My favourite stories are where someone comes back from the brink of disaster to be uber successful; he worse the failure; the sweeter the success. It inspires me to think that no matter how bad things might be, I can make a comeback too. It’s hard to concede defeat when we have examples such as Lance Armstrong who fought terminal testicular and brain cancer and before winning an unprecedented seven consecutive Tours de France.Or Donald Trump who has his place in the Guinness Book of Records for the biggest financial turnaround in history. To achieve this auspicious record, naturally, he had to dig his way out of a very deep pit, $975 million guaranteed personally OUCH! And we can’t forget the inimitable Steve Jobs, fired from the very company he founded and then forced to watch it sink into oblivion. Sound familiar? I am sure many of us can relate to these situations albeit on our own lesser scale.It’s easy to look at Lance, Donald and Steve now as some of the greatest but what about when they were in that very public, deep pit of despair terminal cancer, unconquerable debt and crushing humiliation in the boardroom. At least that was the prognosis by the veritable field of media and public opinion. Not so for these indomitable warriors of our time!What did the Donald do? “Giving up is something that never entered my mind … my critics were trying to skewer me but it had the opposite effect … it just made me want to make a comeback and in a BIG way ... I began to see my situation as a great opportunity. I had a big chance to show my enemies that I was a force to be reckoned with.“Then the turning point …. My accountants were in the woe-is-us mode and I walked in and talked about all the exciting projects I had lined up. I was exuberant and my descriptions were colourful and optimistic. They thought I was cracked! It wasn’t an act I was ready. All the financial pressure would be behind us soon, I told them, and I believed it too” (“Never Give Up How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success”).Steve Jobs said that being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything,” Jobs said. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” And he added: “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.”Darren Hardy, publisher of Success Magazine says: “The power of your WHY is what gets you to stick through the gruelling, mundane and laborious. It’s not about achievement; it’s about fulfillment. That’s why it’s not enough to choose to be successful. You have to dig deeper to find your core motivation, to activate your super-power. Your WHY power.”It is such a powerful principle; whether you are a homemaker, philanthropist, musician, yoga instructor, sportsman, businessman or a pastor. Or if you are coming from behind through injustice, mistakes, or plain bad luck, it’s all about having a vision for yourself.As Paul Meyer memorably quoted “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass.” (I love the word “inevitably”, it could ably be replaced with unavoidably, predictably inescapably all beautiful words in the tumultuous seas of negativity).Put more simply the ancient sage, Habbakuk said “write the vision, make it plain, that he may run that reads it”. Or Solomon, the wisest man “for lack of a vision, my people perish”.You may feel like you have been chopped off at the knees in these difficult times. But the real battle is for the mind. Hitting the wall is not an obstacle, it is an opportunity and when the mind is harnessed to believe that, creativity starts to work.As Lance quotes in his autobiography “It’s Not About the Bike; My Journey Back to Life”: “There is a point in every race when a rider encounters his real opponent and understands that it’s himself …. In my most painful moments on the bike, I am at my most curious and I wonder each and every time how I will respond. Will I discover my innermost weakness, or will I seek out my innermost strength.”Something to read: “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy (Publisher of SUCCESS magazine). The book is a treasure chest of ideas for achieving greater success than you ever dreamed possible (Brian Tracy)Something to watch: Jim Rohn (Formula for Success and Failure) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wMwHY3UjRMThis article was written by Lois Wilson. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Royal Gazette.