‘Psychology Of Winning' Pioneer Denis Waitley Dead At 92
Famed motivational psychologist Dr. Denis Waitley died in his sleep on June 7th, 2025. He was a major player in a new phenomenon that arose in America – the motivational rally. In auditoriums and convention centers, businesspeople, educators, salespeople, and homemakers gathered to hear speakers such as Norman Vincent Peale, Zig Ziglar, and Art Linkletter, among others, extol the virtues of positive thinking, unbridled optimism, and hard work.
Waitley's The Psychology of Winning self-development program would go on to sell over two million copies and capture the hearts of many baby boomer age adherents, eager to carve out their place in the world.
Waitley's message was built on his study of the traits that high-achieving people have in common. As a young magazine journalist, I interviewed Waitley in 1982 and asked him which characteristic, above all others, seemed to define winners from the rest of the pack?
'It's their understanding of the degree of control that their thoughts have over the actions that follow in their lives," he said. "Whether they are astronauts, parents, or prisoners of war, these individuals have taken responsibility for their actions. The deepest, most significant choice we make is in the way we choose to think."
The difference between winners and losers, Waitley taught, was in what he called a person's 'self-talk.' 'The mind is talking to itself constantly at some eight hundred words per minute. Winners, he found, think constantly in terms of 'I can,' "I will,' and 'I am,' while losers concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can't do.
When our self-talk is positive, Waitley observed, the mind then goes to work instructing the body to carry out the performance of the thought as if it had already been achieved before and is merely being repeated.
Waitley would go on to sell these ideas and many others to audiences of self-improvers worldwide. He spent more than four decades on the international speaking circuit, logging an average of 500,000 miles each year, helping people—from astronauts to Olympic athletes, corporate leaders to schoolchildren—redefine success from the inside out. Waitley's clients included everyone from members of the U.S. Olympic team to Super Bowl champions, as well as scores of corporate clients.
Waitley was the former Chairman of Psychology for the U.S. Olympic Committee's Sports Medicine Council and authored 16 books, including classics such as Seeds of Greatness, The Winner's Edge, and Empires of the Mind. He was invited to join NASA's astronaut training program, where he worked with space shuttle crews on mental preparation. Around the same time, he began coaching elite athletes on visualization techniques. He popularized the use of guided imagery and mental rehearsal long before it became mainstream.
His speeches—delivered with laid-back authority, a radio announcer's voice, and self-effacing storytelling—centered on mental toughness, personal responsibility, and visions of a brighter future. Forty years after my interview with Waitley, his observations ring relevant today.
When asked to summarize his primary message, he responded: 'The period we're living in is no worse than any other period in history, and probably better. Since society is changing rapidly, it's up to the individual to view change as normal, and to see many of the changes taking place as positive rather than negative.'
Yet behind the inspiring keynotes and bestselling books was a man whose private life was marked by turmoil. Born in 1942, Waitley grew up in Depression-era San Diego, California. His mother worked in a factory, and his father was a warehouseman. They soon divorced. 'One night my father came into our bedroom to say goodbye,' Waitley recalled in an interview with Success Magazine. 'We didn't see him again for six years.'
Waitley's struggle to break free of a loser mindset and shift into an abundant winner's mindset propelled his determination to make something of himself. 'I wrote The Psychology of Winning while I was losing,' Waitley recalled. 'I wanted to remind myself what I needed to do to change myself from loser to winner.'
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