The Power of Belief

Last Saturday was the final game of the NCAA Women's Volleyball championships.

Minnesota's Golden Gophers (I still am having trouble with the choice of a discolored rodent as a mascot) were playing Stanford's Cardinal (even though it sounds incorrect, it's Cardinal, not Cardinals). Stanford was seeded 11th, Minnesota 5th. Both had overcome amazing obstacles to get into this game.

Stanford's team had started the year projected to be a .500 team, winning only half of their games.

They did have an ace in the hole, Olympian Ogonna Nnamani was on their team, however one player doesn't make a volleyball team.

But somehow not only were they there in the NCAA tournament, they were in the finals.

And they won.

Afterwards, Stanford's coach, John Dunning, was asked what was the turning point for the team, when they knew this could be something special? His reply was enlightening:

"In mid-November, we had three or four wins, Washington, and a couple of others that we probably should have lost. When you're in that situation, the team that doesn't think they're that good starts to believe, and the more it piles on, the more it's like a snowball rolling downhill. By the end, we had a lot of momentum. We really believed we were going to win today."

Catch that? The key to their season came when the team actually started to truly believe that they could win. At that point, it turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, with each win contributing to the belief (and conversely, each loss being ignored as not fitting into the reality of what the team was), until they became as difficult to stop as the snowball rolling downhill.

Belief is one of the keys of success!

Now, just believing isn't enough - I can sit here for 4 hours a day and honestly believe, vision and meditate on being a PGA-level golfer, but it's not going to happen because I only actually play golf 1-2 times per year.

It certainly helped that Stanford had an Olympian who could jump a good 12 inches higher than everyone else (making her spikes virtually unblockable) and send floor-cracking spikes virtually anywhere she wanted on the court.

In other words, belief has to be based on some degree of reality to work.

Conversely, if a belief contains no element of outrageousness, it will be virtually worthless.

And finally, you've got to work to make beliefs turn into reality. Hard.

Once you optimize the combination of reality and outrageousness, then process it through a filter of intense, real, constantly repeated and worked on belief, then you've got something going here that will truly rock your world.

Here's some thoughts on how you can use the belief principle to change your life. Consider:

1. How can you apply the belief principle in your business planning process for next year?

My business has shown remarkable growth over the last two years primarily through application of this principle. I set an outrageous goal, recognizing that I had the capability, but not knowing exactly how I was going to achieve the result.

I then focused on that goal daily, devoting time and effort to figuring out how to achieve it - telling my conscious mind that this was one of my key priorities.

This created a gap between existing systems and businesses and what needed to be achieved. My subconscious then strove to fill that gap (the subconscious hates unfilled gaps!) and kept feeding ideas to my conscious mind through random thoughts (showing, driving, mowing the lawn, dreams, anyplace where the mind is free and paper is not close at hand) .

Most of those ideas were bad, but enough of them were excellent to, once I acted upon them, create a major difference in the size and quality of my business.

2. How can you apply the belief principle to your relationships with those who are most important to you?

People become what others important to them believe them to be. Those beliefs, whether stated or implied, set up expectations, reward/punishment routines, and goals which become reality.

If you believe that your child will never be good at math, I can virtually guarantee that they won't be. The same applies to academics, behavior, choice of friends, and success in the job. Create an outrageous expectation, truly believe in it, then build them towards it, and you'll be amazed at the results.

There are few things more upsetting than to hear someone say negative things about their children, even in jest. Far too often, those negative words, spoken in jest, are the exact same ones you say later on in tears. Think about it.

By the way, this works on husbands too! ;)

3. How can you teach the belief principles to your children and the other youth with which you come into contact?

Children, and especially teenagers, need to know:
1. What these belief principles are and how to apply them,
2. That other adults whom they admire believe in them and their future.

Spend time to teach these basic principles to the youth you contact.

And then, tell them how much you believe in them - repeatedly, publicly. Praise in public, critique in private. There's nothing that changes a teen's mindset faster than to hear an admired adult give them specific praise in the presence of their peers. The public aspect makes the praise more real, and raises the expectation of not only the teen, but the peer group too.

Do this for a lifetime, and I can guarantee that there won't be an empty seat or a dry eye at your funeral.

And the world will be a better place through the lives that you've changed.

That's my holiday gift to you this year - the principle of belief. Try it - it will literally change your life.

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