When You Stop Believing

The amount of success you have today with your work… the amount of success you have this week with accomplishing your goals… the amount of success you have this month this quarter, this year… is either limited by, or accelerated by your belief…

Your belief in YOURSELF. Your belief in your ABILITY. And your belief in THOSE around you.

You hear a lot of gurus talk about believing in YOURSELF. But that’s not good enough.

To grow a business, to scale a company, to achieve greatness in any area of your life, you need to work on:

• FIRST your belief in yourself,
• SECOND your belief in your abilities. Meaning: to do what it takes to persist through the obstacles and reach your targets,
• THIRD you need to believe in those around you, which means surrounding yourself with people who will support you and help you grow. People who have already achieved what you want to achieve, so it’s easy for you to believe in them… even when you do not YET see a clear path to reaching your target.

So how do we do this?

Well, we believe in OURSELVES, by reminding ourselves what we’ve accomplished so far in life.

So often people are looking to the future and focus on trying to accomplish bigger and bigger goals, without reminding themselves of the accomplishments they’ve already had in life.

Whether it’s getting good grades in a tough class, or overcoming a bully, or starting your first business when everyone said you were crazy to do it, or making your first thousand dollars in business, or speaking in front of a group of people when the fear of getting up in front of a crowd made you almost throw up, or staying in shape during the pandemic when most other people use that as an excuse to gain 20 pounds.

Whatever it is – you’ve already accomplished a LOT of great things in your life so far – but most people belittle what they did in the past, and forget to use their past accomplishments to keep them moving forward.

One of the tools I use (and have used for more than 20 years) is something called a wall of fame.

When I first started in business, and I needed a lot of belief in myself, my wall of fame was a collage of pictures of things that I had achieved up to that point in my life.

I’d look at those pictures every single day to remind myself that I am the kind of person who doesn’t give up, and who achieves the things I put my mind to.

Today that wall has changed… it’s now simply a series of pictures throughout my house and office. Pictures of memorable accomplishments in my life, from starting businesses, to selling businesses, to buying buildings, to our NASCAR, to me speaking on stage in front of tens of thousands of people, and pictures of family vacations that inspire me, and amazing moments with my children, and jumping out of an airplane.

Pictures that remind me of the kind of person I am, and the kind of person I want to be for my family, for my team, for myself.

Having those pictures surround me, even though I don’t look at them every day, my subconscious mind picks them up whenever I walk through a room and reminds me that I have a past, and that past is riddled with events where I set big targets for myself, and my companies, and my family, and those around me who I love… and I achieved wonderful things.

But… simply believing in yourself isn’t good enough on it's own.

You have to believe in YOUR ABILITY to take the daily actions necessary, to accomplish the small tasks EVERY DAY that pile up and turn into major achievements that you’re proud of.

To do that, we need small wins… EVERY DAY.

Maybe it’s as simple as waking up and drinking a large glass of water, knowing that most people go through their day dehydrated, so their brain doesn’t have the ability to function at peak performance. So by starting your day with a large glass of water, you know you’re starting with a small win that sets you ahead.

You might think – “that’s got nothing to do with success”… but the more small wins you can pile up every day – wins that matter in some way, or that help you perform better – the more small wins you pile up, the more confidence you’ll have and the more you’ll believe in your ability to do BIG things every day!

So maybe… next would be having a healthy breakfast, knowing that your food choices are fortifying every cell in your body, so your body and brain can function at an optimal level, to give you the mental and physical energy to make the split-second daily decisions necessary to be a high growth person.

Maybe then you build a list of the most important uses of your time that day to bring you closer to your main goals. And every goal you have for the year or for the quarter or for the month, are chunked down into daily tasks, so you always know the best use of your time.

So then every day, you start with the most important task that day and you check it off. Then you celebrate that win, which might simply be by taking a breath and congratulating yourself for checking something off of your list, knowing that it brought you closer to your goal.

Or your celebration might be a nice dinner at the end of the day to celebrate an entire day of small wins.

Whatever it is for you, get in the habit of celebrating the small wins, so you stay motivated to keep piling up those wins every day, because every day you take the appropriate actions to get you closer to your goal, helps you to create a life that you can be proud of and a HIGHLY profitable business that’s fun to run.

The third thing that you absolutely need to develop a belief in… in order to achieve massive things with your time... is THE PEOPLE around you.

Take stock in the people you spend time with, in your business life, and in your personal life.

Because none of us have time in our lives, to waste it with people who drag you down personally, or who under perform in business.

For every position in our company, we have “A SCORECARD”, which clearly details the qualities of the person in their position, and the most important tasks they need to accomplish. That scorecard is something we use to evaluate each person in the company. There’s a scorecard for every position including mine.

Every team member has a copy of the scorecard for the position they hold in the company.

So they are fully aware at all times, the qualities they need to exemplify EVERY DAY to meet or exceed expectations.

Those scorecards are used for every performance appraisal. Because when you’re that clear on the kinds of people you need to surround yourself with in order to succeed, and those people are clear on what your expectations are, then your belief in them becomes automatic.

Obviously you don’t have scorecards for the people in your personal life. But you should have a list of qualities you look for in the people who you spend the majority of time with personally. And that list should include things like positivity, and support… so the people you spend time with… pull you up with inspiration and assistance, rather than anchor you down with constant negativity.

My success in life, both personally and professionally came very slow in the beginning, until I started to believe in MYSELF, and my ABILITIES, and the PEOPLE around me. And it took a long time to do, because I didn’t understand how to do it.

But if you start with the 3 areas we covered in this video, you’re decades ahead of where I was. What you’ll find is that when you begin to believe in yourself AND those around you, you won’t have nearly as much stress, and you’ll be significantly happier in every area of your life, and the amount of success you have in business and financially will start to amaze you.

I want to hear about it when it does… so please if you haven’t followed me yet, take a minute and do that now, and keep me up to date on your progress, or tell me in the comments what you’d like to see in the next article so I can keep giving you the tools to help you believe in yourself and scale your company more this year than you might even think it possible.

Then, if you know somebody who would benefit from having more belief in themselves, forward this article to them. Whether that’s family, or your kids, or friends, or your employees.