We receive what we believe!

Nick was a big, strong, tough man who worked in the railroad for many years. He was one of his company's best employees. But Nick had one major problem. His attitude was chronically negative. He was known around the railroad yards as the most pessimistic man on the job. He perpetually feared the worst and constantly worried, fretting that somethng bad might happen.

One summer day, the crews were told that they could go home and hour early in order to celebrate the birthday of one of the foremen. All the workers left, but somehow Nick accidentally locked himself in a refrigerated boxar that had been brought into the yard for maintenance. The boxcar was empty and not connected to any of the trains.

When Nick realized that he was locked inside the refrigerated boxcar, he panicked. Nick began banging on the doors so hard that his fists became bloody. He screamed and screamed, but his coworkers had already gone home to get ready for the party. Nobody could hear Nick's desperate calls for help. Again and again he called out, until finally his voice was a raspy whisper.

Aware that he was in a refrigerated boxcar, Nick guessed that the temperature in the unit was well below freezing, maybe as low as five or ten degrees fahrenheit. Nick feared the worst. He thought, "What am I going to do? If I don't get out of here, I'm going to freeze to death. There's no way I can stay in here all night." The more he thought about his circumstances, the colder he became. With the door shut tightly, and no apparent way of escape, he sat down to await his inevitable death by freezing or suffocation, whichever came first.

To pass the time, he decided to chronicle his demise. He found a pen in his shirt pocket and noticed an old piece of cardboard in the corner of the car. Shivering almost uncontrollably, he scribbled a message to his family. In it Nick noted his dire prospects: "Getting so cold. Body numb. If I don't get out soon, these will probably be my last words."

And they were.

The next morning, when the crews came to work, they opened the boxcar and found Nick's body crumpled over the corner. When the autopsy was completed, it revealed that Nick had indeed frozen to death.

Now, here is what is fascinating... the investigators discovered that the refrigeration unit for the car was not even on! In fact, it had been out of order for some time and was not functioning at the time of the man's death. Therefore, Nick froze to death in a slightly less than normal room temperature of sixty-one degrees because he believed that he was in a freezing boxcar.

He expected to die...he expected the worst....was convinced that he didn't have a chance...and lost the battle in his own mind.

What battle are you losing in your mind????? How can you change your thinking? What you believe has a much greater impact on your life than what anybody else believes!

*Story from Empires of the Mind (Morrow, 1995)