life on planet earth on Staying Positive

The Double Helix, James Watson’s 1968 memoir about discovering the structure of DNA, describes the roller coaster of emotions he and Francis Crick experienced through the progress and setbacks of the ...

While serving as British Prime Minister, Lloyd George had to deal with World War I, an economic depression, and the Sinn Fein movement attempting to effect Irish liberation, as well as many other smal...

In 1918, a chemical-fueled fire destroyed the inventor Thomas Edison’s factory in West Orange, New Jersey.. The flames consumed much of his life’s work, causing over two million dollars in damage. Yet...

"Nothing paralyzes our lives like the attitude that things can never change. We need to remind ourselves that God can change things. Outlook determines outcome. If we see only the problems, we wi...

“The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at...

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willi...

Core beliefs can be hard to change because they’ve generally been with us for a long time, and we assume that they’re true. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to changing our core beliefs is that they are s...

Keep yourself clean and bright, for you are the window through which you must see the world.

You will always find what you are looking for. Think about the difference between two birds: a vulture and a hummingbird. Vultures soar high in the sky, looking and searching. What does a vulture find...

I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim...

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

While it might seem obvious in retrospect, one of the latest discoveries in the psychology of happiness has to do with gratitude. Multiple studies have shown a positive correlation between gratitude a...

A sour outlook is pessimistic about the future. Such people are always anxious, fretful, gloomy, negative, seemingly hopeless. How can a Christian be like that? We should be radiant with hope, fully e...

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.

I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.

Whatever happens to me in life, I must believe that somewhere, In the mess or madness of it all, There is a sacred potential— possibility for wondrous redemption In the embracing of all that is.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.

One of my continual battles is the one that happens in my own heart and mind. I continue to discover and fight negative patterns of thought and emotion that are shaped less by Jesus and more by the wo...

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

A 2007 study conducted at Fuller Theological Seminary found patient people were less likely to suffer from depression. Patient people were found to be more grateful and expressed they felt more connec...

In recent years, an entire discipline of modern psychology has developed called cognitive behavioral therapy. This breakthrough teaching reveals that many problems, from eating disorders to relational...

Attitude is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, money, circumstances, than failures and success, than what other people think, say, or do. It is more importa...

Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great , interviewed Admiral Jim Stockdale, the highest-ranking officer in the Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Regarding the ...

A stout heart, a clear conscience, and never despair