7. Possibility Thinking Keeps You from Giving Up
Above all, possibility thinkers believe they can succeed. Denis Waitley, author
of
The Psychology of Winning
, says, “The winners in life think constantly in
terms of ‘I can, I will and I am.’ Losers,
on the other hand, concentrate their
waking thoughts on what they should have done, or what they don’t do.” If you
believe you can’t do something, then it doesn’t matter how hard you try, because
you’ve already lost. If you believe you can do something, you have already won
much of the battle.
One of the people who showed himself to be a
great possibility thinker in
2001 was New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. In the hours following the World
Trade
Center tragedy, Giuliani not only led the city through the chaos of the
disaster, but he instilled confidence in everyone he touched. Afterward, he gave
some insight and perspective on his experience:
I was so proud of the people I saw on the street. No chaos, but they were
frightened and confused, and it seemed to me that they needed to hear from
my heart where I thought we were going. I was trying to think,
Where can I
go for some comparison to this, some lessons about how to handle it?
So I
started thinking about Churchill, started thinking that we’re going to have to
rebuild the spirit of the city, and what better example than Churchill and the
people of London during the Blitz in 1940, who had to keep up their spirit
during this sustained bombing? It was a comforting thought.
12
Sixteen hours after the planes struck
the buildings in New York City, when
Giuliani finally returned at 2:30 A.M. to his apartment for a rest, instead of
sleeping, he read the
World War II chapters of
Churchill: A Biography
by Roy
Jenkins. He learned how Winston Churchill helped his people to see the
possibilities and kept his people going.
Inspired, Giuliani did the same for his
own people six decades later.
