Positive thinking looks upon weak places in people as challenging opportunities. You can turn them into your strongest points.

Think defeat and you are bound to feel defeated. But practice thinking confident thoughts, make it a dominating habit, and you will develop such a strong sense of capacity that regardless of what difficulties arise, you will be able to overcome them.

Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles; they toughen and make strong.

A sense of inferiority and inadequacy interferes with the attainment of your hopes, but self-confidence leads to self-realisation and successful achievement.

Grasp a difficulty by the "blade" and it cuts; grasp it by the "handle" and you can use it constructively.

So if you feel that you are defeated and have lost confidence in your ability to win, sit down, take a piece of paper and make a list, not of the factors that are against you, but of those that are for you.

The secret is to fill your mind with thoughts of faith, confidence, and security.

complete state of retreating

Once he began to act as if he could not fail, he did not fail.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things?" What things? Why, anything! Disappointment, frustration, nervousness, despair, anxiety, injustice: "What shall we then say to these things?" Well, the answer is . . . "If God is for us, who can be against us?" Isn't that wonderful? That is resonant, that is sturdy, that is the essence of victory.

There was Glenn Cunningham, whose legs were so badly burned as a child that he was told he would not walk again. But he became one of the fastest Olympic milers in history. Glenn Cunningham told me that faith and positive thinking are 85 per cent of an athlete's success;

Practice "seeing" yourself, not as weak, wishy-washy and vascillating, but as strong, controlled, purposeful.