A railroad crew was making repairs to a section of track when a train rolled up on a parallel track. Several men in suits disembarked from one of the passenger cars and began inspecting the work that was being done. A tall man in a blue suit looked over at the crew and nodded. He began to smile and walk toward them.

“Ted, is that you?” he asked of the crew’s chief.

“Yes, it is,” the chief replied as he shook hands with the visitor. “It’s good to see you, Dale!”

The two men chatted briefly, inquiring about each other’s health and families. Before they parted, they shook hands again and promised to keep in touch. When the man in the suit walked away, a member of the crew asked the chief, “Was that Dale Willis, the head of the railroad?”

“Yes, it was,” the chief replied.

“It seems like you two are old friends,” the man said.

“We are,” the chief replied. “We started out together on this job on the same day 20 years ago.”

“So how is it that you’re here laying track with us?” someone asked.

“Well,” the chief replied, “I had a vision of working for the railroad, while Dale had a vision of running the railroad.”

And if Ted is content working for the railroad, his vision was realized. Dale’s vision, on the other hand, set him on a path that he could accomplish only through a step-by-step plan to move ahead. This story from the inspirational magazine Bits & Pieces perfectly illustrates the importance of vision.

A study done by Fortune magazine examined 120 entrepreneurs over a three-year period. They were asked, “What do you need most to be a success?”

The study, headed by J. Robert Baum, then an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, pointed to the necessity of vision when reaching one's goals. The people who succeed are the ones who have a vision and clearly know where they want to go.

The American Marketing Association did a study several years back and asked 500 CEOs what their companies needed to survive the next five years. Eighty-one percent said creativity and vision. But of the 500 CEOs, the same percentage of them said that their company was not doing a good job of fostering those things.

I suspect that part of the problem is that many companies don’t know how to formulate a realistic vision. They confuse it with goals and objectives, which should come out of the corporate vision. Vision doesn't do the planning and it doesn't anticipate the obstacles. It gives a real idea of what is possible, if only everyone wants it bad enough.

Base your vision on principle. An effective vision isn’t about processes or products, but principles -- guidelines for action and behavior. Explore the values that guide the organization. Rely on principles that are timeless and easy to grasp, even if they’re sometimes difficult to live up to.

A vision that inspires people to action doesn’t come out of a single afternoon brainstorming session. Every member of your team needs to spend time asking questions about the organization, your industry, customers, competitors, trends -- everything that affects the success of your vision. You must build a foundation of learning before you can go forward.

Don’t base your vision on where you are today, but on where you want to be in five years, or 10 or 25. Think about the direction you want to take and the obstacles you will have to overcome in order to succeed.

When I speak to corporate America, I tell the story of Helen Keller, who was left blind and deaf at age 19 months from a childhood illness. Yet she became a brilliant author and lecturer who graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College. According to one story, she was making a speech on a college campus, and during the question-and-answer session, a mean-spirited person asked her the following: “Tell me, Miss Keller, is losing your eyesight the worst thing in the world that can happen to anyone?”

“No,” she said. “It’s losing your vision.” Eyesight is what we see in front of us. Vision is all the way down the road.

Mackay’s Moral: Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

After the New England Patriots defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers to advance to the Super Bowl, star Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was asked what makes his team so special. His answer was short and succinct, “Mental toughness.”

Not exceptional physical strength, not training, not even superior talent.

Mental toughness.

In the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology, Graham Jones, Sheldon Hanton and Declan Connaughton interviewed elite athletes, as well as elite-level coaches and sports psychologists, to arrive at the following definition of mental toughness: It's “having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables you to: generally, cope better than your opponents with the many demands (competition, training, lifestyle) that sport places on a performer; specifically, be more consistent and better than your opponents in remaining determined, focused, confident and in control under pressure.”

There are many characteristics that contribute to mental toughness. It all starts with training and preparation. If you aren’t prepared to do your job, you have no chance. The will to succeed is preceded by the will to prepare.

Consistency goes hand-in-hand with preparation. Getting started is hard enough, but consistently carrying out your plan is more difficult. Even the best business plans will fail without a dedication to consistency.

Other important traits are concentration and focus. It’s a topic I hear about frequently in business. The most common complaints? Too many irons in the fire. Too many projects spinning at one time. Too many interruptions. Too many phone calls. Too many emails. Too many things to do. Too little time. To deal with this, you must stay focused as best you can, and don’t let things happen to you -– not when you can make things happen.

Poise under pressure is another important attribute. It’s easy to show poise when everything is going well. It’s a lot tougher to maintain your poise when things are not going well. But the minute you lose your composure, the chances of defeat increase. Focus on what you can do or control. Forget the past.

