You'd Better Believe It

Something that is bandied around a lot, but not always fully understood, is the importance of the belief and expectation system that we all have. “Believe it, expect it – and you’ll find it!” many a self-help book or therapist says. “If you can see it, you can be it!” goes another ‘positive mental attitude’ phrase. And there’s always Henry Ford’s: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right…” 

 

There’s truth in all of them – but there’re also hidden meanings that the subconscious can so easily take on board instead of that which we **consciously** mean. That first statement can so easily mean that you won’t get what you actually want, but that which you automatically believe and expect to receive, good or bad. “If you can see it you can be it,” works some of the time, but it can also be read ‘backwards’ so that if you **can’t** see it, you can’t achieve it – yet there are times when people achieve something almost by accident. And Henry Ford **might** have meant that if you can’t actually do something, then your mind already knows it, so you might as well not bother… 

 

Belief, true belief, is essential for success but sometimes a little more difficult to find than we would like. The sort of positive belief that we need has to be as utter and complete as the belief that you are reading this email. Or that you know how to read in the first place. In other words, it needs to be so deep that you don’t have to even think about it – it’s inbuilt and totally natural. 

 

One of the best statements to aid this sort of belief is: “Be careful what you look for… in case you find it.” It’s difficult to misunderstand that one, either at a conscious or subconscious level; it leaves you in no doubt that if you don’t look for what you want, then you’ll find what you’re looking for instead. So if the person who believes that people don’t like him/her searches for evidence that s/he is right, rather than wrong, bad news will be on the way! 

 

When we seek anything, we ignore that which doesn’t fit the ‘search profile’ – and we keep on searching until we find what we were after. If you were searching through a drawer for a valuable coin, you probably wouldn’t remember the paper clips that you found, or the elastic bands, old receipts and so on… but if you believed that the coin probably wasn’t there in the first place you’d be seeking to NOT find it – and you’d take much more notice of all the other stuff… odd, maybe, but it’s the way the human mind works. 

 

And there’s more to it. If you ‘know’ (truly believe at a very deep level) that something exists, you’ll search harder. Consider this scenario: 

 

Somebody tells you he THINKS there’s a needle in a haystack but he’s by no means certain; if you find it though, you will receive a huge cash reward. You’d search for a certain length of time before you decide that it’s not there and then give up. But if you actually SAW that needle being thrown into the haystack, you’d search for a whole lot longer! If you know beyond doubt something exists, then it’s easier to find. 

 

The point of all this might be obvious by now: the happiest people in life always look for exactly what they want to find and that which they **know** (truly believe at a very deep level!) is there – and they find it eventually, happily ignoring or not seeing everything and anything that doesn’t fit the search criteria. If they are searching for success, whatever success means to them, they won’t give up the search until and unless they find it. Even while they’re searching, they’re happy, because they **know** (truly believe, etc) that it’s just a matter of time until they find what they’re looking for. And it is. 

 

To lend power to your own quest for success, just recognise that all successful people were unsuccessful at the beginning. The only reason that they became successful was that they found what they were looking for.