According to Tsun Tzu, "a battle is won or lost before it is ever fought." You can make an analogy with yourself, by re-interpreting your sense of failure and anticipating whether you'll experience and personalize it or, learn instead to expect success.  Do any of these ideas sound familar?

1) That man (or woman) is "out of my league."

2) I'm simply wasting my time. That employer won't take me seriously.

3) Why have I entered this race? I know I won't finish. I have no stamina.

If you begin to approach a person or situation with a sense of low-confidence and esteem, you have not yet understood the reality you begin with begins with a clean slate, so long as you sincerely believe it does. Your inner child is self-absorbed and may not yet have developed the emotional strength to rise above negative memories or feelings. Its never to late to change.

Any sense of conflict starts in your mind and results from a perceived disagreement. You may decide to organize a group outing, a club meeting, a public event, a new job, a business deal or negotiate the evolution of a relationship. How do you feel if you don't see the same way as other people? Do you dream of the pending fights, separation, redundancy, reminsce how your previous situations resulted poorly or below your expectations? Maybe you think abandoning your latest plans would be advisable to avoid repeating history, humiliation and defeat?

Whether your battles are 'won or lost' is determined by how you learn to separate your feelings from yourself. You can work through your feelings and understand why you have them, which experiences they're based on. Working through the roots that are grounded in your hopes, fears, memories or wild imagination, is preferable to suppressing them. Learn why you may accept or reject your potential in any area of your life, based on conditioned values and expectations that are truly changeable.

All you have to do is recognize the impact of external influences and whether or not your own memories or visions of the future are compatible with your current self and abilities. Those battles worth fighting are those that will enrich you, enable you to face fears, and even benefit from your perceived weaknesses. Discover whether any inner battles you fight aren't even yours. Someone may have imposed their hostility or other inner conflict on you. Toss such negative emotions aside. After all, why adopt someone else's issues? Why waste energy better channelled elsewhere?