True believers! You do not know how your belief betrays your intent when your intent is not congruent with your belief. You cannot know. It is not possible to know how powerfully belief affects your behaviour. “It is by their actions that they shall be judged.” This comes from the fact that we human creatures get most of our communicative information from the behaviour of those around us. This is our instincts working for us. This is our primordial nature at work. This is how we survive, so pay attention to how important it is that we become true believers.
I have been out on sales calls, sharing the wonders of our offerings to qualified prospects, and in some cases the prospect fails to request our product or service. As a result, I realize that this prospect does not believe what I believe, because if they did, they would not continue with the risky behaviour they were engaged in before I came along and shared our solution(s). If they believed as I believed, they would immediately require our solution to be implemented throughout their organization. Clearly the responsibility is mine. I have failed to ignite the required belief in my prospect, and it is my fault. With the pre-existing and unmodified belief that he or she currently has, obviously they will continue with the status quo, saying “no” to me.
If I didn’t believe, it would be much harder to instill a belief in a prospect. Mostly my success would be based on the prospect coming to believe in my solution(s) independent of my interactions with them. I could only hope that I didn’t talk them out of it, or inadvertently corrupt their belief. Doubt would creep in. I would think, “I might be okay as an order taker. As long as the prospect couldn’t see me or hear me, I couldn’t mess things up.”
Belief and faith is a popular topic. Seth Godin talks about it extensively in his book, Tribes1:
The first thing you need to know is that individuals have far more power than ever before in history. One person can change an industry. One person can declare war. One person can reinvent science or politics or technology.
The second thing you need to know is that the only thing holding you back from becoming the kind of person who changes things is this: lack of faith. Faith that you can do it. Faith that’s its worth doing. Faith that failure won’t destroy you.” – (pg 43)
Not believing is your own responsibility to change, and I tell you that you must believe in those things that are you—that you are involved in, that you spend your resources on, that you expend time on, and so forth. The true warrior knows that acquiring beliefs is only an exercise of the mind. Start with curiosity. Then explore, discover what works, discover what doesn’t, figure out what the results are, experiment, work at it, spend time at it, commit to it, and believe in it (fake it till you make it). You can come to believe … if you only try.
True warriors also understand the value of opposing beliefs, and realizes that they can co-exist for a time. True warriors use the power of the opposing belief as a light to shine on that which requires investigation. It is their vision quest in action—lining up heaping mounds of curiosity to help the true warrior gain insight and knowledge. You are warriors and you will come to believe … and with that power, you shall prevail. So it is written.