BELIEVE YOU CAN SUCCEED AND YOU WILL
by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D
SUCCESSFUL MEANS MANY WONDERFUL positive things. Success means personal prosperity: a fine home, vacations, travel, new things, financial security, giving your children maximum advantages. Success means winning admiration, leadership, being looked up to by people in your business and social life. Success means freedom: freedom from worries, fears, frustations, and failure. Success means self-respect, continually finding more real happiness and satisfaction from life, being able to do more for those who depend on you.
Success means winning.
Success — achievement — is the goal of life!
Every human being wants success. Everybody wants the best this life can deliver. Nobody enjoys crawling, living in mediocrity. No one likes feeling second-class and feeling forced to go that way.
Some of the most practical success-building wisdom is found in that biblical quotation stating that faith can move mountains.
Believe, really believe, you can move a mountain, and you can. Not many people believe that they can move mountains. So as result, not many people do.
On some occasion you’ve probably heard someone say something like “It’s nonsense to think you can make a mountain move away just by saying ‘Mountain, move away’. It’s simply impossible.”
People who think this way have belief confused with wishful thinking. And true enough, you can’t wish away a mountain. You can’t wish yourself into an executive suite. Nor can you wish yourself into a-five bedroom, three bath house or the high-income brackets. You can’t wish yourself into a position of leadership.
But you can move a mountain with belief. You can win success by believing you can succeed.
There is nothing magical or mystical about the power of belief.
Belief works this way. Belief, the “I’m-positive-I-can” attitude, generates the power, skill, and energy needed to do it. When you believe I-can-do-it, the how-to-do-it develops.
Every day all over the nation young people start working in new jobs. Each of them “wishes” that someday he could enjoy the success that goes with reaching the top. But the majority of these young people simply don’t have the belief that it takes to reach the top rungs. And they don’t reach the top. Believing it’s impossible to climb high, they do not discover the steps that lead to great heights. Their behavior remains that of the “average” person.
But a small number of these young people really believe they will succeed. They approach their work with the “I’m-going-to-the-top” attitude. And with substantial belief they reach the top. Believing they will succeed — and that it’s not impossible — these folks study and observe the behavior of senior executives. They learn how successful people approach problems and make decisions. They observe the attitudes of successful people.
The how-to-do-it always comes to the person who believes he can do it.
A person is a product of his own thoughts. Believe big. Adjust your thermostat forward. Launch your success offensive with honest, sincere belief that you can succeed. Believe big and grow big!
Several years ago after addressing a group of businessmen in Detroit, I talked with one of the gentlemen who approached me, introduced himself and said, “I really enjoyed your talk. Can you spare a few minutes? I’d like very much to discuss a personal experience with you.”
In a few minutes we were comfortably seated in a coffee shop, waiting for some refreshments.
“I have a personal experience,” he began, “that ties in perfectly with what you said this evening about making your mind work for you instead of letting it work against you. I’ve never explained to anyone how i lifted myself out of the world of mediocrity, but I’d like to tell you about it.”
“And I’d like to hear it,” I said.
“Well, just five years ago I was plodding along, just another guy working in the tool-and-die trade. I made a decent living by average standards. But it was far from ideal. Our home was much too small, and there was no money for those many things we wanted. My wife, bless her, didn’t complain much, but it was written all over her that she was more resigned to her fate than she was happy. Inside I grew more and more dissatisfied. When I let myself see how I was failing my good wife anda two children, I really hurt inside.
“But today things are really different,” my friend continued. “Today we have a beautiful new home on a two acre lot and a year-round cabin a couple hundred miles north of here. There’s no more worry whether we can send the kids to a good college, and my wife no longer has to feel guilty every time she spends money for some new clothes. Next summer the whole family is flying to Europe to spend a month’s holiday. We’re really living.”
“How did this all happen?” I asked.
“It all happened,” he continued, “when, to use the phrase you used tonight, ‘I harnessed the power of belief’. Five years ago I learned about a job with a tool-and-die company here in Detroit. We were living in Cleveland at the time. I decided to look into it, hoping I could make a little more money. I got early on Sunday evening, but the interview was not until Monday.
“After dinner I sat down in my hotel room, and for some reason, I got really disgusted with myself. ‘Why, ‘I asked myself, ‘am I just a middle-class failure? Why am I trying to get a job that represents such a small step forward?’
“I don’t know to this day what prompted me to do it, but I took a sheet of hotel stationery and wrote down the names of five people I’ve known well for several years who had surpassed me in earning power and job responsibility. Two were former neighbors who had moved away to fine subdivisions. Two others were fellows I had worked for, and the third was a brother-in-law.
“Next — again I don’t know what made me do this — I asked myself, what do my five friends have that I don’t have, besides better jobs? I compared myself with them on intelligence, but I honestly couldn’t see that they excelled in the brains department. Nor could I truthfully say they had me beat on education, integrity, or personal habits.
“Finally, I got down to another success quality one hears a lot about: initiative. Here I hated to admit it, but I had to. On this point my record showed I was far below that of my successful friends.
“It was now about 3 A.M., but my mind was astonishingly clear. I was seeing my weak point the first time. I discovered that I had held back. I had always carried a little stick. I dug into myself deeper and deeper and found the reason I lacked initiative because I didn’t believe inside that I was worth very much.
“I sat there the rest of the night just reviewing how lack of faith in myself had dominated me ever since I could remember, how I had used my mind to work against myself. I found I had been preaching to myself why I couldn’t get ahead instead of why I could. I had been selling myself short. I found this streak of self-deprecation showed through in everything I did. Then it dawned on me that no one else was going to believe in me until I believed in myself.
“Right, then I decided, ‘I’m through feeling second-class. From here on in I’m not going to sell myself short.’
“Next Morning I still had that confidence. During the job interview I gave my newfound confidence its first test. Before coming for the interview I’d hoped I would have courage to ask for $750 or maybe even $1,000 more than my present job was paying. But now, after realizing I was a valuable man, I upped it to $3,500. And I got it. I sold myself because after that one long night of self-analysis I found things in myself that made me a lot more salable.
“Within two years after I took that job I had established a reputation as the fellow who can get business. Then we went into a recession. This made me still more valuable because I was one of the best business-getter in the industry. The company was reorganized and I was given a substantial amount of stock plus a lot more pay.”
Believe in yourself, and good things do start happening.
