I Believe
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Stevie Wonder sang I Believe When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever, and so laid down one of the enduring love songs of all time that should have a place in every wedding.
In all probability for most people the important part of the song is when he sang about being in love for ever. But for me it’s his intention: I Believe. Without belief it’s almost impossible to do anything for ever.
So what happens when you truly believe in something?
Having a belief in something helps to deliver what we think about the most. It can bring us joy and happiness, or despair and sorrow. It can help make us wealthy, or keep us poor. It can change our circumstances for better, or worse.
To believe in something with all honesty will act like a guiding light that leads you to your destination no matter what your belief is. But we have to be careful about how we nurture our beliefs, for they can spell disaster too.
To believe in something is like a leap of faith
Jim Rohn often likened poor beliefs to weeds strangling a garden and gradually taking over the flower beds if left unattended. He felt that we should be like a good gardeners with our minds and pluck these intrusive thoughts out of our heads before they take hold.
Being careful what you believe in will ensure that you have the future you really want, and not one that’s a simple accident of pre-programming.
In The Law Of Success, Napoleon Hill warns what the impact of a poor belief system can have on people. He describes the principle of organised effort as being one of Nature’s forces, and should someone refuse to permit those forces from carrying them to the heights of achievement, “they become forces of destruction.”
He summed up these actions of defiance in two stories. One was of an educated man who had much to offer the world. But as he was growing up a chance remark that “modesty is a great virtue and that to push one to the fore is egotistical.”
Believe in yourself
The negative connotation associated with that statement began to grow, and soon the man started to believe that he should quietly slip in the back door of meetings and remain quiet while the “movers and shakers” dominated the front.
Because he’d grown to believe all of the negative impressions he’d allowed to be nurtured in his mind, he feared what others might say about him if he appeared pushy or drew attention to himself. And because he remained out of the spotlight, nobody could recognise his talents and what he could do to make a difference.
Hill recalls another story of a man born of poor parents. “Since the first day he can remember he has seen evidence of poverty. He has heard talk of poverty. He has felt the icy hand of poverty on his shoulders and it has so impressed him that he fixes it in his mind as a curse to which he must submit.”
This man unconsciously permitted himself to believe that “once poor always poor”, and this belief became the dominating thought throughout his life.
“Finally he becomes a quitter. Ambition is gone. Opportunity comes his way no longer, or if it does he has not the vision to see it. He has accepted his FATE!”
We all believe in something. What we believe in is down to each of us as individuals. All too often people’s beliefs are hi-jacked by others for sinister or selfish motives. With others it’s the default that was set from childhood. It’s the lazy approach to allowing uncultivated beliefs take hold, just like the weeds in a garden.
To be truly happy and successful we must all determine our own blueprint for the life we want to lead, to build our ambitious goals and plans for the future, and to only believe in what will make us great.
Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi summed it up best:
Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.