There’s a thing I often like to point out about belief. It’s the fact that it can only be developed two ways:
1) Through blind faith, which is usually based on a compelling argument, or
2) Based on some sort of tactile hard evidence.
This forms the basis of an observation.
There are two types of people in the world: There are those who can believe in something without actually seeing it and there are those who need hard evidence of its existence before the investment of their belief is forced out of them.
As today’s world shifts more and more towards the cynical belief in anything not proven with absoluteness seems increasingly rare. Yet it still exists. It exists for one reason. People require some semblance of hope just to carry on. They seek it everywhere. It’s as essential as the air we breathe.
As a student of entrepreneurship I know that things must be created and shipped even though they may not be perfected. Tweaks can be made latter. “Run it up the flag pole and see who salutes it” as the great copywriter Gary Halbert once said. That kind of productivity is scary. It can lead to many failures. But it can also lead to successes too. You just need to have the gumption to proceed.
Consider the mobius and how it elegantly demonstrates the duality principal yet again.
Belief, in its usual form, looks a lot like just another’s personal perspective and indeed it is. But, on the other hand, if you can get some sort of hard evidence then consider that a bonus.
It can disperse the strength of resistance and make the road forward more attainable.
Sports figures, entrepreneurs, politicians, and you and I. This is only a partial list of those who succeeded because of just one thing: they had just enough belief to try.
I’m talking about self-belief of course. That’s the kind of belief that infuses the confidence of our mindset and opens a portal to our potential that allows it to flood into our every attempt to succeed at something new.
But there is a problem with this. Two problems actually.
The first is the worrisome fear that our self-belief might be groundless and superficial. That it was applied, like a thin coat of cheap paint, from the time when we read something inspirational in a book or listened to a motivational talk from a skilled presenter.
The second problem is that our potential, if we even think we have any, cannot be seen. Its invisibility becomes a burden even though we’re told by others, who are trying their best to encourage us, that we have lots of it. So we stubbornly use that as reinforcement to our argument for why we can’t do something. If we can’t see it, we reason, then how do we know it’s really there?
There is one main reason why these two problems exist. It’s the lack of actual proof. The problem of your potential’s invisibility is do to the fact that you are human. You can’t see your own potential because it’s simply too darned big a pattern to fit into your human brain.
Yes, the fact is that you can’t possibly comprehend something who’s boarders you can’t see. For example, imagine that you’ve been shipwrecked and found yourself alone in the middle of the vastness of the ocean. You look around but all that you can see is open water in every direction. How could you not feel completely lost?
That ocean is like your potential. It’s a pattern and the pattern is huge. It may have an edge somewhere but since you can’t see it you’re unable to have a frame of reference between you and it. Without that frame of reference there can be no understanding of the pattern you’re looking at.
If you need some kind of proof you need to have it in a form that is solidly understandable. A huge ocean like this is a great metaphor for the size of your own personal potential but to get your head around it you need a something smaller. You need a sample. You need a cup.
A cup of that ocean’s water is an amazing game changer. Small enough so that its boarders can easily be comprehended yet chock full of truth because its contents are exactly the same as the water that’s in that ocean.
There is a word for this type of sample. It’s called a “fractal”.
Fractal images are usually rendered by computer and were first developed and named by the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in the 1970’s. They are more closely related to geometry, rather than samplings of personal belief patterns, but they fit my purpose beautifully so I use them.
My point is this: If you had just two types of fractals
• a set sequence of true-life examples of your individual past accomplishments
• a set sequence of the exact same gut exhilaration you experienced when you first performed each of the successful activities you had examined above
I have discovered that if those two things are brought together in a tight time-frame of a few short hours then an interesting reaction happens inside anyone who does it. An authentic body feeling will present itself as irrefutable proof that you have had success in the past, and therefore, have enormous potential for attaining it in the future.
To overcome the problem of believing in something that is far too large to comprehend has been my life’s work up to this point. I now have turned the theory into reality and only need a few of you to test it.
Please leave a comment below if you’re willing to give it a try.
I subscribe to a design blog and they send me updates like a lot of blogs do. The latest one contained a quote someone sent in from broadcaster Ira Glass. Ira won the much coveted Edward R. Murrow Award in 2009. He’s a very accomplished writer and radio personality. Been doing it since he was just nineteen years old.
Know what he said about his beginnings in radio? He said that he took the longest time to reach a level of mastery in doing interviews and stories on radio then anyone he knows. He says that getting through the beginning time can take years of working through the frustration with your own crappy output. It tries to be good but it’s just not. He says that’s where most loose it. They quit because they are convinced that they will never ever see success.
I know what he’s talking about.
I’ve just had another birthday blow by and I’m still trying to refine my message about mindset immunity and the fact that I have the tool that can allow anyone, in 24 hours or less, to see and feel the huge ocean of potential that exists within them. And when they use this tool they can create amazing levels of self-belief.
When attempting to do something new it becomes a creative work no matter what field you work in. There is a lot of failure to contend with.
