Your level of success is directly proportional to the state of your belief. The state of your belief is the summation of the three elements described in the above section.
If you are strong willed in self-confidence and stand up to your fear, and if at the same time you are mindful and aware of yourself and your desires, you will find that the resulting state you are in is one of strong belief in yourself and in the final outcome of your inspiration.
When you have this belief and you fail at something, you will have no doubt in your mind that you can get up and get back to work. The belief you have, fortifies you from within and you need that kind of fortification to be able to succeed and it carries you to greatness. You have to manage this state of belief consistently.
Your state of belief is not something you can reach by accident. It doesn’t happen by chance and it can be eroded if you are not in careful cognizance of its power. You have to guard your belief, and in the event you feel unsure, you need to examine the elements that go into strengthening and defining your belief.
The above is an incontestable fact. What you believe in will always be your reality, regardless of what others choose to tell you. If you believe that you will never amount to much, you’re right. But if you believe, even with evidence to the contrary, that you will be wildly successful, you will be right as well. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
All else being equal, it does not matter how educated you are, how much you inherited, or where you are born. What you need is to believe that you can be whatever you want to be. The other side of that coin is that you will be whatever you are afraid of being. Between the both outcomes, what do you think determines the one that materializes in the tangible world?
Is it belief?
No. This is a trick question because you will end up being whichever you apply the more energy to. Belief is a form of energy, and so is fear, if regulated incorrectly.
Many people end up becoming exactly what they fear. Look at it this way, whatever you pay attention to is what will materialize in your life. That’s where elders talk about bad luck when they say talking about bad things could result in it happening. It’s not bad luck, it’s about your state of belief.
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If
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself
when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream –
and not make dreams your master.
If you can think –
and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build them up
with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart
and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds
and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings –
nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son.
Introduction to the Power of Belief
The road to success has many detours and distractions. Among the lot of them, I’ve chosen ten of the most common to reveal their nature and how belief is the best way to overcome them:
- Self-doubt
- Procrastination
- Fear of Failure
- Excuses
- Prejudice
- Negative Thoughts
- Pleasing Others
- Negative Environment
- Fear of Success
- Focusing on the Rewards
Every single one of these detours can be fatal to the attainment of success because they represent the manifestation of our inability to believe in our own abilities. You may even think that you are not worthy of success and that a mediocre life is all you need to get by. None of that is true. You have the free will to desire success, you have the universe which you have equal right to extract inspiration, and you have the free will to use your body and mind to make that inspiration a reality.
The following ten chapters will cover each detour in turn so that you may be able to understand the detour when you are faced with it, and you will uncover the level of belief you need to invoke upon reaching the detour to get past it.
By this point, you may have had the opportunity to read the preceding four books covering the other four elements needed to succeed. The one additional thing you need to know is that these are not rigid frameworks like a scaffold at a construction site where you lay one something on top of the other and voila! you have a platform.
That’s not how it works.
What you really have to do is develop each skill individually. Once you understand them, you have to assemble each and with all five, you can now build one atop of each other. What you will find is that each element becomes richer by its combination with the others. It’s an iterative collaboration as each element comes together and mixes with the other; they boost their characters and the whole is much greater than the individual parts.
Once you get to that level, you will see that you don’t need to give your effort a second look. You will find that you are always geared up and always ready to rumble. Success, at that point, becomes second nature.
That’s the way we have evolved. If you take away the distractions, success is in our nature. But we have been blinded and become part of a collective that looks like something out of the Matrix trilogy - plugged in and doped up to be content with a simple existence. Our real nature is that of a highly successful life, designed for greatness, but unfortunately, distracted by sideshows.
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Chapter 1: Self Doubt
“It’s not what you think that’s holding you back, it’s what you think you are not.”
Anonymous
At the top of the list of things that will throw a cog into your entire plan to be successful, is the seeming unexpected feeling of self-doubt. While you don’t plan on it and certainly don’t want it, you should never fall into the trap of thinking that self-doubt is not something that is beyond you. It is, and it can surface at a time when you least expect.
Self-doubt will throw you off your game, whether it’s in a bar room pool game or Olympic swimming competition. It’s a condition that creeps up upon you on the eve of battle and questions your entire existence and right to stand at the cusp of success. You can curse it, you can hate it, and you can fear it, but it’s pointless because self-doubt is not real. It’s not real as in, it’s not tangible and not something that is grounded in reality or truth. It is grounded, however, deep within your psyche.
Self-doubt that attacks moments before the finish line can only be managed. There are tactics and strategies to quell self-doubt at the moment it occurs before a duel or competition. These tactics can typically be breathing exercises that are similar to mindfulness training. We will discuss tactics later on in this chapter.
The time to totally expunge self-doubt is before it strikes. The removal of self-doubt should be an exercise that you undertake in your run up to success and in your outside life – that is the leisure time that is not related to the work that you do to achieve the success that you envision.
There are a number of levels of self-doubt. Some come in the form of questions and they challenge your worthiness to succeed at the tasks you are doing: others come to you in the form of disbelief that you are indeed destined to take the glory you deserve. There are some people who even succeed once and then feel guilty about their success so much so that they never attempt to succeed again. The self doubt makes them feel like frauds and that they may be found out.
Experiences dating back to the time you were a child show that self-doubt may have began with you being told that you are not good enough, or that you cannot do anything: on the other hand, strong belief may have been built up when parents and the environment encourage you positively. There are many psychological reasons that could point to this, but it is not a unique phenomenon, neither is it one that is rarely found. Self-doubt is a widespread issue among many people who, under normal circumstances, seem confident and gregarious.
The reason you experience self-doubt is that you lack the basic understanding of the universe and your role in it. Y...