I’m sure that everyone knows something about the power of positive and negative thinking in each of our own lives.  But do we consciously and intentionally decide to think in a particular way, or do we just let ourselves be taken in one direction or the other without thinking at all?

When we let life take us on an emotional roller coaster, so to speak, we give up our power to choose the way in which we live our lives.  And, if you so desire, you can do this.  But, if you wish to have a positive or a negative outlook, you must decide how to view things.

Catastrophe hits you right between your eyes.  What do you do?  Panic and see no hope?  Stand up and see it as a challenge?  Maybe you go into shock first, before you can even see straight.  Then, you make a decision.  Whatever you do, you are making a choice because not choosing is making a choice too, if only by default.

You can decide to be positive.  It is something you can learn and it is worth your time.  It is valuable, even if you don’t always make that decision.  It is a useful tool in many ways.  By learning  to think this way, you can develop techniques to make informed decisions.  It takes serious work to look at possibilities and face challenges.

Negative thinking, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily require a particular thought process to exist.  Instead, it is a mindset that can intensify miserable feelings with negative self-talk.  On it’s own, it does not solve problems.  It could make problems worse.

In 1952, Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power Of Positive Thinking and it became a bestseller.  To date, it has been translated into 15 languages and has sold over 7 million copies.  Peale wrote 6 more books with the word “positive”  in the book title and 46 books in all before his death in 1993. Since then, a myriad of other books with similar titles have flooded the market.  When I “Googled” the title, I found one listing of quotes about positive thinking that had 1834 entries.  Clearly, you could spend a lot of time reading about this way of thinking.

To be fair, I also searched the web for “the power of negative thinking” which quickly produced a book by Bobby Knight and a lot of other entries, including a New York Times article entitled, “The Positive Power of Negative Thinking.”  There is a wealth of material that can be accessed if one wants to study these two ways of thinking.

One thing is certain.  The way in which we think deeply affects the quality of our lives.  It would behoove each of us to make a deliberate decision about the way we choose to live, and not be tossed and turned by the events of our lives.