In another email I got this week Ishita Gupta was interviewing Steven Pressfield on his new book “Do The Work“. In it Pressfield related a story about Picasso:
“There’s a famous story of Picasso after he had finished about 24 paintings for his next show. He invited his agent or his manager to his studio to look at the paintings and as Picasso was looking at them with his manager, he started to hate them. He grabbed a painting knife and started slashing the paintings. The manager absolutely freaked out and said, “NO, NO, NO!” but Picasso kept slashing until they were all ruined. Then he went back to the drawing board.”
That’s the kind of craziness that happens with our own self-assessment. It’s punishing to be a creative or a leader of any kind.
If I was going to quit I should have done it 20 years ago. But I didn’t and now I can’t. There is just too much at stake. Too many lives to help make better, richer, more fulfilling.
Besides, it worked for Ira so it’ll work for me.
It’ll work for you too. Hang in there.
More power to you.
PS; Let me know what you think about the challenge of trying to put together something brand new. Leave me your thoughts in the comment area below. If you’d like to get alerted on new blog posts you can subscribe by clicking here.
Famous Quotivations # 14 – February 18 , 2011 [display_podcast]
The most important thing you can have is an unbridled belief in yourself. This one thing will fuel your personal vision of the future like nothing else can. It will be a vision that is so real that it is not a question of weather or not it is going to come to fruition but only when.
But, given this truth, there is one fly in the ointment. Belief, any belief, is established in one of two ways: through argument or through hard evidence. If you go out and attempt to build self-belief by investing in the argument method only it might not be sticky enough to pull you up the life’s incline.
Better you should seek an authentic burning eternally-fired energy-backed belief based on the hard evidence that you’ve been successful before.
The key can be found in your success history. Locate that and you at least stand a fair chance no matter what the current circumstances look like.
Charlie was a child performer and had lots of ups and downs.
But he must have been keenly aware that those times when he persevered would create memories of real victories that he could draw on later.
Must have worked because he did go on to gain many honors. Playwright George Bernard Shaw called Chaplin “the only genius to come out of the movie industry.”
It’s Friday. Consider yourself “Quotivated”!
PS: If self belief is something you’d like to have in abundance then check out my free webinar on Tuesday night at 6PM Pacific. To get a notification go here.
Famous Quotivations # 9 – Jan 28 , 2011 [display_podcast]
“I couldn’t wait for success so I went ahead without it.” –Jonathan Winters
Do you have a wait problem?
Know what I’ve noticed over the years?
A lot of us have wait problems.
No, I’m not talking about the heavy kind of weight. To be sure, obesity is certainly reaching critical mass here in Canada and in the US, but what I’m talking about is a problem that has gripped almost all of us no matter what the size label says.
The wait problem I’m talking about is metered by the pendulum not the tape measure and it’s probably more virulent than you would think. In fact the number one reason for highway deaths each year is speeding in an attempt to beat the clock.
So, why are we going so fast? We can’t wait to get to where we’re going.
See the wait problem?
We can’t stand to wait for anything so we surround ourselves with things that deliver quickly. Microwave ovens, email, rapid transit, TV and internet with high-speed cable, and, of course, pizza.
Clearly, we hate waiting. We want stuff and we want it now.
Instant gratification has become the new normal. Too bad our immune system, the one that looks after our thinking not the one that takes care of our body, hasn’t kept up to this speed increase. It’s been a mindset immunity massacre.
As a result all the old methods of personal development, the ones that were authored way back in the 30’s and 40’s, don’t work near as well as they once did They we’re never designed to overcome such a high level of uncertainty.
One of the most devastating effects of this bias for all things instant is when it comes to success. When a new entrepreneur doesn’t see their dream unfolding quick enough it tends to kill their motivation to carry on. They loose the ability to muster enough passion and persistence to keep running the business efficiently and learn from their mistakes over the long haul.
The problem with success is that the timeline to it can be long and arduous. Take for example the prolific mystery author Steven King. He wrote every day for nine years before he sold his first novel. Marie Curie spent seven years living in poverty in Paris while studding and researching radio activity. Michael Faraday worked as a lab assistant for seven years before he was even allowed to do his own experiments. And finally, Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star newspaper in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Thirty-six years later on July 18, 1955 Disneyland opened to the public and approximately 50,000 guests attended the Monday opening day.
Studies show that, on average, fifty percent of all start-ups fail during the all-important first five years of being in business. Same for relationships (What’s that? You refuse to make me happy every single day? I’m outta here!)
Sure, you shouldn’t have to wait for success to happen but don’t quit trying new things to make it happen. Consistently working every day toward the end goal is key to getting through the dreaded timeline and the learning curve on the road to success.
It could well be that success in anything is always going to be further than you think. But what if the reward of knowing that you could do it on your own is worth the wait?
It’s Friday. Consider your self quotivated.
PS: Is this about you? Do you have a wait problem? Is success running away from you? Maybe you should check out my new book “The Gut Brain Balm – How to get more of the success and happiness you deserve by learning to love the ugliest brain your world has never known.”
The Annual New England Xylophone Symposium by DoKashiteru is licensed under a Attribution Noncommercial (3.0)
