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If You Believe It, You Can Be It
What do you believe? According to science, believing in yourself is the strongest predictor of success. High achievers in life don’t let self-doubt, worry, or outside influences stop them from believing in their goals. If you want something, make “If you believe it, you can be it” your mantra.
Free Will
Researchers often look at students when studying beliefs and success. Generally, students all have the same goals, including to do well on tests, finish assignments, and graduate from school. For researchers, students are the perfect group for research because their goals are similar, while their belief systems may not be.
Psychologists have identified two separate belief systems about learning and success. The first, belief in free will, is held by people who think they can make their own choices and successes, regardless of internal or external challenges. The second, belief in fixed ability, is held by people who think their success is predetermined at birth by the skills and abilities they have.
A study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences showed that students who believed in free will scored better academically, both on test scores and overall class grades.
Another study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology tied the lack of success by subjects with a fixed ability belief to negative feedback. When someone doesn’t believe in themselves or their potential for success, they are much less likely to take on challenges where they could fail. By not accepting these challenges, people with a fixed ability belief also limit their opportunities for success.
How to Believe in Yourself
Another group that researchers often study are successful entrepreneurs and business leaders. Success in these areas isn’t easy. Many entrepreneurs fail at business before building a successful company. Many business leaders struggle with challenges and disappointments before becoming industry powerhouses.
Interviews with successful entrepreneurs and business leaders all point to the same underlying theme – belief. Successful people all believed they could accomplish their goals, despite mistakes and setbacks.
They offer these tips for developing and using your beliefs to succeed:
- Win in your mind
- Believe in reality
- Get competent
- Focus on the positive
- Failure is growth
The first tip, win in your mind, reminds you to see yourself in the situation you want. Seeing is believing! Having a clear goal helps you believe in your success when faced with challenges and obstacles. To keep their goals in sight, successful people use:
- Vision boards
- Journals
- Mediation
Believing in reality reminds you that success doesn’t happen overnight. Achievement takes hard work, dedication, and resilience. When you have a plan to reach your goal, each step you accomplish helps build your belief in ultimate success. Trying to do everything at once or expecting everything to happen just because you want it is not realistic and may lead to losing belief in your goals.
With a belief in free will, you have the power to learn, grow, and change to reach your goals. To make your beliefs a reality, you need to dedicate yourself to learning how to succeed. Successful people use a variety of support and learning tools to help them believe in themselves and their abilities, including:
- Mentors
- Classes and seminars
- Self-help media
- Practice
Another way successful people learn to believe in themselves is by focusing on the positive. Having a plan helps focus on each accomplishment. Believing that they are the skills and abilities to overcome obstacles and face challenges also helps them reach their goals. And when they do experience failure, they know that they can learn from it. Even when failure seems like a setback, what you learn, and how you use that knowledge can help you keep believing in your ultimate success.
