Power Habit #1: Self-Assuredness & Self-Belief – Amplifying Your Intent

Amplifying Your Intent—I Will

Failures happen as much to successful people as they do to unsuccessful people, probably more, because successful people keep trying no matter what and it’s only natural the more you try the more you’ll fail. The more you swing, the more you’ll miss. But you’ll also succeed more too.

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried, as the saying goes. As such, success is by and large a numbers game.

The more you understand this, the more you’ll succeed. It’s called ‘The Law of Averages’.

Amplify Your Intent—I Will (*From The Power of YOU! How to Manifest the Life You Want by Dr. Scott Zarcinas)

I remember a story about George Herman “Babe” Ruth, one of the most famous names in US baseball history, and someone who epitomised The Law of Averages.

He was the first person to hit 60 home runs in a season and is considered the greatest baseballer of all time. Babe Ruth was someone who wasn’t afraid to strike out, and his attitude of ‘keep swinging’ and ‘every strike brings me closer to the next home run’ helped the NY Yankees to many titles.

But it wasn’t always so straightforward. In one famous, series-clinching game against Philadelphia, he’d already failed in two previous innings. His third time up to bat in the last innings was crucial.

With bases loaded, NY needed a home run to win. Babe Ruth stepped up to the plate, but was 0-2 in the blink of a speedball (he apparently swung so hard at one pitch he fell over onto his back).

Dusting himself off, he readied himself at the plate again, then swung and hit the ball out of the ground, one of the biggest hits ever seen at the time. NY won.

When interviewed after the game and asked what was going through his mind when 0-2 at the plate and facing defeat, he is reputed as saying something along the lines of: “I knew if I kept swinging, the Law of Averages would work in my favour.”

You see, although Babe Ruth hit over 700+ home runs and had over 2,200+ runs batted in (RBI) over the course of his career, it isn’t so well known that he also struck out over 1300+ times—which means he struck out almost double the number of home runs he hit.

But he had faith in his abilities and faith in the Law of Averages. As long as he kept swinging, he was confident the Law of Averages would ensure the results would eventually fall in his favour.

Like Babe Ruth, if you want to succeed you just have to keep trying. You have to keep swinging. You just have to keep working at it until you achieve the results you’re after. And there you have it, the master-word, which is ‘work’.

People who succeed not only have great faith, they have a great work ethic.

They want to work. They love to work. They love to keep swinging, to keep giving it a shot.

They have a great attitude to work and keep trying because they know where they’re going, and they know that to get there they have to keep putting in effort, thus doing their bit to allow The Law of Averages to work in their favour.

As we know, faith without works is dead. It’s no surprise then, that people who habitually fail don’t make the most of The Law of Averages because they don’t have a great work ethic; they actually have a work phobia, a fear of doing (which is called ‘ergophobia’ or ‘ponophobia’).

They have a poor attitude to work because they generally don’t know what they want or where they’re going, so the return on investment isn’t there for them. It just isn’t worth the effort.

It isn’t worth the effort because they focus on the misses, the strikes, not the hits. Imagine if Babe Ruth only focussed on his 1300+ strikeouts (that’s actually 3900+ strikes). He would never have summoned the effort to keep swinging, he would never have hit 700+ home runs, and the world of baseball would have missed out on the greatest player to stand at the plate.

Thankfully, he had a success attitude, not a failure attitude. As Zig Ziglar reminded us,

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”

Attitude is the magic word. But it isn’t too difficult or require magic to change a failure attitude to a success attitude if you want to: it’s more or less a simple exercise in perspective. It can be as simple as looking at things from a different angle, which can be all the difference in succeeding or failing.

But what is a failure attitude? What is the difference between the attitude of success and the attitude of failure?

From my experience, a failure attitude is any mindset or thought processing that encompasses any or all of the following:

1. 1. 1. Blame—blaming others, the situation, lack of money, know-how or resources, or anything else other than yourself for your failures and the refusal to acknowledge your part in the result or situation you find yourself in.
      2. Losing first, winning second—believing that you are already going to lose or not succeed before you’ve even started and that any wins you might achieve are the result of good luck rather than good performance.
      3. Excuse making—being more invested in why you failed or lost than what you can do to find a solution and succeed.
      4. Mediocrity—accepting less than the best, both from yourself and from others, but mainly from yourself and what you are capable of being and achieving. Mediocrity is nothing less than the refusal to utilise your talents and maximise your potential in order to become the person you’re capable of becoming.
      5. Entitlement—believing the world owes you a living and all you have to do is sit back and wait for the good things to come your way without you having to do anything.

So here’s what you need to do to change these failure traits into success traits. It’s not too difficult, but you’ll need to work keep working on it day after day until they become a habit (21 days is usually a rough estimate to override old habits and establish new habits):

1. 1. 1. Be Response-able: Take responsibility for what you’ve done, where you are now, and where you’re going. Don’t react with blame, which can be instinctive but nonetheless controllable. Rather, respond maturely with leadership. It’s your life. Take the lead in defining who you want to be, determining what you want to do, and designing how to achieve it. Then take responsibility and do it.
      2. Win First, Learn Second: Focus on the saying, “I never lose: I either win, or I learn.” Successful people learn from their mistakes and failures. They constantly improve upon where they went wrong. They have a vision of winning, of seeing themselves cross the finish line, and use failures as stepping stones to get there, thus transforming failures into success because they refuse to sit down and stop—they progressively move toward their worthy ideal.
      3. Be Solution Focussed: As well as staying focused on your vision and goals, take on board the success habit of turning problems into opportunities. Focus on the result you want, not the problem getting in the way. Deliberately and intentionally seek out solutions, because that’s the best way to turn a problem into an opportunity.
      4. Think BIG: There’s no such thing as an average person, only an average mindset. Your potential is only limited by your thoughts and beliefs about yourself. Therefore set goals that you see yourself achieving, not goals that you only hope you’ll achieve. Think BIG. Think no limits. Set BIG goals that are actually the minimum of what you can achieve, not the maximum limit of your success. Use these BIG goals as steps to your next big thing, not a ceiling that caps a limit to what you are capable of achieving.
      5. Be a Person of Value: The world owes you as much as you are willing to owe the world. It’s been said, “You reap what you sow.” This means what you put in, you get out. Put nothing in, get nothing out. Put rubbish in, get rubbish out. Put value in, get value out. Some call it karma, some call it The Law of Attraction. So to fully maximise this law and use it to your advantage, be pro-active about it and be a person of value: think how to create and add value to this moment, and act with the intention to create and add value to this moment. Even if the results don’t work exactly as you had intended or in your favour, you can still rest in the knowledge that your intentions were good and you meant to add value—this alone will fill your mind with the sense of joy, security, acceptance, peace, and freedom. This is fulfillment. What, then, does the world owe you?

To work on these traits and develop new habits and attitudes of success, a powerful exercise is to say “Yes, I will…” before each statement:

1. 1. 1. Yes, I will be response-able!
      2. Yes, I will win first, learn second!
      3. Yes, I will be solution focussed!
      4. Yes, I will think BIG!
      5. Yes, I will be a person of value!

*Note: The difference between failure and success can often be measured in the use of one word. People who fail without succeeding tend to say, ‘I wish…’ They only wish for something, to be somebody, to do something. In respect to the above success habits, they will say, ‘I wish I was response-able.’ ‘I wish I could win first, learn second.’ ‘I wish I could be solution focussed, to think BIG, to be a person of value.’

Successful people don’t wish, they say ‘I will…’