No Swimming; But How About Some Poetry?

I haven't been able to get myself in the water for a long time now; I'm feeling like I've lost my edge, and that's a bad thing.  I'm experiencing two countervailing feelings: the negative influence of chronic pain versus my willpower to get into the ocean.  Living with pain has stripped my willpower, and is causing me to struggle with my motivation.  Certainly I have swum in pain time and time again when my mindset was right.
Unfortunately, I have a self-pity gene against which I have struggled throughout my life.  Adrenaline-rich experiences repress that gene, freeing me up to live as one who blends in with the world.  My adrenal glands need a good squeeze.

I have some quotes and sayings memorized that I rely on to keep me going.  They don't always work, but I have stuck with one especially though a few decades.  I'll give you a bit of history before I write it down.
There was a young sailor of 19 who swabbed the deck of the medical department on board the USS Midway  routinely.  One day in 1979, underway in the South China Sea, I was swabbing the small medical ward.  I was raising the racks (beds) up to swab thoroughly underneath.  I found a small scrap of well-worn paper with a poem written on it.  I toted this paper (approximately 3" x 3") around throughout my life (in my wallet) and memorized it over and over again.  I know the words well, for this great find was about 33 years ago.  It has served me as a source of motivation and I will share it. 

If You Think You're Beaten

If you think you're beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you want to win, but think you can't;
It's almost a cinch you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost.
For out in the world we find;
Success begins with a fellow's will;
It's all in the state of mind.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.

I never researched it until now; I thought that the sailor who had been napping on that rack during lunch had probably written it.  He was a studious type, this Mr. P. Pena, who was always seen with a novel and a dictionary.  I never did ask him; I liked the poem and kept it. 

It was written by a Mr. Walter Wintle in the early 1900's, and later modified and claimed by a few other writers as their own work.  When I looked it up today, I see that there is a third verse that was not written on my scrap.  I MUST look around the house, for surely I still have that paper somewhere.

It is not working for me just now, but I won't give up on it.  After all, as I say at the bottom of all my posts:

"The first time you quit is the last time you try."