Here's one of my favorite sayings: "if you think you can, or if you think you can't,
you're right."
Now, I first heard this from my father-in-law. He used to call me on the phone, I'd answer
the phone, he would say something like this, and then he'd go on for about ten
minutes about why this was true. He was kind of at the end of his career, and he was looking
back and try to figure out what was that made a him successful, and he would hear sayings like
this, and he would say, yep, that's right, that's exactly what happened to me.
So when I met him, he was already successful, but he didn't start out that way.
Here's his story:
He gets married during World War II, goes overseas with his unit, he's over there
till the end of the war, comes back after the war, reconnects with his wife,
settles down, and starts looking for a job to try to make a living.
So, things don't go too well. He can't find the right job, it's not the right fit, or
he has a job for a while, he loses the job,
things kind of go from bad to worse, to the point where he and his wife have to
move back in with his wife's family.
So he continues to look for a job after that, he's not feeling too good about
himself,
then one day he gets a job in the machine shop working on a honing
machine.
He realizes right away that he's good at it, and he kind of sees the whole picture of
the thing--
even though you'd only get a few cents or even a penny per part,
if you're fast and accurate at it, you can make a good living at this. And he
sees the whole picture of the thing.
So he borrows some money, buys his own machine,
rents out a little corner in the machine shop where he's working,
starts bringing in some business of his own, the machine shop owner does him some favors
and put some business his way,
and that's how he gets started.
When I met him, he owned three buildings in South Gate, California, had twenty
people working for him,
had a very successful machine shop business.
People from all over the country would send their parts to him because they
knew that they would get a good price, the work would be accurate, and he would
stand behind it.
So he was a role model for me. I looked up to him. When he would say things like
this to me, I would try to apply it to myself in trying to be successful
myself. So he was a role model.
And so the way he explained it to me was like this: even though there was a
particular time in his life when he was struggling to find what it was he was
going to do for a career,
and he was having a lot of setbacks, he still had the feeling that there was something
out there for him,
that things were going to somehow work out, and he didn't want to give up until he
found out what that was that. Now, it doesn't mean that he didn't get down on himself
from time to time, of course he did,
but the overall foundation of what he was working with was the idea that
things were going to work out.
Now what's the flip side of that?
Well, it's something that I see in my students from time-to-time. I will
occasionally have students
who, every time they have a setback, they kind of treated it as evidence that things
in general are not working out. It's almost as if they're trying to prove
that things aren't going to work out for themselves.
Now for myself, I'm lucky. I have role models in my life, successful people like
my father-in-law
who were willing to share with me the things that made them successful.
So when it comes to sayings like this, I would take it to heart, and I would think,
you know, I want to try to be in this category right here.
I want to think that things are going to work out. Now, you could be watching this
video, and maybe things aren't going too well for you. Maybe you're taking a math class and you
don't even know how you're going to finish this math class, let alone finish school.
Now, I know that this is just a saying right here, and it's not going to make
any difference to someone who is really having a difficult time.
I just want to leave open the possibility that maybe it's also true that you're on
your way to becoming a role model for somebody that you haven't met yet, in the
same way that my father-in-law was, when he was struggling after the war
to find a job, was actually on his way to becoming a role model for me, someone that
he would meet later in this life.
Now if that turns out to be true, and you meet all your goals, and you end up
successful, and you look back to this particular time in your life, I think
you'll find that will also be true that somehow you aligned yourself with
the thinking behind sayings like this. If you think you can, or if you
think you can't, you're right.