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