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| I Don’t Believe in Defeat |
I Don’t Believe in Defeat
There is no difficulty you cannot overcome. A wise and philosophical man once said to me, when asked how he overcame his difficulties, “How do I get through a trouble? Well, first I try to go around it, and if I can’t go around it, I try to get under it, and if I can’t get under it, I try to go over it, and if I can’t get over it, I just plow right through it.” Then he added, “God and I plow right through it.”
An effective method for making your mind positive in character is to eliminate certain expressions of thought and speech, which we may call the “little negatives.” These negatives clutter up the average person’s conversation, and while each one is seemingly unimportant in itself, the total effect is to condition the mind negatively. When this thought of “little negatives” first occurred to me, I began to analyze my own conversational habits and was shocked by what I found. I was making such statements as, “I’m afraid I’ll be late,” or “I wonder if I’ll have a flat tire,” or “I don’t think I can do that.” These are “little negatives” to be sure, and a big thought is of course more powerful than a little one. But it must never be forgotten that “mighty oaks from little acorns grow,” and if many “little negatives” clutter up your conversation, they are bound to seep into your mind. It is surprising how they accumulate in force, and before you know it, they will grow into “big negatives.” So I determined to root those “little negatives” out of my conversation. I found that the best way to eliminate them was deliberately to say a positive word about everything. When you keep asserting that things are going to work out well, good results do occur.
On a roadside billboard I saw an advertisement of a certain brand of motor oil. The slogan read, “A clean engine always delivers power.” So will a mind free of negatives.
Therefore flush out your thoughts, give yourself a clean mental engine, remembering that a clean mind, even as a clean engine, always delivers power.
So to overcome your obstacles and live the “I don’t believe in defeat” philosophy, cultivate a positive-idea pattern. What we do with obstacles is directly determined by our mental attitude. Most of our obstacles are mental in character.
“Ah,” you may object, “mine are not mental, mine are real.” Perhaps so, but your attitude toward them is mental. What you think about your obstacles largely determines what you do about them. Form the mental attitude that you cannot remove an obstacle and you will not remove it. But when your mind becomes convinced that you can do something about difficulties, astonishing results will begin to happen. All of a sudden you discover that you have the power you would never acknowledge.
There is no difficulty you cannot overcome. A wise and philosophical man once said to me, when asked how he overcame his difficulties, “How do I get through a trouble? Well, first I try to go around it, and if I can’t go around it, I try to get under it, and if I can’t get under it, I try to go over it, and if I can’t get over it, I just plow right through it.” Then he added, “God and I plow right through it.”
An effective method for making your mind positive in character is to eliminate certain expressions of thought and speech, which we may call the “little negatives.” These negatives clutter up the average person’s conversation, and while each one is seemingly unimportant in itself, the total effect is to condition the mind negatively. When this thought of “little negatives” first occurred to me, I began to analyze my own conversational habits and was shocked by what I found. I was making such statements as, “I’m afraid I’ll be late,” or “I wonder if I’ll have a flat tire,” or “I don’t think I can do that.” These are “little negatives” to be sure, and a big thought is of course more powerful than a little one. But it must never be forgotten that “mighty oaks from little acorns grow,” and if many “little negatives” clutter up your conversation, they are bound to seep into your mind. It is surprising how they accumulate in force, and before you know it, they will grow into “big negatives.” So I determined to root those “little negatives” out of my conversation. I found that the best way to eliminate them was deliberately to say a positive word about everything. When you keep asserting that things are going to work out well, good results do occur.
On a roadside billboard I saw an advertisement of a certain brand of motor oil. The slogan read, “A clean engine always delivers power.” So will a mind free of negatives.
Therefore flush out your thoughts, give yourself a clean mental engine, remembering that a clean mind, even as a clean engine, always delivers power.
So to overcome your obstacles and live the “I don’t believe in defeat” philosophy, cultivate a positive-idea pattern. What we do with obstacles is directly determined by our mental attitude. Most of our obstacles are mental in character.
“Ah,” you may object, “mine are not mental, mine are real.” Perhaps so, but your attitude toward them is mental. What you think about your obstacles largely determines what you do about them. Form the mental attitude that you cannot remove an obstacle and you will not remove it. But when your mind becomes convinced that you can do something about difficulties, astonishing results will begin to happen. All of a sudden you discover that you have the power you would never acknowledge.
I played golf with a man who was not only an excellent golfer but a philosopher as well. As we went around the golf course the game itself drew out of him a gem of wisdom for which I shall ever be grateful.
I hit a ball into some high grass. When we came up to my ball I said in some dismay, “Now just look at that. I certainly am in the rough. I have a bad lie. It is going to be tough getting out of here.”
My friend grinned and said, “Didn’t I read something in your books about positive thinking?” Sheepishly I acknowledged that such was the case.
“I wouldn’t think negatively about that lie of yours,” he said. “Do you think you could get a good hit if this ball were lying out on the fairway on the short grass?” I said I thought so.
“Well,” he continued, “why do you think you could do better out there than here?” “Because,” I replied, “the grass is cut short on the fairway and the ball can get away better.”
Then he did a curious thing. “Let’s get down on our hands and knees,” he suggested, “and see just how this ball does lie.” So we got down on our hands and knees, and he said, “Observe that the relative height of the ball here is about the same as it would be on the fairway, the only difference being that you have about six inches of grass above the ball.”
Then he did an even more whimsical thing. “Notice the quality and character of this grass,” he said. He pulled off a blade and handed it to me. “Chew it,” he said. I chewed, and he asked, “Isn’t that tender?” “Why, yes,” I replied.
“Well,” he continued, “an easy swing of your number-five iron will cut through that grass almost like a knife.” And then he gave me this sentence, which I am going to remember as long as I live, and I hope you will also. “The rough is only mental. In other words,” he continued, “it is rough because you think it is. In your mind you have decided that here is an obstacle which will cause you difficulty. The power to overcome this obstacle is in your mind. If you visualize yourself lifting the ball out of the rough, believing you can do it, your mind will transfer flexibility, rhythm and power to your muscles and you will handle that club in such a manner that the ball will rise right out of there in a beautiful shot.
All you need to do is to keep your eye on that ball and tell yourself that you are going to lift it out of that grass with a lovely stroke. Let the stiffness and tension go out of you.
Hit it with exhilaration and power. Remember, the rough is only mental.” To this day I remember the thrill, the sense of power and delight I had in the clean shot that dropped the ball to the edge of the green.That is a great fact to remember in connection with difficult problems—“the rough is only mental.”
Believe that Almighty God has put in you the power to lift yourself out of the rough by keeping your eye firmly fixed on the source of your power. Affirm to yourself that through this power you can do anything you have to do. Believe that this power is taking the tension out of you, that this power is flowing through you. Believe this, and a sense of victory will come.
I hit a ball into some high grass. When we came up to my ball I said in some dismay, “Now just look at that. I certainly am in the rough. I have a bad lie. It is going to be tough getting out of here.”
My friend grinned and said, “Didn’t I read something in your books about positive thinking?” Sheepishly I acknowledged that such was the case.
“I wouldn’t think negatively about that lie of yours,” he said. “Do you think you could get a good hit if this ball were lying out on the fairway on the short grass?” I said I thought so.
“Well,” he continued, “why do you think you could do better out there than here?” “Because,” I replied, “the grass is cut short on the fairway and the ball can get away better.”
Then he did a curious thing. “Let’s get down on our hands and knees,” he suggested, “and see just how this ball does lie.” So we got down on our hands and knees, and he said, “Observe that the relative height of the ball here is about the same as it would be on the fairway, the only difference being that you have about six inches of grass above the ball.”
Then he did an even more whimsical thing. “Notice the quality and character of this grass,” he said. He pulled off a blade and handed it to me. “Chew it,” he said. I chewed, and he asked, “Isn’t that tender?” “Why, yes,” I replied.
“Well,” he continued, “an easy swing of your number-five iron will cut through that grass almost like a knife.” And then he gave me this sentence, which I am going to remember as long as I live, and I hope you will also. “The rough is only mental. In other words,” he continued, “it is rough because you think it is. In your mind you have decided that here is an obstacle which will cause you difficulty. The power to overcome this obstacle is in your mind. If you visualize yourself lifting the ball out of the rough, believing you can do it, your mind will transfer flexibility, rhythm and power to your muscles and you will handle that club in such a manner that the ball will rise right out of there in a beautiful shot.
All you need to do is to keep your eye on that ball and tell yourself that you are going to lift it out of that grass with a lovely stroke. Let the stiffness and tension go out of you.
Hit it with exhilaration and power. Remember, the rough is only mental.” To this day I remember the thrill, the sense of power and delight I had in the clean shot that dropped the ball to the edge of the green.That is a great fact to remember in connection with difficult problems—“the rough is only mental.”
Believe that Almighty God has put in you the power to lift yourself out of the rough by keeping your eye firmly fixed on the source of your power. Affirm to yourself that through this power you can do anything you have to do. Believe that this power is taking the tension out of you, that this power is flowing through you. Believe this, and a sense of victory will come.