Next, everyone must have goals. What is it you want to achieve? Truly dedicated individuals won’t let anything interfere with the attainment of their goals. That’s why so few people become champions in their fields.

Determination almost goes without saying. If you don’t have a deep-down burning desire to achieve something, you won’t accomplish it. Sometimes, desire is more important than talent. Determination can turn the ordinary into extraordinary.

This old quote says it best: “Some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined to.”

To be mentally tough, you've got to love competition. It’s healthy. It keeps you sharp, makes you better and improves quality. You should not only welcome stiff competition, you should actively seek it. You’ll never realize your full potential in business or sports unless you are challenged. The breakfast of champions is not cereal, it’s competition.

Adversity is very important as well. There are many things that can go wrong in life, so you must be mentally prepared for whatever happens. At some point, you will need to perform at your best when you’re feeling your worst.

Similarly, people who are mentally tough are resilient. The strong survive not because they are determined to conduct business as usual, but because they find ways to rise above the issue at hand. You can’t live life with an eraser. You can’t anticipate every possible problem, no matter how hard you try. But you can resolve to face challenges as they arise. Keep your mind wide open for solutions, listen to those around and under you, reprogram your brain for success and dig in. Don’t let hard times turn into end times. Let them lead to your best times.

You’ve heard the old saying: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Believe it. That’s what separates the winners from the losers.

By the time you read this, the Super Bowl will be over. But I guarantee, the winner will be the team that understands the importance of mental toughness.

Mackay’s Moral: When life tests your mettle, nothing succeeds like an iron will.

The most important product that America has managed to produce is not the automobile, television or computer. It is hope -- not only for ourselves, but for the world. In these times of so much tension and divisive rhetoric, hope is what will sustain us.

America is, after all, a country founded on hope.

We recently celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and few people represented hope more than that legendary civil rights leader. He said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

Consider also the words of another inspirational pastor, Robert H. Schuller, who said, “Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.”

The future is what we have to work with. We can’t change history, but we can sure learn from it.

Businesses thrive on hope. Hope is manifested in long-range plans. Hope is apparent in building projects and expansion schemes. Hope is what brings new products to the market and what makes salespeople tick.

Hope is the reason most of us find a way to keep on keeping on. Hope is what helps us get past the bumps in the road and find a better path. Hope is believing that the best is yet to come.

Few people in the history of college sports have had a greater impact than my close friend Lou Holtz. He’s the only coach ever to lead six different schools to bowl games -- all within his first two years as head coach at each school. How did he do it? Well, according to Coach, there’s really only one way.

“I think everybody has to have four things in their life to be complete,” he told me. “First, everybody needs something to do -- something you have a passion for regardless of age. Second, everybody needs someone to love. Third thing, everybody needs something to hope for -- something that you’re really striving to accomplish. And finally, everybody needs something to believe in.”

In my mind, one of the best examples of hope is the backyard gardener. A gardener is someone who believes that what goes down must come up. Planting tiny seeds, hoping the ground is fertile, hoping for enough rain to nourish the seeds, but not so much that they will drown, hoping for sunshine and warm temperatures, hoping for a bountiful crop or beautiful flowers.

There are no guarantees when the spade turns the earth in the spring. No way of predicting whether the elements will cooperate. No assurance that the rabbits will stay away from the tempting sprouts. And yet, gardeners hope for a successful growing season despite so little being in their control.

When you plant seeds of hope in your garden, business or life, there are no promises. But there is a driving force that makes you persevere because you have hope that you will succeed. You have something to believe in.

According to a famous story, Bishop Milton Wright was expounding on the notion that the second coming of Christ was near, during an 1890 sermon. He said that everything that God had sent man to Earth to do was accomplished. A member of the congregation jumped to his feet and said that someday, man would fly.

The bishop responded with the predictable line, “If God had intended man to fly, he would have given him wings.”

Yet 13 years later, in 1903, Bishop Wright’s two sons, Orville and Wilbur, proved him wrong.

I wonder what Bishop Wright would say about the space program -- another amazing example of hope.

Hope is a gift that we give ourselves. Hope is a gift we can share with others. Hope is free, yet losing hope comes at a great cost. Hope is within all of us. We just need to let it guide us to a better future.

Just remember these words frequently attributed to Albert Einstein: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

Mackay’s Moral: When the world says, “Give up,” hope whispers, “Try again.”

(EDITORS" For editorial questions, please contact Reed Jackson at rjackson@amuniversal.com.)