If I was completely honest with you, I would tell you that I am a much more positive person to others than I am to myself. I can cheer up friends and help them look on the bright side, but when it comes to my own self-talk, I struggle. My self-talk has been mostly negative, which is why I was very excited to receive Unsinkable Faith: God-Filled Strategies to Transform the Way You Think, Feel, and Live by Tracie Miles along with the Unsinkable Faith Companion Study Guide and Journal to review.

Tracie Miles is an author of three best-selling books. In addition to this, she is also a part of Proverbs 31 Ministries, where she is a speaker and contributing author among her other roles there. Her books are written from lessons she has learned from personal experiences. Tracie’s goal when she is writing is to encourage others and give them hope.

Unsinkable Faith shows you step by step how you can break away from pessimistic thoughts and replace them with positive thinking. Tracie shares her own personal stories and struggles with negativity and how changing her thinking to become more optimistic has truly saved her life. The book includes ten chapters. These chapters help you get to the root of the negativity in your life, explain why negativity is a health risk, and show you how to transform your thoughts to positive ones. Each chapter also features strategies to help you transform your thinking, Bible verses to renew your mind, and a challenge. The chapter challenge sums up each chapter and gives you a goal to work on. This book teaches you to notice your negative thoughts, reject those thoughts, and replace them with positive thoughts, Bible verses, and God’s truth. This book is available for purchase for $16.99.

The Unsinkable Faith Companion Study Guide and Journal is a great tool to go along with the book. It also features strategies to help you transform your thinking, Bible verses to renew your mind, and the chapter challenge from the book, but this resource encourages you to dig deeper into each area. It also features stories of famous people who could have given into negativity and quit what they were doing, but didn’t. The study guide also encourages deeper reflection on the personal stories told in the book. It also uses techniques like visual representation and writing out Bible memory verses to further cement the chapter concepts in your mind. The study guide is available as a download for just $10.00.

This book is one of the best books I have read this year. I knew that I struggled with negative self-talk, but didn’t really want to admit how bad it was. As I started reading through chapter one of the book, it encouraged me to just start noticing the negative thoughts I had. I was floored by how often I thought only of the negative things especially because I love to be an encouragement to others. I couldn’t believe how easy it was for me to be positive for everyone but myself. I determined right in the middle of chapter one that I was going to change. This desire to change my thought pattern was cemented in my mind after I worked through the study guide questions. I have really struggled through a couple of situations in the last couple of years, and it really left me feeling negative and bitter, but as I worked through the study guide, I realized I could keep feeling this way or I could change my thoughts about these situations.

The biggest eye opener of the book for me was in chapter four. This chapter discusses the things we have believed from our past versus what God’s truths are. There have been many, many times where I have let things I have believed in the past affect me today, and I dwelt on the negativity of those beliefs. Now I realize that the negative things I believed before are not what God says about me and that when I have those negative thoughts I can open my Bible and search for God’s answer. Then when I was working through the study guide, I had my eyes opened even more on this chapter. The work on this chapter made the biggest impact for me. Since I have finished the book and the companion study guide, I have noticed that I have fewer negative thoughts, and when I have do negative thoughts, I am quicker to catch them, reject them, and replace them. It will still take me awhile to get rid of all my negativity, but using what I have learned reviewing this book has given me the tools I need to change. I am now looking for the positive in every day. I highly recommend this book if you want to change your thinking.

-Product review by Cassandra Holdeman, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, July 2017