The Power of Actually Using Positive Thinking

Recently I picked up a rather old book, from 1987, called “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” by Susan Jeffers. I remember hearing years ago of the physical demonstration that she talks about in her book.

During her seminars she would get a volunteer out of her audience and have them hold their arms straight out to the side. She would tell the volunteer to resist with all their strength as she attempted to push down on their arms. “Not once have I succeeded in pushing ….the arms down on my initial trial” she states in her book. She would then tell the volunteer to repeat “I am a weak and unworthy person” ten times and really feel the statement. When trying to push down the arms right after this, she was able to pull both arms down. To prove her point even more, she would again ask the person to repeat ten times the positive statement “I am a strong and worthy person” but this time, she would not be able to budge their arms, even more so than the first time she tried to push them down.

A couple days ago, just before heading out to play in a round robin tennis tourney, I repeated to myself, many times over, (even thought I felt kind of childish doing it) ” I am a very strong tennis player and I am very worthy of winning” and also repeating “I am younger and more fit now than I was a year ago”—and did it ever work! I played 4 rounds of tennis winning each round by a very wide margin!!

Most of what Jeffers had to say was stuff I already knew but I was not doing it anymore. It was like a rebirth doing it again and, wow, does it feel good. The power of positive thinking is pretty amazing. Especially when you remember to use it!