Quote:
Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
@ Kate
Well, I think there's a fundamental difference between a person praying to god to fulfill a need and a person self-motivating to achieve a goal.
While I agree that a positive attitude is more conducive to achieving a goal than a negative one, I think that a prayer for a goal to be achieved is the act of a person submitting that they can't do it on their own and admitting to god that they need his help. To arrive at the point where a person admits need of divine influence is to admit that they are incapable of doing it alone, which is negative thinking.
In essence, prayer itself is the antithesis of positive thinking and personal esteem in the regard you're speaking of.
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True, if you conducted a prayer that was like "I want $1000" or "I want X to fall in love with me" or "I want my pregnancy test to be positive" or "I want to be cured of this fatal cancer" then that is very much the case.
But if your prayer is something like:
"I need the strength to overcome my addiction to nicotine," then by verbalising your problem you have identified that you need to overcome your addiction and to do this you are going to need strength. Thinking that God is giving you strength could muster up your own inner strength and help you to overcome the problem. Kind of like a placebo effect.
or if you said something in your prayer like:
"I need the motivation to finish this assignment so I don't fail," then you have recognised that the assignment needs to be completed in order for you to not fail, and that to do this you need motivation. Again, if you are under the impression that God has sent you motivation then you are probably more inclined to be motivated to finish the assignment. The fact that you have verbalised to yourself exactly what you need to do may also aid in working towards the goal.
I'm not saying this is something that happens every time somebody prays but just an idea...