Living the Significant Life (22 page)

With so many things to distract us from what we need to do, setting priorities and sticking with them isn’t easy. There’s always e-mail to be checked and rechecked, a great game on TV, your list of bookmarked websites, the little project that will take only a few minutes, and a hundred other things that keep us from getting where we want to go.

But as Lauren is learning, failing to focus on what’s most important steals not only our time but also our dreams. Start today to work on your stones before getting sidetracked by all the sand in your jar. You’ll be surprised at how attainable even the most ambitious goals will become.

PRINCIPLE #10

Believe in Belief

What you believe yourself to be, you are.

—Claude M. Bristol

As we New York Mets fans used to say during the 1973 baseball season, “Ya gotta believe!” Belief is a feeling of certainty—specifically, being certain of possibilities. When we believe something, what we really believe is that it is
possible.
Whether it’s life after death, a cure for cancer or lupus or AIDS, or success in any endeavor, either we believe it’s possible or we don’t.
Impossibility
might simply be defined as “the absence of positive belief.”

The more certain you feel that something is possible for you, the stronger your belief is. Conversely, you can weaken or even kill a belief by introducing doubt
.

Doubt is like black paint, and belief is like white paint. Have you ever mixed white paint into black to get gray? It takes an extraordinary amount of white added to black to lighten it, yet the tiniest dab of black added to white makes it gray immediately. Doubt is that strong.

For more than a hundred years, the holy grail of athletic competition was to run a mile in less than four minutes. With each failed attempt, the possibility of success faded further—not simply further into the future, but further from the idea that such a thing was even possible.

From the 1920s to the early 1950s, science and what passed for sports medicine held that the human body was simply incapable of such unbelievable performance. The conventional wisdom of the day was that the lungs could not process enough oxygen to sustain the effort; they would burst under the strain, and so would the heart. Bones would fracture, joints rupture, muscles give out, and ligaments and tendons tear and fail under such stress. It was a physiological and psychological barrier. A human being running a mile in less than four minutes was just
not possible.

Then on May 6, 1954, in Oxford, England, a young medical student named Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.

Obviously, Bannister believed it was possible—and with his historic run, he broke not only the physical four-minute barrier but also a universally held “belief barrier.” Within three years, another runner had duplicated Bannister’s feat, and in the years that followed, hundreds of others did, too.

What were they all waiting for?

Today,
thousands
of runners around the world have run a mile in less than four minutes. Even high school students do it. Bannister proved it was possible. Now everyone believes it. “Impossible” is something we
make up.

Clearly, belief is powerful!

Feeling Is Believing

Although our beliefs are feelings of certainty, that doesn’t mean that our beliefs are absolute truth. However, we operate
as though
our beliefs are the truth. And isn’t it wonderful? It means we can change our beliefs whenever we want. We are in control—in fact, our beliefs are among the few things in life we truly
can
control. In the realm of belief, we are all truly free.

A woman named Janice was in Peter’s relationship marketing organization. Janice was a legal secretary and had started her own relationship marketing business because she was fed up with her boss telling her what to do.

Janice had a fantastic opportunity to expand her new enterprise quickly, because she knew at least a hundred successful lawyers who could have served as perfect prospects for her fledgling business. But she didn’t contact them.

Peter spent a good amount of time with Janice, and although she had great intentions, week after week, she continued not to get any results. Finally, he asked her, “Janice, what do you think is missing in your approach?” She hemmed and hawed, as though afraid to articulate the real reason for her suboptimal performance. Eventually, however, after enough trust had been established, she confided that she didn’t feel on the same level as the professionals for whom she’d once worked as a secretary. She didn’t believe that they would treat her as an equal or pay attention to the opportunity she was offering them. Janice was a prisoner of her own beliefs.

Peter had quite a different perspective. He’d
been
a lawyer, and he had gotten out of the profession because he hated it. He also knew what it was like being faced with ethical questions almost every day of his life, and in order to succeed in the legal profession (that is, keep his job), he constantly had to make choices that compromised his integrity. He didn’t like that at all.

