Reinforcing Your Self-Belief – I Can

The final step in developing the first Power Habit of Self-Assuredness & Self-Belief is to reinforce your belief in yourself.

Reinforcing Your Self-Belief—I Can (*From The Power of YOU! How to Manifest the Life You Want by Dr. Scott Zarcinas)

Aligning the right Attitude with Imagination is powerful because it strengthens your belief that you can accomplish all you set out to accomplish.

With the right attitude, you will be willing to do everything that’s required to get you over the finishing line.

But where is the finishing line?

That’s up to you. It’s wherever you decide it should be. The finishing line is the vision of who you want to become and what you want to achieve.

So first set your direction through imagining and visualising the finishing line.

Then, like an athlete future pacing her gold-medal victory, imagine yourself crossing the finishing line. Then go out and do what you need to do to cross the finishing line filled with the belief that it will happen.

You need to find that place where the doubts and misgivings about your abilities are dismissed, where the fears of not being good enough and not being deserved enough are unheeded.

You need to find that place where negative thoughts are transmuted into golden thoughts, where self-sabotaging beliefs are transformed into self-empowering beliefs.

That place is inside you. It is at the overlap where your Attitude and Imagination align.

Here you transcend to the level of knowing you can be and do anything you set your mind to—your ‘I Can’.

You might be familiar with the American fairy tale, The Little Engine That Could, which has been told in many formats, including films by Disney and Universal Studios. It goes something like this:

A small red engine is pulling a toy-filled train to a town on the other side of a mountain. The toys are for the children of the town, but the engine breaks down upon reaching the mountain.

A toy clown jumps out of the train and flags down other engines to help them get to the children. First, a shiny yellow passenger engine, then a big black freight locomotive, and finally a rusty old engine.

The shiny passenger engine is too pompous and refuses to help. So too the big freight locomotive, who is too important to bother helping. Even the rusty old engine is too tired and old to help out.

Finally, a little blue locomotive arrives. Although she tells the clown she is only a switcher engine, and has never pulled a train or been over the mountain, she agrees to help them get to the children on the other side.

“I think I can,” she puffs, and couples herself in front of the toys.

She starts up the mountain, puffing as she goes, “I think I can, I think I can…”

Halfway up, the gradient increases and she struggles with the heavy load, but she continues to puff, “I think I can… I think I can…”

Ever higher she goes, struggling with the increasing steepness of the grade. “I think… I can, I think… I can…”

Nearing the top of the mountain, she almost stops, slowing to a crawl, but never giving up, “I… think… I… can, I… think… I… can.”

Then, drawing on bravery and hope, she reaches the crest and makes her way to the children below, delighted with her success, “I knew I could, I knew I could, I knew I could.”

Although this is a tale for children on the value of optimism, self-belief, and hard work, it has meaning for adults too.

What would the result have been if the brave little engine said instead, ‘Nah, I don’t think I can. I’m too little. I’m not strong enough. Surely, some other train is better than me for this job.’

I once made a calculation on how many negative words the average person says to him or herself in an average year. I based it on the amount of thoughts psychologists estimated goes through a person’s mind on a daily basis, coupled with the estimate that of those thoughts, 80% are negative. The results are staggering:

The average person has 3-17 million negative thoughts per year.

That’s astounding. Now let’s multiply that by the average lifetime of 80 years: 240-1,360 million negative thoughts per person, per lifetime (and yes, that’s 1.36 billion at the top end).

But just imagine the person who has 1.36 billion positive thoughts in their lifetime.

Imagine what they could achieve. Imagine the power of good they could do for others and their community. Imagine the paradise they could create for the world.

Imagine if it were you.

Power Habit #1 Summary

The first step to transform your failures into success is to build your faith muscle, and this you do by:

• • • #1: Clarifying your Vision—your ‘I Am’
    • #2: Amplifying your Attitude—your ‘I Will’
    • #3: Reinforcing your Self-Belief—your ‘I Can’

Did you notice the 3 vital words of success in these articles?

These 3 words, when used habitually and with intention every day, have the power to change the quality of your life and transform your failures into success. They are:

1. 1. 1. Your 1-word—that single word that best describes who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you do it.
      2. The master-word—work.
      3. The magic-word—attitude.