"The Man Who Thinks He Can"

The Internet is really a great thing!  When I was in high school, my parents had a poem or at least part of a quotation taped to our refrigerator door.  I was thinking about what to post on the blog last night and remembered the first line of the quotation.  I never knew who really had said it - one of my friends (a Green Bay Packers fan) thought it sounded like something that the great football coach, Vince Lombardi would say.  He certainly said something like it when he said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”  I tried hard to remember the quotation and just could not remember enough of it, so I looked up the first line and found it all over the Internet.  As it turns out, Vince Lombardi didn't say it - the quotation is actually from a poem written by a man named Walter Wintle (as an aside, I did not find any details on the poet, even on the Internet).  The poem is called "Thinking" and was published in 1905 (the poem is also known by the title, "The Man Who Thinks He Can").  You may have heard it, but if not, here it is:

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you'd like to win, but you think you can't,
It is almost a cinch that you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost;
For out of the world we find
Success begins with a fellow's will
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you're outclassed, you are;
You've got to think high to rise.
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the prize.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can!

I only learned the first and last stanzas of the poem.  The poem itself reminds me a lot of the classic story, "The Little Engine That Could" ("I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...").  And who knows, maybe Vince Lombardi used it to motivate the great Packers teams of the 1960's.  It really is a powerful poem.  I do believe in the absolute power of a positive attitude.  A positive attitude is one of the key drivers of success.  And in the end, it is the man (or woman) who believes in him- or herself that accomplishes his or her goals.