Many accept that Nostradamus is, or was, one of the best prophets in the world. The word prophet is defined as one who sees the future through or a person who has encountered the supernatural or the divine and serves as an intermediary with humanity. After reading articles and watching documentaries about him, there is nothing that says he was influenced by the supernatural. It seems all was based on his knowledge as an astrologer. He used quatrains in his written predictions to avoid persecution by authorities who questioned his predictions. Along with the quatrains were his drawings or sketches on what he sees. His predictions, if interpretations were correct, were accurate even with the 9/11 catastrophy!

Prophets are also called seers. However, there is a question about their prophecies or predictions. How come all they could prophecize or predict are bad or unfortunate events in the future? Does that mean in totality, everything in the future will turn out to be bad? Their prophecies and predictions are about the "fall ofs" and the "death ofs"! Why none of the "good ofs"? So prophets are seers, but are they not better termed as "Doom Seers" or "Doom Sayers"? Are fortune tellers better seers of good fortune in the future? There are also those who have extra-sensory perception (ESP) or sixth sense. What they sense most of the time is danger or bad things to come. This would also be different from speculation or lucky guess of a good outcome.

Since BC and AD, there have been a lot of prophets that foretold of events to come. On the side of being religious, of which I am not totally, the only good prophecy was the coming of Jesus Christ. And when he came, he was the only one who said about good things to come and only warned men of what bad results can come out of wrong doings! The only problem is, there is no account of him from ages 13 to 29. That would be more than half of his 33 years on earth. Does that mean 17 years, more or less, of not anyone knowing how he went on with life. This could have resulted to my article here playing on some possibilites in my mind.

So many, if not most, concede that prophets did have good predictions or prophecies. Looking at it overall, what they saw were the negative things in the future, whether it came for real or not. If what was predicted bad and came true would be a simple case of negative thinking that became positive, right? I still have to see, or probably learn about, a positive prediction that really came out as positive, of course that's aside from travelling to outer space.

In this conjecture, does positive thinking have anything really to do for people? For day-to-day activities, maybe yes. But taking Nostradamuses' predictions, negative holds right for hundreds of years in the future. What has positive thinking got for a brighter hundreds of years into the future? Your guess might be as good as mine!

Source of some definitions & reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophet