You never lose unless you quit. Vince Lombardi is often
quoted as saying, “The difference between winning and losing is quitting.”
There are thousands of stories about people who failed miserably time after
time before finally achieving their goals. They succeeded because they never
quit.
Knowing your own limitations is different from quitting,
which is a mental state. You may see a ballplayer walking off the field, but
long before taking this action, his mind set sail through all the
possibilities, reasons, and rationalizations for giving up. He may have even
rehearsed the event—to try it on, so to speak—before the actual action. So as I
said, it’s first a mental action, like my son’s strikeout.
There are people I’ve worked with in the past who persist
at quitting. They’re not aware that they’re giving up, per se, any more than my
son was aware that he’d surrendered to striking out before the first pitch was
thrown.
Becoming aware of this tendency in ourselves is the only
way we can end these self-destructive, self-sabotaging patterns. Persisting
should be all about allowing our efforts to become better and better. We
persevere at practice—reinforcing our improvement instead of mentally
rehearsing our failure expectation. As Marilyn vos Savant is credited with
saying, “Being defeated is only a temporary condition; giving up is what makes
it permanent.”
Winning
I believe that inside every human being is a winner. Each
and every one of us possesses a unique ability—a talent, if you will—and chief
among all of our abilities is the one called “Doing our very best.” I believe
that this ability is what makes us champions.
I remember being confused as a young man about such statements
as “All men are created equal.” It doesn’t take an Einstein to see how untrue
this statement is—or is it? I tell a story on myself in my book Choices and Illusions, in which I made
just this inquiry. It seems appropriate here to share what I learned.
Imagine a rocket scientist who, after much work, launches
an interstellar voyager. Imagine the pride he feels in the accomplishment. Now
imagine a so-called menial laborer. On his hands and knees for endless hours,
he scrubs and polishes a floor. He has worked so hard and with so much pride
that he has scrubbed his knuckles raw. Now he stands back and beholds his
labors. The floor absolutely glistens—every square inch of it. It never looked
that good even when it was new. Now . . . which man senses the most pride, the
rocket scientist or the floor scrubber?
Even at a young age, I understood that feeling. The fact is
that when you do your utmost, you enjoy the same state of specialness, the same
ecstatic feeling, the same sense of purpose and pleasure as anyone else,
regardless of the act (launching rockets or scrubbing floors).
I believe there are no real losers because in the end, you
cannot escape yourself. You—both here and in the hereafter—will learn to
persevere, and in time you’ll turn the act of trying or the pattern of losing
into winning because that’s who you ultimately are! You’ll acquire the habit of
applying your best to all that you do, and as the rocket scientist–floor
scrubber story illustrates, that means you’ll always come out ahead. You were
created a winner, and a winner you were meant to be. Believing in yourself
makes winning happen, so the only question is what you’re going to do to
reinforce a strong, vital faith in yourself—for what you believe always
matters!
Always remember the following analogy from Alfred Adler.
It’s one of my favorites, and it will help you remember to believe in yourself
along the way, even when you feel you’re drowning.
What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make
mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you
have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning—and some of them
many times over—what do you find? That you can swim? Well—life is just the same
as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other
way of learning how to live!
Reflection
The only way you lose is by quitting. Failure becomes
permanent only when you give up. When you visualize quitting, you’re rehearsing
the event. Can you think of examples from your own life when you were so convinced
you’d be unsuccessful that you never even tried? Isn’t this often the most
basic frustration that people have during a midlife crisis? Do you dare to look
again at those dreams you once had and discarded—and to try again, this time
with persistence, determination, and tenacity?
Eldon Taylor has spent
over 25 years researching the power of the mind and developing scientifically
proven methods to use this power to enhance the quality of your life. I Believe is a book that will not only
inspire you, but will highlight the kinds of beliefs you hold that may be
causing you to fail. In the process, it will provide you with the opportunity
to choose, once again, the beliefs that drive your life.
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