He shared these thoughts and feelings with Janice on a number of occasions. One day, on the telephone, she suddenly exclaimed, “Peter, I got it! What I’m offering these guys is
hope.
I’ve got the solution to their problems. These lawyers
need
me!”

At that moment, Janice simply shifted her belief about lawyers and who she really was for them. She shifted her belief from a limiting one to an empowering one. The process of laying the foundation for that moment had taken her two months. In the next six months, she became a transformed person: poised, confident, and self-assured—and her income increased from zero to more than ten thousand dollars a month.

Your Beliefs Are Your Destiny

Your beliefs shape your actions. Your actions cause results—the circumstances of your life—and those results, when stretched out over a lifetime, are what’s called your
destiny.
Therefore, your beliefs—what you cause your mind to think and feel certain about—are the causative source of your destiny.

Stop and think for a moment. Is that the way you think it works? For many people, this is a dramatic shift in their way of thinking. Most of us walk around believing that when we earn a hundred thousand dollars, drive a Porsche, or live in a fantastic house, then we’ll really feel great!

We think that our results cause our feelings. Although it can work that way, it’s not the
only
way. Obviously, things happen and you feel one way or another about them. That’s a choice you have. But do you see that your feelings can also cause results?

Remember, your beliefs are
feelings of certainty
—feelings that, however aware or unaware you might be of them, you choose to have. Your feelings direct your actions. So if you want to achieve a specific result, one surefire way to get it is to feel the way you would if that result were already present and true for you.

How would you feel if you earned a hundred thousand dollars? Can you think of any better way to bring that kind of income into your life as fast as possible than feeling like a hundred-thousand-dollar-income earner? There isn’t any. It all starts with belief. How would it feel to be able to live beyond your daily stress? How would it feel to be able to give abundantly and generously to your church, family, or even strangers? How would it feel knowing that you could help your parents retire with dignity?

Belief is a powerful tool. This is not “positive thinking” mumbo jumbo; it’s how great accomplishments actually occur. It’s how success happens, and it’s crucial that you understand this point—or at least try it on as a
possibility.

Knowing this is not enough. Knowledge alone never produces accomplishment. One of the greatest half-truths (that is, half-lies) in the world is “knowledge is power.” Not quite.

Do you remember from your high school science days the two types of energy: potential and kinetic? Potential energy is just that, potential. It just sits there, accomplishing nothing. Kinetic energy is energy in action. It’s actually doing something.

It’s the same with the energy of knowledge. Knowledge in action is kinetic. It’s moving and shaking, not just sitting there in your mind. What quality breaks the inertia of potential knowledge’s tendency to just sit there, doing nothing, and turns it into wisdom in action? Belief.

The number-one belief for all high achievers and genuinely happy people we have ever met or studied is the belief that
action supersedes everything.

This is another fundamental shift for many of us: it means changing the habitual strategy of “Ready, aim, fire” to the more proactive—and, most people would assume, more reckless and dangerous—“Fire, aim, ready!” But that’s precisely the kind of shift that generates quantum leaps and breakthroughs in our lives.

The Two Types of Beliefs

Beliefs come in two forms: empowering and limiting; these are also referred to as possibility and no-possibility. People commonly think of these as positive beliefs and negative beliefs.

Remember how Janice shifted her beliefs from negative to positive, from limiting to empowering, and the results she achieved when she did? That’s the power of adopting possibility beliefs. Of course, Janice had all the inside-track lawyerly information from Peter.

All the runners had the fact that Roger Bannister had already run a 3-minute, 59.4-second mile to bolster their courage. But Bannister didn’t. How did he form such a powerful belief while the rest of the world held tenaciously to its limiting one?

The answer is surprisingly simple: he made it up. He made up a challenge and then believed it would happen.

