IF YOU ARE thinking thoughts of defeat, I urge you to rid yourself of such thoughts, for as you think defeat you tend to get it. Adopt the “I don’t believe in defeat” attitude.
I want to tell you about some people who have put this philosophy into effect with excellent results and shall explain the techniques and formulas which they used so successfully. If you read these incidents carefully and thoughtfully and believe as they did and think positively and put these techniques into operation, you too, can overcome defeats which at the present moment may seem inevitable.
I hope you are not like an “obstacle man” of whom I was told. He was called an obstacle man because, regardless of whatever suggestion was advanced, his mind instantly went to all possible obstacles in connection with it, but he met his match and learned a lesson which helped to change his negative attitude. It came about in the following manner.
The directors of his firm had a project under consideration which involved considerable expense and some definite hazards as well as success possibilities. In the discussions regarding this venture the obstacle man would invariably say, and always with a scholarly air (invariably this type acts wise, probably a cover-up for inner doubt feelings), “Now just a moment. Let’s consider the obstacles involved.”
Another man, who said very little but who was respected by his associates for his ability and achievements and for a certain indomitable quality which characterized him, presently spoke up and asked, “Why do you constantly emphasize the obstacles in this proposition instead of the possibilities?”
“Because,” replied the obstacle man, “to be intelligent one must always be realistic, and it is a fact that there are certain definite obstacles in connection with this project. What attitude would you take toward these obstacles, may I ask?”
The other man unhesitatingly replied, “What attitude would I take toward these obstacles? Why, I would just remove them, that’s all, and then I would forget them.”
“But,” said the obstacle man, “that is easier said than done. You say you would remove them and then you would forget them. May I ask if you have any technique for removing obstacles and for forgetting them that the rest of us have never discovered?”
A slow smile came over the face of the other man as he said, “Son, I have spent my entire life removing obstacles and I never yet saw one that could not be removed provided you had enough faith and guts and were willing to work. Since you want to know how it’s done, I will show you.”
He then reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. Under the isinglass window was a card on which were written some words. He shoved the wallet across the table and said, “There, son, read that. That is my formula, and don’t give me the song and dance that it won’t work either. I know better from experience.”
The obstacle man picked up the wallet and with a strange look on his face read the words to himself.
“Read them out loud,” urged the owner of the wallet.
This is what he read in a slow, dubious voice, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:13)
The owner of the wallet put it back in his pocket and said, “I have lived a long time and have faced a lot of difficulties in my time, but there is power in those words—actual power—and with them you can remove any obstacle.”
He said this with confidence and everybody knew he meant it. This positiveness, together with the facts of his experience which were known to all, for he was a remarkable man who had overcome many odds, and because of the further fact that he was not in any sense “holier than thou,” made his words convincing to the men around the table. At any rate, there was no more negative talk. The project was put into operation and, despite difficulties and risks, turned out successfully.
The technique used by this man is based on the primary fact about an obstacle which is—don’t be afraid of it. Practice believing that God is with you and that in combination with Him you have the power to handle it.
So the first thing to do about an obstacle is simply to stand up to it and not complain about it or whine under it but forthrightly attack it. Don’t go crawling through life on your hands and knees half-defeated. Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have.
A friend in England sent me a book by Winston Churchill entitled Maxims and Reflections. In this book Churchill tells of the British General Tudor, who commanded a division of the British Fifth Army which faced the great German assault in March 1918. The odds were heavily against him, but General Tudor knew how to meet an apparently immovable and undefeatable obstacle. His method was simple. He merely stood and let the obstacle break on him and he, in turn, broke the obstacle.
Here is what Churchill said about General Tudor. This is a very great sentence and it is filled with power: “The impression I had of Tudor was of an iron peg, hammered into the frozen ground, immovable.”
General Tudor knew how to stand up to an obstacle. Just stand up to it, that’s all, and don’t give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break, and it won’t be you, it will be the obstacle.
You can do this when you have faith, faith in God and faith in yourself. Faith is the chief quality you need. It is enough. In fact, it is more than enough.
Use that formula which the businessman suggested and you will develop this brand of powerful faith in God and in yourself. You will learn to know yourself, your own ability, your power to do things. To the degree to which your attitude shifts from negative to positive the mastery touch will come to you. Then, with assurance, you can say to yourself under any and all circumstances and mean it, “I don’t believe in defeat.”
Take the story of Gonzales, who won the national tennis championship a few years ago in a grueling battle. He had been practically unknown, and because of wet weather he had not been able to perfect his game prior to the tournament. The sports writer of a metropolitan newspaper in analyzing Gonzales said that there were certain defects in his techniques, and gave it as his opinion that probably greater champions had played on the courts, however, he credited Gonzales with a marvelous serve and a skillful volley. But the factor that won the championship, said the writer, was his staying power and the further fact that “he was never defeated by the discouraging vicissitudes of the game.”
That is one of the most subtle lines I have ever read in any sports story—“He was never defeated by the discouraging vicissitudes of the game.”
It means, does it not, that when the game seemed to go against him he did not let discouragement creep in nor negative thoughts dominate and thus lose the power needed to win. This mental and spiritual quality made that man a champion. He was able to face obstacles, to stand up to them and overcome them.
