January 31

Theodore Roosevelt, a strong and tough-minded man, said: “I have often been afraid. But I would not give in to it. I simply acted as though I was not afraid and presently the fear disappeared.” Fear is afraid itself and backs down when you stand up to it.

January 30

The controlled person is a powerful person. He who always keeps his head will always get ahead. Edwin Markham said, “At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky is a place of central calm.” The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.

January 29

Do not exclusively say your prayers in the form of asking God for something. The prayer of thanksgiving is much more powerful. Name all the fine things you possess, all the wonderful things that have happened to you, and thank God for them. Make that your prayer.

January 28

The famous Olympic champion Jesse Owens said that four words made him: Determination. Dedication. Discipline. Attitude.

January 27

There is a three-point program for doing something with yourself. Find yourself, motivate yourself, commit yourself. These three will produce results.

January 26

Self-confidence and courage hinge on the kind of thoughts you think. Nurture negative thoughts over a long period of time and you are going to get negative results. Your subconscious is very accommodating. It will send up to you exactly what you send down to it. Keep on sending it fear and self-inadequacy thoughts and that is what it will feed back to you. Take charge of your mind and begin to fill it with healthy, positive, and courageous thoughts.

January 25

Yesterday ended last night. Every day is a new beginning. Learn the skill of forgetting. And move on.

January 24

Work and live enthusiastically. Take successes gratefully. Face failures phlegmatically—that is, with a “so what?” attitude. And aim to take life as it comes, philosophically.

January 23

Don't knock yourself out trying to compete with others. Build yourself up by competing with yourself. Always keep on surpassing yourself.

January 22

A whimsical old preacher, speaking on a familiar text, said, “And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is common sense.”

January 21

A man who had suffered a succession of devastating blows said something I liked: “I came through because I discovered a comeback quality had been built into me.”

January 20

Said William James, “Believe that you possess significant reserves of health, energy, and endurance, and your belief will help create the fact.”

January 19

The best of all ways to get your mind off your own troubles is to try to help someone else with theirs. As an old Chinese proverb says, “When I dig another out of trouble, the hole from which I lift him is the place where I bury my own.”

January 18

You can do amazing things if you have strong faith, deep desire, and just hang in there.

January 17

Attitudes are more important than facts. Certainly, you can't ignore a fact, but the attitude with which you approach it is all-important. The secret of life isn't what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you.

January 16

The “as if” principle works. Act “as if” you were not afraid and you will become courageous, “as if” you could and you'll find that you can. Act “as if” you like a person and you'll find a friendship.

January 15

Obviously, he was a happy man. He was Joe of Joe's Place, a little lunch counter I found one night. There were about a dozen stools occupied, for the most part by elderly men and a couple of older women from the neighborhood.

He set a steaming bowl of soup before an old man whose hands shook. “Mamie made it special for you, Mr. Jones.” One elderly and rather stumbling lady started to go out the door. “Be careful, Mrs. Hudson, the cars go pretty fast out there. And, oh yes, look at the full moon over the river. It's mighty pretty tonight.” I sat there thinking that Joe was happy because he really loves people.

January 14

At one time I lived in upstate New York, where the winters are quite cold. And the roads would freeze and melt and freeze again. Come springtime, they were pretty badly broken up and rutted. One early April day, I came to a bad stretch of road where someone had put up a handmade sign: “Choose your rut well. You'll be in it for the next twenty-five miles.” Pretty good idea to get into the right rut, isn’t it?

January 13

My college classmate Judson Sayre started with nothing and became one of the most successful salesmen in our country. At dinner, in his apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, we got to talking about having a great day – for he was expert at it. “Come look at my mirror,” he said. He had pasted a sign there which read:

Want a great day?

Believe a great day

Pray a great day

Deserve a great day

Take God with you for a great day

Get going and make it a great day

January 12

The place was Korea, the hour midnight. It was bitter cold, the temperature below zero. A big battle was building for the morning. A burly U.S. marine was leaning against a tank eating cold beans out of a can with a penknife. A newspaper correspondent watching him was moved to propound a philosophical question: “Look,” he said, “if I were God and could give you what you wanted most, what would you ask for?” The marine dug out another penknife of beans, thought reflectively, then said, “I would ask for tomorrow.” Perhaps so would we all – a great tomorrow.

January 11

George Reeves was a huge man, 6 feet 2, weighing 240 pounds. He was my teacher in the fifth grade. In class, he would suddenly shout, “Silence.” Then he would print in big letters on the blackboard the word CAN'T. Turning to the class, he would demand, “And now what shall l do?”

Knowing what he wanted, we chanted back, “Knock the T off the CAN’T.” With a sweeping gesture, he would erase it, leaving the word CAN. Dusting the chalk from his fingers, he would say, “Let that be a lesson to you—you can if you think you can.”

January 10

I shall never forget Ralph Rockwell. He was the farmer on our place in the country. Ralph was a New Englander of the old school, always caring for the place as though it were his own. He said to me once, when I was presuming to give him advice: “Tell you what, Dr. Peale, you do the preaching. I'll do the farming.” It is good to remember to take advice as well as give it.

