Hero (14 page)

LAIRD HAMILTON

You need to believe that all things are possible – that you can do it.

To believe in yourself is perhaps the most powerful hero ability you have available to you. Your belief will carry you through every difficult situation or any challenging circumstances, and enable you to ultimately realize your dream!

In his first season as head coach at the University of Southern California, Pete Carroll mentored a talented young quarterback whose great potential threatened to go unfulfilled. The problem was that this player was prone to negative self-talk, which at times affected his ability to perform. Once Pete discovered his quarterback anticipated making mistakes, he worked with his staff to eliminate the player’s negative self-talk.

Thanks to their timely intervention, the quarterback came to believe in himself, so much so that two seasons later he was awarded the Heisman Trophy as the best player in all college football. He went on to star in the NFL, and won “Most Valuable Player” in the NFL Pro Bowl. His name is Carson Palmer.

PETE CARROLL

Throughout my coaching life, I’ve helped people understand the power of their thoughts and personal beliefs. A person’s self-talk is the clearest indicator of one’s belief in themselves. I constantly preach the value and significance of positive self-talk as a key element to manifesting your dreams.

ANASTASIA SOARE

The message I want to send to people is: if I came here without speaking the language, with not one penny in my pocket, and I was able to do this, anybody could do it. You need just to believe in yourself. That’s it.

But what if you don’t believe in yourself?

The only reason you don’t believe in yourself is because you’ve inadvertently
thought
your way into not believing in yourself. Thinking a whole bunch of thoughts and accepting that they’re true forms beliefs. You were born with belief in yourself, and so if you don’t believe in yourself today it just means that in your life you have accepted thoughts about yourself that other people put upon you, and you believed them to be true. And the only way you have maintained that lack of belief has been through your own continuing thoughts about yourself – your self-talk.

MASTIN KIPP

The number-one hindrance to success is people who believe it’s not possible for them. If you believe something’s not possible, then you’re right. And the whole Universe will be against you, not because the Universe is a bad place, but because that’s how you’re interacting with it, and all you’ll look for is proof of your low self-worth, and proof of why it’s not possible.

The way to change a lack of belief is very simple. Begin thinking the opposite thoughts to what you’ve been thinking about yourself: that you
can
do it, and that you have everything within you to do it. Remind yourself that you have incredibly powerful abilities, and that you will know exactly how to use them when the time comes. Remind yourself that all you need to do is take one step at a time.

Your Subconscious Mind

As you think thoughts that you can achieve your dream, you will change the program in your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is like a computer, and it has many different programs that you have loaded into it, either with your thoughts or by listening to and accepting other people’s thoughts about you. And you’ve been doing this throughout your life.

MICHAEL ACTON SMITH

If you don’t believe in yourself – if you don’t believe you can achieve something – then no one else is going to.

All the programs in your subconscious mind have been put there by thought, and it’s thought and thought alone that will create a new program and override the old one.

When you first start to think thoughts that you can do anything, you’ll feel the rejection from the “firewall” of your subconscious mind, which will tell you that those thoughts aren’t true. But as you keep planting the thought that you can do it, eventually those thoughts will become a belief, and you will have changed the program.

LAYNE BEACHLEY

Anyone can acquire self-belief if they choose to do so.

It’s surprising that after many years – even a lifetime – of not believing in yourself, it only takes a short time of concerted effort to start believing in yourself.

The most powerful time to reprogram the subconscious mind is when you’re falling asleep at night. When you’re in that very sleepy state of being half asleep and half awake, plant the thought that you can do anything and you can achieve anything you set your mind to. Your aim is to make that “believing in yourself” thought your last thought before you fall asleep, because the very last thought you think as you’re falling asleep goes straight past the firewall and into your subconscious mind. And when that thought goes past the firewall, the subconscious mind must accept it as true.

Once your subconscious mind has the new program of believing, it must carry out that program and prove your belief in yourself true. You will suddenly find new people in your life who believe in you, or new support from people already in your life, and you will feel inspired to take particular steps or actions that prove your own abilities and increase your self-belief.

Whatever
you hold in your subconscious mind is what happens in your life. This is because any new program in your subconscious mind is immediately transmitted to the Universal Mind; and once the Universe has the instructions, it will work with you to make sure you achieve what you believe. Perhaps now you will understand why it has been said that “whatever the mind of man can conceive and
believe
he can achieve.”

G. M. RAO

I strongly believed in my vision of creating value for society. In spite of two significant setbacks that could have derailed my life, I persevered because my values and unflinching commitment were aligned with the will of the Universe, which supported me unconditionally. There was never a doubt in my mind.