POSITIVE THINKING

If you think you are beaten, you are.

If you think you dare not, you don't.

If you'd like to win but think you can't,

It's almost certain you won't.

Life's battles don't always go

To the stronger or faster man,

But sooner or later, the man who wins

Is the man who thinks he can.

Plaque on the wall of Golfer Arnold Palmer's office.

A delightful children's story tells of a little blue engine who looked at his impossible task of pulling a train up a steep hill and said, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." Filled with determination, the little blue engine huffed and puffed and pulled up the hill. But in an amusing twist to the original story, another author wrote:

"He was almost there, when --CRASH! SMASH! BASH! 

He slid down and mashed into engine hash

On the rocks below...which goes to show

If the track is tough and the hill is rough

THINKING you can ain't enough."

Source Unknown.

The winner glories in the good; the whiner majors in the mediocre. Winners' thinking processes differ from other people's. As part of their normal, moment-to-moment stream of consciousness, winners think constantly in terms of I can and I will. Losers concentrate their waking thoughts on...what they should have done...would have done...what they can't do. When the mind's self-talk is positive, performance is more likely to be successful. The huge majority of our negative doubts and fears are imaginary or beyond our control. 

Denis Waitley.