For each one of us, I believe God has a grand design and plan for our lives. Some of us may want to accomplish many things and others, great things that will impact the world in positive ways. The Bible says that for everything under heaven, there is a time and a purpose (see Ecclesiastes 3:1). So because you are reading this right now, this is your appointed time in the space of history, and your interest or need to know more about positive thinking has drawn you to read this book. Maybe you feel a need for a change in the way that you approach life.

As for purpose, God has given each of us specific goals in life and we need to know what they are. It may be something we love to do or would like to try. It may be something we are already doing, but we’d like to go further with it. When our lives are fruitful, truly our thoughts will also be fruitful and positive. Positive thoughts are productive thoughts. They result in a good return because we truly believe in God and in what we are doing.

For me, I feel as if I have a specific purpose and destiny in life, but getting to where I am today didn’t come without a lot of struggles. As a teenager, I didn’t understand it or know why I struggled with my thoughts as much as I did. I started reading many positive thinking books back then, in hopes that these authors would provide some hope and answers for the depression I was suffering from. The books were excellent and some of the thoughts and ideas they offered stayed with me to this day. But to learn how to, or to know how to become a positive thinker on a consistent basis seemed elusive. I’d read one book, then forget most of what I had read. The same thing would happen with the next book. So I had to keep reading these books in order to temporarily stay on the pathway to positive thinking.

I didn’t understand the many dynamics involved when it comes to our mind. I had yet to learn that many factors affect how we think. We are a whole person with many parts; parts that don’t always work as well together as we’d like them to. I have struggles with my emotional life, and this has profoundly affected my thought life. My physical health also affects my thoughts. We can see how they are all inter-connected when we think of a situation like going to the doctor. I may have a pain in my stomach, so my immediate thought is fear. I wonder, “Do I have an ulcer?” So in that one physical symptom, I not only have physical pain, but now I am emotionally affected by the thought that the pain triggered. I have a physical pain, an emotional upset and a single thought that has determined it all. So you see, what we think does affect how we feel and profoundly affects our physical, emotional, and even spiritual life. One negative thought can unsettle our entire life if we let it.

I discovered, through the years, and after many counseling sessions, continuing to read wholesome books, finding meaningful support groups, and so on, that becoming a positive thinker is really a process. It doesn’t happen overnight like I once hoped and believed. It is an on-going process, and that is why this book is written in such a way that you can return to it again and again without getting lost in lengthy detail and scientific explanations. Sometimes, all you need is one positive thought for the day and it’ll make all the difference. So we begin with the knowledge that we take one small and meaningful step at a time and we just keep on going in this way, not turning back.