Winning is a choice

You are a conqueror. You belong to the league of conquerors.

Dumisane Ntombela, who lost both his eyes to cancer at the age of two and had never seen a football match, became a sensation in South Africa when the team he coached in the Under-15 football league became number one.

Just when many experts thought the human body could hardly cope with low levels of oxygen climbing to the top of Mount Everest, two human bodies defied all that and achieved a remarkable milestone.

On May 8, 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habelar became the first men to climb Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen.

Come to think about it, Albert Einstein, one of the greatest thinkers the world cherishes, did not speak until when he was four years old. At the age of 16, he failed entrance examinations to the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School.

His father, even until the time of his death, considered his son to be a major failure. Even after graduating from college, he worked as an insurance salesman but quit after sometime because he failed too.

Such is the person who is best known for developing the theory of relativity and who further made significant contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. The heart and mind of a conqueror

No matter the obstacles you are coming across in pursuit of your dreams, never give up. Never ever give up. The obstacles are meant to make the best out of you. Iron sharpens iron.

You are just passing through the hot furnace of fire that is wiping impurities out of you. It may be seen to be tough. You might feel as if you are not making any progress. The truth of the matter is that you are making significant progress but probably impatience is frustrating your belief.

Anything that you wish to be you can be. Whatever the mind conceives, know that it is possible. As a matter of fact, you do not have to wait for the approval of people for you to pursue your dream.

If you wait for public acceptance, it will never come. People are comfortable in doing the very same things over and over, again and again. Your novel idea, therefore, sounds abstract to them and it may not be of value to them at face value.

As the going seems tough, take time to listen to your inner soul and sing along with Empire Cast.

Got a vision that no one else sees/Lots of dirty work, roll up your sleeves/Remember there’s a war out there/So come prepared to fight!/You never know where the road leads you/ Not everyone’s gonna believe you/And even when they’re wrong, don’t prove them right.

In that stanza you will come to realise what it takes to be successful. But hold on a moment. It is the chorus part that will further make your skin impenetrable to the spears of failure.

I would rather stand tall

Than live on my knees

‘Cause I am a conqueror

And I won’t accept defeat!

Try telling me no

One thing about me

Is I am a conqueror

A conqueror you are. A conqueror you were born. You might have just lost that belief and bravery to fear along the way, to self-doubt, to self-belittlement, to the disbelief of others in you.

You can never achieve anything if you are not a warrior. Fight the battle. Fight on. No matter how bruised you are, keep on fighting. Feel and say it in your heart: “I am a conqueror.”