A business executive was deep in debt and could see no way out. Creditors were closing in on him. Suppliers were demanding payment. He was sitting on a park bench, alone, head in hands, wondering if anything could save his company from going in bankruptcy.

Suddenly an old man appeared before him.
"I can see that something is troubling you," he said.
After listening to the executive's woes, the old man said, "I believe I can help you."
He took out a checkbook from his pocket, asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed it into his hand saying - "Take this money for now and meet me here exactly one year from today, and believe me you can pay me back at that time."
The business executive saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world of the then time.

"I think I can erase my money worries in an instant by this huge amount of money." he realized, but instead, the executive decided to put the check in his safe. "Maybe just knowing that the money was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business", he thought. Thus with renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again even more than before.

One year later, at the same time as agreed upon, as promised, he returned to the park with that check. At the agreed time, the old man also appeared there. But just as the executive was about to hand back the check and share his success story, that a nurse came running up and panting and grabbed the old man.

"I'm so glad I have caught him." she cried.  Then she said to the executive - "I hope he hasn't been bothering you. He's always been escaping from the home and telling people he's John D Rockefeller. " And she led the old man away from there.

The astonished executive just stood there, stunned. All year long he'd been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced that he had half a million dollars behind him. Was he not Rockefeller? Was that check fake? Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money that had turned his life around, it was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.