“Change your thoughts and you can change your world.” ~Norman Vincent Peale
Norman Vincent Peale is one of the more famous pioneers of the positive thinking movement. And the saying above is an example of the tools he gave those of us who want to change our lives.
Up until I got sober in my early 50s my thoughts were mostly negative and I thought that the world sucked. Even though I had moments of success in business and in relationships my negative thoughts always took me back to drugs and alcohol. And, of course, I ended up losing everything and having to start rebuilding all over.
Now many of us addicts – I'd say probably 90% of us – were raised by people who had no business raising children. And because of our dysfunctional early years, a lot of us turned to some kind of foreign substances to kill our pain. We felt justified in doing whatever we could do to make ourselves feel better, including things that cause us to commit crimes, ruin our health, and often times even lose our freedom. And many of our peers died because they could never get quite enough drugs or alcohol in them to kill their negative feelings.
Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I never thought that I would live to be 40 years old. And when I woke up at 40 years old I began to think a little differently about my life. I wasn't happy doing what I was doing, yet I didn't know what else to do to make myself feel better. It was only after repeatedly going to jail and losing everything over and over that I started to realize that regardless of how I was brought up I was the one who was ultimately responsible for my life. And at that point, I began to change my thoughts, began to think differently.
Because I knew on a deep level that most of my problems were associated with my drinking and drugging I knew that I had to get sober before I could make progress of any kind. In other words, I had to change my thoughts and learn a different way of dealing with my feelings of self-pity that I used to justify living my life as a drug addict and alcoholic.
And, you know, once I took that first step and went into a detox my life became completely different. Today I'm the person that I always wished to become.
And I bring this up today to share with you the power of your thoughts: if you change them to something positive there are no limitations to what you can do with your life.
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