Words of Wisdom from Norman Vincent Peale

Excerpted from Guideposts Daily Planner 2020.

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

Every so often, I like to pore over the few pictures we still have that were taken when I was a boy growing up in a small town in Ohio. There I am, a winsome little lad, tucked away in a back row or off by myself in a corner. And all by choice, for I was painfully shy as a child.

Why, the little fellow staring back at me from those old pictures hardly seems to be me at all. The fact is that little boy hardly is me.

If you can believe the doctors—and I do!—he’s undergone ten complete cell changes since that time. He’s no longer shy; he’s developed into the sort of person who loves people and wants to be with them. And he’s no longer afraid of his own shadow for the simple reason that he has come to know Jesus Christ as his all-powerful Redeemer and Savior Whose followers need fear no evil.

I am a great deal older now but I still firmly believe in the possibilities of change. Not long ago the Lord and I licked a weight problem that had crept up on me. My point is, if you don’t like the way you are now, you can change. Your chemistry is changing every day, and you can change right along with it, for the better.

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