I was born in Welch, West Virginia, a small city in the heart of Appalachia. Welch is the seat of McDowell County, the most productive coal mining area in the state. When I was a child, McDowell County mines—such as Coalwood, Flat Top-Pocahontas, and Williams—produced millions of tons of coal each year, setting production records for the entire nation. If you’ve seen the movie October Sky, which is set just down the road in Coalwood, you’ve had a glimpse of the place where I came from.
Our family lived in a tiny three-bedroom home nestled against Baileysville Mountain. Not surprisingly, my father, William Aaron Toler, was a coal miner. He went to work underground every day, and some of my earliest memories are of Dad coming home, his face streaked with sweat and his clothing caked with coal dust. During the winter months, he would leave the house long before sunrise and work until after dark. He would go for days, sometimes weeks at a time, without seeing daylight. Dad worked hard every day to provide a living for Mom, my two little brothers, Mark and Terry, and me.
Though McDowell County was rich in resources, it wasn’t a prosperous place—quite the opposite, in fact. Welch was the poorest city in America at that time. After John F. Kennedy visited the area while running for president in 1960, he noted, “McDowell County mines more coal than it ever has in its history, probably more coal than any county in the United States, and yet there are more people getting surplus food packages in McDowell County than any county in the United States.”1 To say that our family was poor, as we understand poverty today, wouldn’t adequately convey the conditions in which we lived. Our tiny home had limited electricity and no running water. We carried water from the well every day, and our “bathroom” was a one-seat privy located out back. Our heat came from a single pot-bellied stove fed with coal from the same mine where Dad worked. For “electronic entertainment,” my brothers and I would watch the black-and-white TV in the furniture section of the Wyoming Company Store during our weekly visits to town.
Mining has always been a dangerous business, and it was especially so in those days. In the 1940s, more than 1100 miners lost their lives on the job every single year.2 My dad had his back broken three times in the mines before he was 30 years old, and he was beginning to suffer from the dreaded black lung disease. I can still remember him sitting in our small kitchen during the evening, coughing up black coal dust into a snow-white handkerchief while my brothers and I played around his feet.
Yet Dad was both a hard worker and a forward thinker, and he realized that things wouldn’t improve for our family as long as he kept working in the mines. The coal industry had peaked after World War II, and McDowell County was losing jobs and people every year. Physically, the work was demanding and dangerous, and Dad saw that it was time to get out. So our family moved to Ohio in search of a better life. We settled in the city of Columbus with high hopes for a brighter future.
Things didn’t turn around right away, however, and Dad went several months without finding work. As a result, our family went from poor to destitute, and we depended on the generosity of Fifth Avenue Church for survival. Those good people fed and clothed us for months until Dad was able to find a job. I’ll be forever grateful for the kindness they showed to my family.
Eventually Dad found employment with a construction company, and we were all elated. The whole family was excited to have more money for food and occasional special treats. We ate a lot of pinto beans and fried bologna, but we were happy. Dad had a job, Mom was content, and my brothers and I were doing well in our new school. Everything seemed back to normal—actually, better than the normal we’d known up to that point.
Then one Monday morning Dad went to work and never returned home. Having escaped the harrowing dangers of the coal mine, he was electrocuted in a tragic on-the-job accident. Our family was devastated. At the tender age of 11, I was thrust into a leadership role in my family. Mom had her hands more than full trying to provide for us, and I helped out as best I could by looking after my brothers. My father’s death had a profound impact on my mind and heart. I had a strong faith in God, even as a child, but losing my father seemed to be only the latest in a string of family disasters—as I’ll share in more detail later. I was deeply shaken.
Several years later I headed off to college, attending what’s now Ohio Christian University. I was excited to begin life on my own but still felt heaviness in my spirit. Without realizing it, I’d developed a negative outlook on life. And who could’ve blamed me? Life had been less than fair during my first 18 years. Not many good things had come my way, and I no longer expected them to.
One day at college I was having lunch in the cafeteria with a newfound friend by the name of John C. Maxwell. You may know John as an internationally recognized expert in the field of leadership and the author of dozens of bestselling books on the subject. But that day he was just a college senior who’d taken me, a lowly freshman, under his wing. John’s father, Dr. Melvin Maxwell, was president of the college, and he noticed us sitting together at lunch and stopped by the table.
“How would you fellows like to skip classes tomorrow?” he asked. Naturally, we were all ears. Both of us were up for anything that would provide a legitimate excuse to get out of school. Dr. Maxwell invited us to attend a Positive Mental Attitude rally being held the next day in Dayton. We eagerly agreed to go, though for my part it was mostly as a way to get off campus for the day.
The next morning we crowded into the University of Dayton arena, brand-new at the time, to hear some of the greatest inspirational speakers of the day. It was a thrilling experience to hear the likes of W. Clement Stone, who popularized the line, “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve,” and Earl Nightingale, who spoke thrillingly on Russell Conwell’s theme, “Acres of Diamonds.” We heard the great Zig Ziglar, who spoke about the fact that if you put garbage into your mind, you’ll get garbage out. The capstone of the day was the last speaker, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, author of the well-known book The Power of Positive Thinking. He opened my mind to fresh new possibilities and deeply impacted my life.