Faith supplies staying power. It contains dynamic to keep one going when the going is hard. Anybody can keep going when the going is good, but some extra ingredient is needed to enable you to keep fighting when it seems that everything is against you. It is a great secret, that of never being “defeated by the discouraging vicissitudes of the game.”
You may counter, “But you don’t know my circumstances. I am in a different situation than anybody else and I am as far down as a human being can get.”
In that case you are fortunate, for if you are as far down as you can get there is no further down you can go. There is only one direction you can take from this position, and that is up. So your situation is quite encouraging. However, I caution you not to take the attitude that you are in a situation in which nobody has ever been before. There is no such situation.
Practically speaking, there are only a few human stories and they have all been enacted previously. This is a fact that you must never forget—there are people who have overcome every conceivable difficult situation, even the one in which you now find yourself and which to you seems utterly hopeless. So did it seem to some others, but they found an out, a way up, a path over, a pass through.
One of the most inspiring illustrations of this act is the story of Amos Parrish who twice every year brings together hundreds of leading department-store executives and style experts in two huge clinics held in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. At these clinics Mr. Parrish gives advice to the merchants and their associates on business trends, on merchandise, on selling methods, and other matters important to the conduct of their business. Having attended a number of the clinics, however, I am convinced that the greatest values Mr. Parrish transmits to his customers are courage and positive thinking, a deep belief in themselves, and the confidence that they can overcome all difficulties.
He seems a living example of the philosophy which he teaches. As a boy he was sickly. Moreover, he stuttered. He was sensitive and a victim of an inferiority complex. It was thought that he would not live because of his weakened physical condition, but one day Amos Parrish had a spiritual experience. Faith dawned in his mind, and from then on he knew that with the help of God and the utilization of his own powers he could achieve.
He developed a unique idea of service to businessmen, and so highly do they rate it that they are willing to pay large fees to attend a two-day session twice a year under the business wisdom and inspiration of Amos Parrish. To me it is a moving experience to sit with that big crowd in a hotel ballroom and listen to “A. P.,” as he is affectionately called, talk positive thinking to those important businessmen and women.
Sometimes he has the greatest difficulty with his stuttering, but he is never discouraged. He refers to it frankly and with a sense of humor. One day, for example, he was trying to say the word Cadillac. He tried several times and was unable to get it out, and finally did so with a powerful effort. Then he commented, “I can’t even say C-C-C-Cadillac, let alone buy one.” The audience roared with laughter, but I noted that they looked up at him with affection written on their faces. Everyone leaves a meeting at which he speaks with the conviction that they, too, can turn their obstacles into assets.
Again I repeat, there is no difficulty you cannot overcome. A wise and philosophical Negro 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.”
Take seriously that formula of a businessman given earlier in this chapter. Stop reading for a moment and repeat it over to yourself five times, and each time you say it conclude with this affirmation, “I believe that.” Here is the formula again, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:13) Say that five times every day and it will release indomitable power in your mind.
Your subconscious, which always resents any change, may say to you, “You don’t believe any such thing.” But remember that your subconscious mind in a sense is one of the greatest liars in existence. It concurs in and sends back to you your own errors about your abilities. You have created the negative attitude in your subconscious and it gives this error back to you. So just turn on your subconscious and say to it, “Now look here, I do believe that. I insist upon believing it.” If you talk to your subconscious mind with that positiveness, in due course it will be convinced. One reason is because you are now feeding it positive thoughts. In other words, you are at last telling the truth to your subconscious. After a while your subconscious mind will begin to send back the truth to you, the truth being that with the help of Jesus Christ there isn’t any obstacle you cannot overcome.
An effective method for making your subconscious positive in character is to eliminate certain expressions of thought and speech which we may call the “little negatives.” These so-called “little negatives” clutter up the average person’s conversation, and while each one is seemingly unimportant in itself, the total effect of these attitudes 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 discovered that 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,” or “I’ll never get through this job. There’s so much to do.” If something turned out badly, I might say, “Oh, that’s just what I expected.” Or, again, I might observe a few clouds in the sky and would gloomily state, “I knew it was going to rain.”
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 a mass of “little negatives” clutter up your conversation, they are bound to seep into your mind. It is surprising how they accumulate in force, and presently, before you know it, they will grow into “big negatives.” So I determined to go to work on the “little negatives” and root them 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, that you can do the job, that you will not have a flat tire, that you will get there on time, by talking up good results you invoke the law of positive effects and good results occur. Things do turn out well.
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 produce positives, that is to say, a clean mind will deliver power. 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 deeply in your consciousness. What we do with obstacles is directly determined by our mental attitude. Most of our obstacles, as a matter of fact, are mental in character.
“Ah,” you may object, “mine are not mental, mine are real.”
Perhaps so, but your attitude toward them is mental. The only possible way you can have an attitude is by the mental process, and 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, not if you think you can’t. But get the idea firmly fixed that the obstacle is not so great as you previously considered it to be. Hold the idea that it is removable, and however faintly you entertain this positive thought, from the very moment you begin to think in this manner, the process is inaugurated which will lead to its ultimate removal. If you have been long defeated by a difficulty, it is probably because you have told yourself for weeks, months, and even for years that there is nothing you can do about it. You have so emphasized your inability to yourself that your mind gradually accepted the conclusion upon which you have insisted, and when your mind is convinced, you are convinced, for as you think so are you.