When Norman Vincent Peale wrote "The Power of Positive Thinking", he was a addressing a very important problem that we humans all tend to suffer from to a greater or lesser extent while in physical form. He was talking about self-confidence and belief in oneself. The opening sentences of his book are, "Believe in yourself! Have faith in your own abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you can not be successful or happy.
Just a little further on, he continues, "It is appalling to realize the number of pathetic people who are hampered and made miserable by the malady popularly called the inferiority complex. it can be overcome. You can develop creative faith in yourself – faith that is justified. "
Norman Vincent Peale was right, of course. His book should be mandatory reading for humanity. But a strange thing has happened over time. People have lost sight of what his concept of positive thinking was all about.
Today, with our "make it easy" mindset, we have tried another path of little resistance. "Thinking" has become just words, mind-chatter, and perhaps affirmations repeated endlessly. We have lost sight of the true power and force – emotion.
The difference between simply thinking and imagining is emotion. When we think, we talk to ourselves, most often clinically, sterility and with every effort to be objective. When we imagine, we get in the feeling of what we are thinking. When we imagine, we move for a time, into the place that we imagine. We can touch, feel, hear, smell, taste the thing we imagine. Of course, the thought of the thing is there, but it is accompanied by emotion.
When we positively imagine our life, we make changes. When we see our life as we want it to be and feel that life, we create that life. As Neville Goddard has said, when we "live in the feeling of the wish fulfilled", we are on our way to manifesting that wish.
More than positive thinking, more than positive sounding words or pleasant mind-chatter, real change comes from positive imagining. Living with all the good the feelings of the thing we are thinking and dreaming about. Of course, positive thinking is better than negative thinking anytime … but when change is what you want, put emotion into the thought and turn it into positive imagining.