Winning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Groeschel uses anecdotes to make his advice personable to readers. His anecdotes come in two main forms: personal and references to imagery. As a pastor, Groeschel tends to provide an illustration for every point he makes. His personal anecdotes color almost every chapter. He typically opens a new section with a story from his life, often at length. Groeschel chooses stories that are confessional and self-effacing.

Groeschel also weaves imagery throughout the book. He regularly returns to the imagery of a battlefield, with several associated images: inner transformation as a fight, negative ideas as strongholds, and prayer and praise serving as weapons. Other illustrations provide imagery for a minor point, such as comparing the Christian discipline of meditation to a cow chewing its cud or the analogy of trying to chop down a tree by pruning a branch here or a branch there.

Groeschel’s use of repetition is atypical. In formal writing, it is usually considered better practice to vary one’s word choice within a passage of text. The repetition of the same word several times tends to be flagged as poor writing, unless it happens to be a technical term for which no replacement is appropriate.