Vera Peiffer - Positive Thinking - Everything you have always known about positive thinking but were afraid to put into practice

Vera Peiffer

For Nada and Ljuba

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword – Please Do Not Read

PART 1:

Chapter 1: Mind over matter: The Pendulum Experiment

Chapter 2: The subconscious mind

Chapter 3: What is positive thinking?

PART 2:

Chapter 4: What is on your mind?

Chapter 5: Getting in touch with your subconscious mind

Chapter 6: Setting up your personal success programme

Chapter 7: Some personality traits and their strategies

PART 3:

Chapter 8: How to use this part of the book

Chapter 9: Communication

Chapter 10: Stress

Chapter 11: Worrying and remorse

Chapter 12: Loneliness

Chapter 13: Illness

Chapter 14: Jealousy and envy

PART 4:

Chapter 15: Hypnosis and self-hypnosis

Chapter 16: Guided affective imagery

Notes

Further Reading

Index

About the Author

By the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Excuse me, have you had this trouble with your eyesight long? No trouble with your eyesight. I see. In that case, would you please read the heading again? OK, now just skip the foreword and go on to the next chapter. Thank you.

I don’t believe this. You’re still reading on when I specifically asked you not to!

You see, when I started working on this book, a friend asked me how far I’d got with my writing and I replied that I had just started on the foreword. My friend waved a contemptuous hand and assured me that she certainly never read any forewords and, as far as she was aware, nobody else did either. That got me thinking. Since I wanted my foreword to be read I thought why not use it to prove a point?

The fact that you were not supposed to read the foreword made it practically irresistible – after all, you’re still reading now, aren’t you?

Note: The harder you try to avoid something, the less you can do it.

You will encounter the implications of these notes throughout the book, and I will demonstrate in the following chapters how they work and how you can use them to your advantage. What is more I know that you will succeed in making the findings of this book work for you, provided you act on your intention of getting more out of life and therefore put these findings into practice.

Theoretical knowledge is a marvellous thing. It increases your self-esteem, impresses your friends and looks good on your CV. All this is also very useful and certainly desirable, but theoretical knowledge cannot effect change: it will never change you from a miserable person into a happy one or from an unsuccessful person into a successful one.

In order to change your life for the better, you need more than just theoretical knowledge. You need to put these theories into practice. This, of course, means that you have to assume responsibility for your own well-being and stop blaming everyone else for things that go wrong in your life. This is not easy, because, let’s face it, it is just so much more convenient to blame your parents/the Government/the weather for the fact that you cannot cope with certain aspects of life, rather than admit that you have not been pulling your weight and are therefore still stuck in that same old job, are still without a partner or still as miserable as you were two years ago.

In the long run, taking responsibility for your actions is a winning strategy because it opens the door to a completely new range of possibilities for becoming a successful person. When I am speaking of success I am speaking of a number of different areas, like health, wealth, happiness and personal fulfilment.

There are practically no limits to what you can achieve provided you put your mind to it. Reading this book will help, but you still have to go out and put the theories into practice. This ultimate step lies with you and you alone. Get on with it now ; don’t wait for the ‘right moment’, it may never come.

Note: The best time to act on new resolutions is now (not the 1st January).

I know you can do it!

VERA PEIFFER

Before we get into theoretical discussions of how the mind works, I would like you to try the following experiment.

Find a piece of string and tie a ring to one end of it. It is quite unimportant what sort of string you use or what kind of object you tie to the end – if you don’t have a ring, use a key or a pen with a clip. The main thing is that you can fasten it somehow to the end of your string.

Now tie the other end of the string around your right index finger. As it is important to keep your right hand perfectly still, I suggest you sit down at a table, firmly rest both elbows on the table and support your right wrist with your left hand.

Lower your right index finger to allow the object to rest on the table, then gently lift the index finger again so that the object hangs still. It is of the utmost importance that you do not move your hand while you carry out this experiment.

Now fix your gaze on the object and begin to imagine that the pendulum starts swinging from left to right. See the movement in your mind, imagine how the object begins to swing, left to right, left to right. Say it silently to yourself, ‘Left to right to left to right’, and you will see that the pendulum actually begins to swing from left to right. It will begin to swing very slightly first, so keep on imagining, seeing in your mind’s eye how the movement is becoming more pronounced, and you will see that this, too, will happen.

Now lower your hand once more, resting the object on the surface of the table. Again, lift the object away from the surface gently so that it hangs free, and now imagine that it begins to swing around in a clockwise circle. Move your eyes in a clockwise circle around the object, see the movement, and very slowly you will notice that the pendulum begins to swing accordingly. All the while make sure you do not move the hand that is holding the pendulum.

Of course you can also make the pendulum swing in an anti-clockwise circle or away from you and towards you. The result is always the same: the pendulum follows the imagined direction. Fascinating, isn’t it?

However, before you give up your job to become a world-famous stage artist in the pendulum-swinging field, let us just have a look at what has been happening here. You were determined to hold your hand perfectly still, and, at the same time, imagined that the pendulum would begin to move in a particular direction. In other words, your will-power was in conflict with your imagination.

Note: When your will-power conflicts with your imagination, your imagination will always win out.

Just consider another example. I am sure you know someone who has attempted their driving test and failed, although they were perfectly capable of doing their three-point turn and manoeuvring the car into a parking space under non-test conditions. The ‘nerves’ these people display in the test situation are nothing but the conflict between will-power and imagination. They want to pass the test, they want to perform well … but they imagine that they will fail and, as we have seen with the pendulum experiment, the imagination is more powerful than the will, and, consequently, the candidate tenses up, panics, and fails his or her driving test. In order to support your wishes effectively, you have to make sure that your imagination runs along the same lines as your wish, but more of this later.