Just because you cannot feel or touch something does not mean that it doesn’t exist. Winston Churchill summed it up for me when he said: “The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

When you set out your goals in life, it is human nature to imagine that you will succeed at everything you choose to do. You day dream about success, reaching the top of your chosen profession, finding the perfect partner – I will leave you to fill in the rest – after all it is your dream we are talking about here.

Sadly, life has this unfortunate knack of delivering a few knocks on the way – it happens to us all – and it is then when positive thinking has to kick in if you are to achieve those goals. If you allow negative thoughts to take over then those dreams will quickly begin to fade.

Let’s get back to Winston Churchill – a man who had more than his fair share of knocks in life. He was a prisoner of war in South Africa, frequently fell out with his peers, was sacked from high profile jobs on more than one occasion and after leading Britain to victory in World War two, promptly lost an election – how’s that for gratitude.

Winston bounced back in the following election, but during all his trials he never lost sight of his ultimate goals – and no matter how daunting – he always assumed he would succeed – and most of the time he did.

But the real reason why I admire Winston Churchill so much is because he frequently suffered from deep depression which he called the “black dog,” but recognised it for what it was and used positive thinking to take him from his inner dark place and back into the light.

Here is the real lesson from this blog and for the rest of us. We have all been in dark places and will no doubt be again at some time and as difficult as it may seem we have to look for the positives and reassure ourselves that in time it will all pass and you will be back where you belong.

If you cannot allow positive thinking back into your life when everything seems to be going wrong then you will develop a pattern of negativity. You will quickly lose sight of those original goals, instead of visualising success, you will only see failure – and that is what you will attract.

Let’s assume for the moment that you may as you read this be in that dark place. We have temporarily distracted you with this blog but as soon as you get to the end then your thoughts will go back into overdrive – so let’s stop that process now with something more practical that even serious people would approve of.

I want you to find yourself a paper and pen and write down everything that is worrying you at the precise moment. Go into as much detail as you want, how you arrived at this situation, what went wrong in the process – get it all out of your brain and on to the paper.

I now want you to write down what you think will be the worst possible outcome. Now I realise that we could be talking about terminal illness or something else that might well be life changing, but even these extremes have to be confronted because right now you need to be strong and thinking positively. By writing down what is truly on your mind you will be able to see it for what it really use and get whatever is challenging you into some kind of perspective.

When you see it on paper you can focus on a solution or a plan of action to take your life forward. You can begin to think more positively by identifying alternatives. Every life is different and so is every negative situation, but think like Winston Churchill and see the invisible, feel the intangible and achieve the impossible.