Being me in the world
Dad loved this poem by Walter Wintle:
If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don’t,
If you like to win, but you think you can’t
It is almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve 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 are outclassed, you are
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!
Maybe I inherited some of that way of thinking from Dad.
I still feel a bit nauseous (it just never, ever truly goes away) and I still have a ‘sore tummy’. It’s MUCH better than for the last number of days, though. Besides, I have decided that I am over being nauseous. I will do my best to ignore what is left. If that doesn’t work, I’ll just live with it!
In keeping with my new ‘state of mind’, I went for a run this morning, which was great. (Didn’t go very far, or very fast, but I went.)
So much of what we do is about the way we see things and the way we approach things. It seriously is about the “state of mind”.
Right since the beginning of this whole cancer thing, I’ve been well aware that my state of mind has been important. So many people say that rates of survival etc of not only cancer are linked to the psychological approach and attitude of the patient.
Funnily enough, even knowing this, it has not made me ‘determined to be positive’ at every turn. That’s just the way I am – an incurable optimist, sometimes to my detriment, but that is just the way I approach the world.
Maybe Dad (and God) had something going there.
Dad never really quoted the poem, or drilled it into us, or anything. In fact, I was really reminded about it when we found a few copies amongst his papers after he died. The content definitely spoke to me, though, and resonated with how I approach life anyway.
What a win. Dad would approve.
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