One day, two children were skating in a frozen lagoon. The afternoon was cold and cloudy, but the children had fun doing pirouettes and played without worry, laughing at their antics.
Suddenly, the ice broke and one of the children fell into the water. The other child, seeing that his little friend was drowning under the ice, took a stone and began to hit with all his strength, until he managed to break it, thus being able to rescue his friend.
When the firemen arrived and saw what had happened, they wondered how he had done it since the ice was very thick. It is impossible that the child could have broken it with that stone and those small hands, they commented among themselves.
At that moment an old man appeared and said: "I know how he could do it!"
"How?" they asked.
"He could do it, because there was no one around him to tell him he could not do it."
Source: Unknown origins.
" 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 certain - you won't./If you think you'll lose, you've lost;/For out in this world we find/Success begins with a fellow's will/It's all in the state of mind."
Excerpt from "Thinking", by Walter D. Wintle
Success begins in our mind, not with desire but with hope, and bases its existence not on our results but on our decisions. It is the will that pushes us to do the greatest deeds, and in the same way it is our mind that guides us.
If we believe that something is impossible, as W. D. Wintle said, then for us it will be, and unlike the child of the fable, with our weak hands we cannot break the hard ice that separates us from our goals.
Nowadays we know how much society influences people, if your exterior pushes you down then it is most likely that you stay on the ground, but this is not an excuse or a justification for failure, it is just a trap for the weak, and it is only they who lack the strength to contrast their environment.
I firmly believe that we are all capable of achieving the goals we set for ourselves, but only if we really want them, and with great will, otherwise we will be doomed to failure.
" Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right."
Henry Ford