“Your success depends mainly upon what you think of yourself and whether you believe in yourself. You can succeed if nobody else believes it; but you will never succeed if you don’t believe in yourself.” -William Boetcker
What we think and believe is paramount. What we think of ourselves and believe about ourselves is what determines our ability to succeed. Before we can ever actually succeed at any endeavor, we must first believe we can. Even the simplest definition of success, the pursuit of a worthy ideal or goal, requires the ability to believe success is possible.
Many of the most amazing accomplishments recorded throughout history have been achieved despite the disbelief of the majority. Great achievers set their sights on a prize and commit to the attainment of that prize despite all the doubts, all the criticism, and all the naysayers. If the doers had listened to the doubters, we wouldn’t have been to the moon, we wouldn’t regularly circumnavigate the globe, and I certainly wouldn’t be typing this message on my iPad.
William Boetcker was a believer. He came to America from Hamburg, Germany, and quickly made a name for himself as an eloquent motivational speaker. He became an ordained minister, but his notoriety came from his speaking and his writing. He established himself with his own belief and his ability to inspire others to believe in themselves. And remarkably, he did this in the early 1900s, long before motivational speakers were a mainstay of American culture.
