Beliefs for Better Outcomes

A belief is a personal statement that you may say to yourself on a daily basis. It can be a mental train of thought about the future, and it has a powerful impact on your life. If you tell yourself, "I never want to be rich," then your brain will start looking for evidence that supports this idea and will find it in the external world. The power of belief lies in how it affects your life without you even realizing it.

Belief One: The World Belongs to Those Who Seize It.

The world belongs to those who believe in themselves and take action.   If you have the right mindset and the right skills, you have the chance to succeed in just about anything you do. It is not a coincidence that many successful people refer to themselves as "self-made." They did not wait for someone else to make their dreams come true - they did it themselves. They are confident and are always aiming to make their presence known.

This group of individuals fit within the definition of what it means to be a self-developer and they see obstacles as challenges and have the audacity to think big. They do not let others tell them what they can and cannot do. They make their own life and fortune.  Changing the world isn’t a requirement for this group but change of self is critical.

Belief Two: plan, action, and then measure.

There are three common stages that people go through when accomplishing something: preparation, action, and measure.

Preparation is the phase where time is set aside for planning out what needs to be done. It allows an individual to have a clear goal in mind. It also creates space to identify skills and strategies that will likely be necessary to accomplish the goal.

Action is the second stage. This is a phase which is often times exponentially more difficult than the preparation stage. Sometimes, preparation can feel like action where it’s unfortunately easy to feel accomplished without any tangible results.  Unfortunately, it’s not.

One way to determine whether preparation or action is happening is to track or measure the amount of failure experienced by the task being completed. For example, if the goal is muscle growth or fitness, the preparation phase can be hallmarked with things such as exercise research, equipment gathering, and fitness coach interviewing.  In all of these activities, there’s really no failure happening.  The act of working out, however, is different.

Take the same goal of fitness where it’s necessary to actually go to the gym to complete the exercise.  It’s easy to measure if you actually went, were on time, or completed the needed number of repetitions or time on a machine, etc.  This is proof that action is actually happening because failing to do what’s necessary and failing to get the outcome desired is measurable.  (Note: failure isn’t a qualitive measure as in “bad” or even “good”, it’s a measure of having accomplished a task identified that has a high likelihood of accomplishing a goal).

Importantly, successfully doing something requires a commitment to action and to actually doing those things necessary for goal accomplishment. Depending on the goal, it can be as simple as taking that first step or as involved as sustained action over a period of time.

Measure is the third and final stage of achieving something. For sure, this phase is brought to fruition by putting in the action necessary and then looking to see if you’re making progress towards the goal, that the goal is still the same, and that the identified outcome is still something that should be accomplished.

This is also the phase where you can measure friction or resistance to accomplishing those things necessary for the individual outcomes and the ultimate outcome of the goal.   This is also the phase where you can make changes in your approach with new preparation but be wise to follow up any new plans with action. Remember, there needs to be risk of some sort of failure to confirm action is occurring.   To be sure, we’re not talking about risk of massive failure or something that’s irresponsible.  For example if you can jog for only twenty minutes, it’s probably not a great idea to run as fast as you can for the same time period.  But if your plan is to jog for twenty minutes, that can be easily measured with information about the pace that your moving and for how long.

Belief Three: my internal game is important.

Every person has self-confidence inside them, even if they have never tapped into it before. You might feel discouraged from time to time, but that doesn't mean you should stop believing in yourself. It's important to remember that self-confidence is a skill that can be improved upon and practiced. It's about being aware of your abilities, recognizing them for what they are, and believing in yourself. Self-confidence is not just a state of mind. It's a physical force that has the power to change your life.  Instead of thinking about what you don't have, start focusing on the things you do have and how that can lead you to more preparation, action, and measuring.

Beliefs help form a personal foundation and they form important building blocks for the self-developer lifestyle.   Confidence in possible outcomes, carefully choosing what to focus on, and moving through the stages of preparation, action, and measuring help ensure the self-developer is making the important change of self that is desired.   Of the three stages of accomplishment, activities which can result in failure (or feedback) can help identify being in the action phase rather than in the planning or preparation phase.  This is important because action which is then measured is fundamental to actual progress.