of thought for myself. And it was for myself alone, for I had to form a new and better thought pattern to give me victory over myself.

By this time, I had become a minister and began to stress in my talks the glorious truths that were revolutionizing my own life. I became aware that all around were people defeated by fear and guilt; that everywhere were those who were failing who did not need to fail if only they could find themselves. I preached and taught a message of faith and hope. Many got the message and found the same answers from the same source as I had found in my own experience.

Then, one day, I decided to put my personal discovery and that of others into a book. It was to be a simple book filled with simple new life formulas that work when worked. All I wanted to do was to share this wonderful way of life with others who had suffered as I had suffered.

At the time of writing the book, I had, of course, no idea that it would ever become one of the best-selling books in American history. My only concern was, as it is now, that the book reach the defeated, the failing, the self-doubtful, the timorous and fearful, with the assurance that positive thinking, or the life of faith, is the true secret of living. Or, as the New Testament says it in Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

During my own struggles, I found incredible help in a verse of Scripture. Indeed, it became my favorite passage. And it underlies all of my thinking and teaching. It is John 10:10: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

As Peale Center of Christian Living celebrates its 50th Anniversary, its goal remains the same. Far beyond my lifetime, it will serve to present the positive and practical principles of Jesus Christ. It will always do so on a personal and caring level. So in that spirit, I invite you to read this book, and then write us with your thoughts, reactions, and comments. If we hear from you, my dreams for this book will be realized.

Norman Vincent Peale
Pawling, N.Y.