Are You Positive

Building on the groundwork laid by Norman Vincent Peale in The Power of Positive Thinking and Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich, Briley analyzes why some people believe they are thinking positively but actually accomplish nothing. He offers a five-step ""positive-power pyramid''with permission as the base, goal-setting, image-holding and thinking as the supports and, at the apex, achievement. He regards goal-setting as the crucial factor in the pyramid, since, in his view, the unfocused individual will not succeed in anything, and argues that the other steps follow logically from that concentration. Briley has special messages for the contemporary woman and the entrepreneur, both of whom he sees as having especially complicated problems, and concludes with a kind of self-inventory for would-be positive thinkers. (December)