January 9

Once, when I felt I had done an especially poor job in the pulpit on a Sunday morning, forgetting the best things I had to say and saying the poorest things, I was pretty discouraged. An old preacher, a polished orator in his day, patted me on the back. “Don't let it bother you, son,” he said consolingly. “Forget it. The congregation will, and you might as well make it unanimous.”

January 8

As an emotion, anger is always hot. To reduce an emotion, cool it. Some people count to ten, but perhaps the first ten words of the Lord’s Prayer will work even better: “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9). Say that ten times and anger will lose its power.

January 7

Fear can infect us early in life until eventually it cuts a deep groove of apprehension in all our thinking. To counteract it, let faith, hope, and courage enter your thinking. Fear is strong, but faith is stronger yet. The Bible tells us,

. . . And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not . . .” (Revelation 1:17)

His hand is always upon you, too.

January 6

At Dunkirk, the fate of the British nation hung upon getting the fighting men off the beaches and back to England. During the most difficult hour, a colonel rushed up to general Alexander, crying, “Our position is catastrophic!” The general replied: “Colonel, I don’t understand big words. Just get busy and get those men out of here!” That’s the kind of thinking needed in crises. Do the simple necessary.

January 5

Go forward confidently, energetically attacking problems, expecting favorable outcomes. When obstacles or difficulties arise, the positive thinker takes them as creative opportunities. He welcomes the challenge of a tough problem and looks for ways to turn it to advantage. This attitude is a key factor in impressive careers and great living. 

January 4

To affirm a great day is a pretty sure way to have one. When awakening, get out of bed and stretch to your full height, saying aloud, “This is going to be a great day.” What you say strongly is a kind of command, a positive, affirmative attitude that tends to draw good results to you.

January 3

The way to success: First have a clear goal, not a fuzzy one. Sharpen this goal until it becomes specific and clearly defined in your conscious mind. Hold it there until, by the process of spiritual and intellectual osmosis of which I wrote in my introduction to this book, it seeps into your unconscious. Then you will have it because it has you. Surround this goal constantly with positive thoughts and faith. Give it positive follow-through. That is the way success is achieved.

January 2

Anybody can do just about anything with himself that be really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We all are capable of greater things than we realize. How much one actually achieves depends largely on:

1. Desire

2. Faith

3. Persistent effort

4. Ability

But if you are lacking in the first three factors, your ability will not balance out the lack. So concentrate on the first three and the results will amaze you.

January 1

At the New Year, we usually resolve to quit something. There is a psychological law of quitting. It’s this: The more you keep quitting, the easier quitting becomes. I know, for I’ve spent a lot of time quitting fattening foods.

But I finally discovered how to quit successfully. Quit for one meal, then two, then three. By now it begins to get tough. So you get tougher, quit the next day and the next. After a while, pride enters the picture to help you. You begin to boast about all the things you haven’t eaten. Then you point with pride to your belt, for you have tightened it to the last notch. This is called positive quitting and can be applied to anything you want to change in your life.

How To Use This Devotional

All of us, it seems, need something every day to keep us going with full energy and enthusiasm. And perhaps nothing is more effective than a motivating and inspiring thought.

There is an old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” May it not also be said that an upbeat thought a day will keep the shadows away and let in the bright light of hope and joy?

For many years, I have made it a practice to insert in my mind every day some inspiring thought and visualize it as seeping into my consciousness. My personal experience has been that such thoughts gradually permeate and affect attitudes. Sometimes I have called them “spiritlifters" for they do just that. And spirit lifting is needed by all of us.

At other times, I have called these selected ideas “thought conditioners.” Even as the atmosphere of a room can be changed by air conditioning, so the climate of the mind can be changed by “thought conditioning. ” And a thought can make an enormous difference in how one feels mentally, emotionally, and physically. Certainly, to have a great day every day it helps to think great thoughts and to concentrate on at least one every day.

So, this book presents 366 upbeat and positive thoughts, one for every day in the year, including leap year. It is my hope that you will keep the book readily available on your desk, nightstand, in the kitchen, or perhaps have a copy in each place. If you begin to feel “down,” take up the book and read the thought for the day. And if one isn't enough, read a few more of them.

Do not hesitate to mark thoughts that may especially appeal to you turn down the pages and go back and read them again and again. Rereading helps to sink any helpful thought ever deeper into the mind. And the deeper a thought penetrates, the more powerful will be its effect upon your well-being.

Further, if you want to clip a thought out of the book to carry it in your wallet or pocket or handbag, don't let the notion that a book should not be mutilated stop you. A book is only a tool to be used for one’s own good. And if you find you have hacked it up too much, you can always get another copy. The idea is that this book is a kind of medicine chest for healthy thinking. So, take the medicine and become a healthier, happier person.

Let me also suggest what I call the “shirt pocket technique.” My shirt pocket is very important to me, for into it I put sayings and quotations written on cards. And, on some cards, I write my goals. Putting the cards into the pocket means placing the quotations over the heart, thus emphasizing the emotional factor. l read these cards repeatedly until, by a process of intellectual osmosis, they pass from the conscious to the subconscious mind and so become determinative.

But, however you use the daily thoughts in this day-by-day book, I truly hope they will help you to have a great day every day.

Norman Vincent Peale