I’d attended the event mostly on a lark, but what I heard truly inspired me. That rally marked the beginning of a profound change in me, for it was there that I discovered the incredible power of one’s attitude upon behavior, happiness, future prospects, relationships—everything in life.
As we made our way back to campus, I was mostly silent, thinking about the many things I’d heard. For the next several weeks, I immersed myself in the principles I’d been introduced to at the rally. I was dealing with lingering effects of difficult things in my background—the death of my father, trying to be the leader in my home, helping my mom and my two younger brothers, my poverty-stricken upbringing—plus the current stress of becoming an adult and seeking a career. It all seemed overwhelming. Yet I realized I was facing a critical choice. I could either allow these difficulties to dominate my life, causing me to be pessimistic, negative, and bitter, or I could choose to have a positive mental attitude that would set a new direction for my future. I could see there was no middle ground between the two. We create our future—for better or worse—by choosing our outlook.
Your attitude really does have that much power in your life.
I chose to have a positive attitude despite having lost my father at a young age and having grown up in abject poverty. That choice has made all the difference for me. I’ve had a successful career and a fantastic marriage, been privileged to be called Dad by two great boys, and been blessed with two beautiful daughters-in-law and five grandchildren. Plus, I’ve enjoyed a quality of life my dad never experienced. Realizing those blessings, I’m convinced that none of this would have been possible had I not had the courage to choose a positive attitude and a vibrant faith early in my life.
The same can be true for you.
I realize you may not be a young person just starting out in life. You’ve lived longer, had harder knocks, and perhaps entered the second, third, or fourth quarter of your life. You may read my story and think, That’s nothing! I’ve suffered far worse. I have no doubt that’s true. Yet no matter what stage of life you’re in or what your circumstances may be, you can create a brighter future by harnessing the incredible power of a positive attitude.
Is this simplistic happy talk? Not at all. As we’ll discover, your thoughts have incredible power—power you’re not fully aware of. They literally become reality, shaping your present and your future. When you make the seven positive choices outlined in this book, you’ll experience an amazing change in how you feel, your energy level, your motivation, and your circumstances. When you take control of your attitude, you take control of your life and create a better tomorrow.
Over the months and years that followed my decision to choose a positive attitude, I reflected often on the things I’d heard at that rally in Dayton, and I began to see I wasn’t the only member of my family who’d chosen to have a positive outlook. As I thought about my dad, which I did nearly every day, I realized he was one of the most optimistic, positive-thinking people I’d ever known. Though speakers like Zig Ziglar and Norman Vincent Peale had provided terminology for my positive outlook, Dad had modeled it for the 11 years we had together. I’d gained my positive attitude from him, though it was nearly choked out of me when he passed away. I determined never to let the great gift my father had given me slip away.
To help me remember and hold on, I began a practice which I’ve continued to this day. One of Dad’s few possessions was an old Timex watch. Years ago those rugged, inexpensive timepieces were marketed with the slogan, “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” That motto seemed like a perfect summary of Dad’s life. He’d been through a great deal and was still able to smile. I resolved to wear Dad’s watch every Monday as a reminder of his life and the positive lessons he’d taught me. Dad had purchased that watch for just two dollars in 1962, and it keeps perfect time to this day. As I wear it, I recall the many gifts he gave me through his buoyant optimism, gracious humility, unrelenting generosity, and effervescent joy.
With this book, I’d like to share those gifts with you. I hope they’ll become as powerful a force in your life as they have been in mine.
As we reflect on the gift my father gave me, we’ll learn together a positive attitude. First, you’ll discover why your attitude has so much power over your life. Part 1 of this book will show you why it’s critical to gain control of your attitude in order to gain control of your life. You’ll learn how your attitude exerts power in five critical aspects of your life—thoughts, words, actions, habits, and choices. This section will inspire you to change your thoughts and thereby change your life.
Second, you’ll learn what needs to change inside you. Part 2 introduces seven critical choices that every person makes with regard to their attitude, whether they’re aware of them or not. These seven choices exert power in your life and shape it—for better or worse. You’ll see that happy, productive people choose a positive response in each of the seven areas, resulting in seven specific character traits—hope, humility, gratitude, generosity, kindness, joy, and perseverance. These are the gifts my father gave me, and the gifts I hope to give you. In this section you’ll become aware of the specific choices you need to make in your thinking to bring about change in your life.
Third, you’ll learn how to implement the seven positive choices in your life. Change doesn’t come easily. Reversing years of negative thought and behavior patterns will take time and effort. But it can be done! In part 3, you’ll gain a clear action plan for the three contexts that make or break your attitude choices—your mind, personal habits, and relationships. In this section, you’ll be equipped to make positive attitude changes in your life.
Are you ready? Let’s get started!