Positivity

In Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith, positivity is the emotional spine of the book — Gordon B. Hinckley’s personal motto, “Things will work out,” is described as “an attitude of abundance over scarcity, accentuating the positive, refusing to dwell on the dark side.” His own formulation: “If you keep trying and praying and working, things will work out. They always do. If you want to die at an early age, dwell on the negative. Accentuate the positive, and you’ll be around for awhile.”

The book traces this disposition to his upbringing — a household where children “frequently heard their parents say, ‘Cynics do not contribute; skeptics do not create; doubters do not achieve’” — and to his wife Marjorie, whose buoyant philosophy that “things always worked out somehow” was “like an elixir.” Hinckley tied positivity to losing oneself in service: “the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves… There is nothing that dulls a personality so much as a negative outlook.”

Where this appears

• Gordon B. Hinckley — Go Forward With Faith — Hinckley’s “Things will work out” motto, his family’s anti-cynicism creed, and positivity as the book’s emotional spine