This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

A sign hangs in the Club House of Bill Roper’s Princeton football squad:

“A team that won’t be beaten, can’t be beaten.”

You men who are putting your life behind Purina Checkerboard Chows just won’t be beaten—you can’t be beaten.

Hang up this motto.

One of the most memorable lines from the movie Apollo 13 is when flight director Gene Kranz announces that, “Failure is not an option.” Like many things in the movies, the line was written for the movie and did not come from real life. However, the attitude behind the line was definitely part of the culture of NASA’s Mission Control.

There is a quotation attributed to Henry Ford that goes something like, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are probably right.”

All three of these quotations have a common theme: Our belief systems play a big part in the results we achieve.

• If we truly believe we can not lose, we will win.
• If we believe failure is not an option, we will find a way to succeed.
• If we believe we can do something, we will approach it with confidence and will keep trying until we do it. If we do not believe we can do it, we probably will not even try.

It is easy to take a negative position–that something is too hard or there is some reason that we can not do it. It is so easy that we may not even realize we are doing it.

Strongly asserting our belief in ourselves and what we can do is harder. But it pays off.

Do you ever say things such as:
“I never do anything right.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Well, I’ll try, but…”

The next time you catch yourself voicing one of these (or other) defeatist thoughts, stop right then and change your attitude. Look for the way to succeed instead of accepting failure as an option.