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 howto 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. 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.