Believing Hard

Practice the belief that keeps you learning when your first plan does not work.

Believing matters most when the evidence isn't there yet.

It's easy to believe you're going to win when you're in first place. What happens when you fall, everyone passes you, and it takes a while to get up?

That's when I want you to believe harder.

I taught this to a group of coaches, and the phrase caught their attention. They had heard me talk about commitment before, but “believing hard” helped them see belief as something they could deliberately practice.

Compare the before and after versions of you

Imagine two stick figures on a piece of paper. One is you now. The other is you after you've created the result you want.

Maybe you've lost weight, stopped drinking, or built a business that earns $100,000. What is different about those two versions of you?

Do a thought download for each one. What do you believe now? What do you feel and do? Then write the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the version of you who already has that result.

Compare them. How does your future self make decisions? What does that person believe that you aren't believing yet?

The work is to begin believing those thoughts now. Don't wait for the result to give you permission to think as the person who creates it.

Commit to the goal, not one version of how

I believe committing to believing is even more important than achieving the goal.

When you commit to belief, you become someone who thinks, feels, and acts differently. That is the transformation. The result follows the person you've become.

But many people try to believe in a plan instead. They think if they know exactly how to do something, then they can believe it will happen. When the first plan doesn't work, they stop believing in the goal.

If your goal is big enough to challenge you, you probably won't know the whole path. The first attempt may fail. Great successes are built on failures.

Your commitment can stay steady while you try different ways to get there. Try something. See whether it works. If it doesn't, try something else. Massive action means continuing until you create the result you want.

Believe when you're the only one who does

When I first wanted to become a coach, life coaching wasn't an obvious career path. People around me questioned whether it made sense. At first, I put money in without making what I wanted back.

I believed anyway. A self-help book had changed my life, and I knew I wanted to help create that kind of change for other people. I didn't know exactly how. I believed it was possible and committed to it.

There were bumps and doubt. I kept returning to that belief.

My students can borrow my belief in them for a while. But I don't want their belief to depend on standing next to me. I want them to have something inside themselves that holds them steady when no one else sees it yet.

What are you using as a reason not to believe? Your past? Someone else's opinion? A failed attempt? Those are the moments when practicing belief matters most.

Enjoy the goal before it arrives

In this episode, I was practicing the identity of a woman whose business creates $100 million a year. The money wasn't in my bank account. But imagining that future was already changing my thinking.

I was excited about what we could do for our industry, employees, students, and other businesses. The goal made my life bigger before the result arrived.

Think about anticipating Christmas as a child or looking forward to a trip. You don't have to wait until the day itself to feel excitement. Your thoughts create the feeling now.

That is how I want you to experience your goal. Enjoy the anticipation and the person you're becoming. If it takes longer than you expected, you can say you haven't achieved it yet instead of using the timeline to attack yourself.

Believing hard doesn't mean creating frantic pressure. The harder you believe, the calmer you can be. You aren't desperately trying to prove whether it's possible every day. You're living from the decision that it is.

Practice the belief every day

One coach who won our top-earner award told us she had decided at the previous year's mastermind that she wanted to win. She wrote that intention in her journal every single day between the two events.

She committed to the belief and let her brain go to work on how to create it.

How often are you acknowledging what you want? How often are you practicing believing it?

You don't have to wait for a successful launch, perfect copy, or a clear path. Choose the result and keep working on the ways to create it. A failed attempt gives you something to learn, not a reason to abandon your belief.

Look back from the future where you've done it

Imagine we go to your future together and you've achieved your goal. Now look back at the moment you're struggling with today.

If you've lost the weight you wanted to lose, how important will that Tuesday when you overate seem? Will a temporary increase on the scale be a reason you should have quit?

You'll be glad you kept going.

The failures matter for what you learn from them. They don't have to become evidence that the future you want is unavailable.

You have a part of you that can observe your brain and decide what to believe, even when your brain offers doubt. Practice using it. Keep bringing yourself back to the result you've chosen.

What matters is whether you've committed to believing. Believe hard.