Enablers for Success: Belief is Key to Success

Saturday 16 February 2013

Belief is Key to Success

Do you have belief that you can do anything that you want to do. Have you ever done anything that your belief was so strong that you achieved it and the feeling was total amazement.

I was watching an interview the other day where Tony Robbins was discussing the topic around belief and why people give up on things, why people struggle with losing weight, or why people don’t progress their businesses forward and just stagnate. During the discussion he demonstrated this in practice on two individuals he was talking to.

Firstly he asked the participates to stand up with their hands by their side and toes facing forward. He than asked them to lift their right hand out in front them, than rotate that arm, clockwise to as far as they could go. He asked them to complete this a couple of times. When they had completed this he asked them to drop their hand, remain tall, close their eyes and than he began to talked them through the movement again, visualising doing it, imagining the feeling of going through that movement, rotating your arm even further, further than before and how good it felt.

He repeated this a few times and every time encouraged the individuals to think that their arm had rotated right around. After the visualisation exercise he ask the participants to do the exercise as they did first. What was interesting both participates extended there arms further than the first time. What was the difference. It’s simple. Belief. Believing you you can do something is the key. Do you think the individuals partaking in the exercise could rotated their arm further the first time. Of course they could. The two participants made some Individual comments, “I thought I might hurt myself if I go to far” I thought it would not be good for me.” Amazing the word obstacles, barriers come to mind.

I coach a senior men’s First Division Football Team and I was at training on Thursday night taking a pre- season session with the the firsts, reserves and youth. We had just completed an fairly hefty aerobic fitness session so you can imagine how everyone was feeling. We went straight from the aerobic session into a small sided game which included a lot of movement and passing with the ball. Pretty easy to see the outcome. They looked tied, effort was poor, you could see that a lot had given up, stagnated and wanted to quit.

So what did I do. I remembered the Tony Robbins clip, stopped training and brought the team together to discuss their effort and the body language they were displaying. We demonstrated the exercise that I had seen. Wow what do you think the response was. Everyone was able to extend their arm by 25 a 30% more. I asked the team what was the difference and why they could extend their arm further after visualisation. It came back to mindset, belief and believing that you could do it. Do you think when we went back to training the session improved.