You might say that Peter made up those beliefs for Janice, and you’d be right, because he did. There was just as much evidence that lawyers love their work as there was that they don’t. What served Janice was for Peter to make up beliefs that supported her seeing herself as a contribution to those lawyers. Making it up is powerful.

This is one of the great inspiring secrets to success in every aspect of life and work. You make up your beliefs.
You
decide. Positive or negative, you choose to believe what and how you do. It’s the possibility we
believe
in that matters, and we discover possibilities even when we have the most limiting evidence at hand. We have a choice: develop beliefs that limit or develop beliefs that inspire. It really is that simple.

So how do you do that? The first thing is,
don’t try
!

Trying Is
So
Trying

Since belief is a feeling of certainty based on possibility, and since it seems so very true that humans can do only what they believe they can do, this puts the kibosh on the word
try.

Look for a pen or a pencil, or any small object, near you. Now
try
to pick it up.

What happened? If this doesn’t make sense to you, then don’t just read it—really, go ahead,
try.
Don’t actually pick it up—that would be
doing.
Don’t do it, just
try
to do it. Do you see the difference?
Doing
is in the action.
Trying
is inaction and procrastination. In the words of the
Star Wars
Jedi knight Yoda, “Luke, you either do, or you do not—there is no ‘try.’”

We suggest that you get out your dictionary and draw a big line through the word
try.
Then do the same with the word in your own vocabulary. Now let’s get back to how to develop beliefs that give you power and how to rid yourself of limiting beliefs.

Asking the Right Questions

One thing that’s common to all the high achievers we’ve met is that they ask themselves questions that help them to develop beliefs that inspire and encourage.

For example, what kind of question is “Why am I so fat?” Is it a limiting question or a powerful question? Look at the possibilities for an answer to that question. They’re all limiting: “I’m a pig.” “I have no willpower.” “I just can’t stop eating.” “My whole family is fat.” No matter what you say, you’re trapped. You’re either a failure or a helpless victim—probably both.

Ask the question this way instead: “What action could I take to lose twenty pounds and enjoy the process?” Now what happens with your answer? You begin to consider the possibilities. You start looking at possible solutions, exploring new and inspiring ideas. Maybe you even begin to make up some new beliefs for yourself.

It’s a whole new and different ball game. It’s a high-achieving question that can be answered only by high-achieving possibi-lities.

One key to establishing new beliefs in yourself—and in others, too—is to ask questions that elicit positive possibility answers. For example, turn “Why can’t I quit smoking?” into a positive by asking, “What steps can I take to be smoke-free”? Or turn “What would I do if I lost my job?” into “What alternatives exist to give me the work security I want and deserve?”

In each of these instances, the answers shift from those that serve only to strengthen your negative beliefs and limitations of no possibility into those that strengthen your aspirations and desires and that generate new beliefs for what is possible for you to achieve.

Two little kittens discovered a big pail of cream. Being kittens, they both tried everything they could to get to all that delicious cream. They finally did—and they fell in! At first they were both in kitty heaven, swimming around in the cream, lapping it up, drinking more and more and more. But after drinking their fill, they suddenly realized that they couldn’t get out! They tried and tried, but the rim of the pail was just too high to reach.

About this time, their kitten playmates came along and gathered around the rim of the big pail, shouting and jeering at the two kittens in the cream. They made fun of them, mocked them, and laughed at how stupid and foolish they were to fall into the pail of cream, where they couldn’t get out.

One kitten kept looking up at the others making fun of him and felt more and more dejected. He kicked and flailed his legs and paws, but to no avail. Finally he gave up and sank exhausted into the cream.

The other kitten also kept looking up at her playmates, but she seemed to be renewed by their taunts and kept trying to jump up and reach the edge of the pail. Eventually all her jumping about turned the cream to butter. She then stood on the firm surface and jumped up and out of the pail easily.

When she got out and stood next to the other kittens, one of them leaned over and asked, “How come you kept trying even though we were laughing at you, making fun of you, and telling you you’d never make it?”