How Can You Develop Your Empathy Abilities?
Our beliefs shape our behaviours, and our behaviours shape our performance.
More often than not, our beliefs are shaped by false conclusions or assumptions we make about the world around us. And we start to rationalize our thinking, saying, “Stay consistent with our belief.” In turn, this leads to confirmation bias, where we actually deceive ourselves more easily than those around us. And the more in-depth you understand the world, the more your beliefs can change over a period of time. Our beliefs shape our behaviors. And so, we come back to our old friend, the question of why?
If we believe something is true or untrue, we should ask ourselves why, especially if it’s holding us back. If we’re able to reexamine and reevaluate this knowledge, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the wisdom of the world around us.
Be Aware Of Your Belief System
As a result we need to be aware of your belief system. People try to impose their beliefs on others. I always say that the world you’re experiencing is merely a reflection of your own attitude towards it. We prove ourselves right even when we’re wrong so you need to learn how to lose before you know how to win, which causes a lot of problems on non-participatory sports days.
Ultimately, achieving the highest level of academia, athleticism, or business. It’s not about whether we have a predisposition, genetic makeup, or specific attributes or genes. More often, it comes down to our belief and what we believe is possible. In Kenya, Ethiopia, Britain, or America, all have equal opportunities to produce long-distance athletes who can excel at the marathon level.
Belief In Sport
However, suppose the British or the Americans believe that they don’t have the genes, unlike the Ethiopians. In that case, they will probably never invest the time and effort it takes to achieve elite status. In Ethiopia or Kenya, the opposite is true. Nobody is in doubt about whether they are elite-level long-distance runners. They believe in themselves; they think in Kenya or Ethiopia. Belief doesn’t cost you anything, and if you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will believe in you.
Belief can be even more powerful and reassuring when we know that someone has achieved the impossible before us. Knowing that something is possible and then studying and analyzing how they achieved it almost always helps increase our chances of remaining committed to achieving that result too. On the flip side, a lack of belief is one of the most cited reasons for giving up. The more compelling the evidence that something can be achieved, the less impossible it seems. It’s no surprise then that we can look to other sports to see this again. In 1997, Anna Kournikova from Russia reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon before this momentous occasion. No other Russian players were featured in the top ten. Two years after Anna Kournikova’s presence, there were five.
The same can be seen in golf. Se-Ri Pak is a South Korean golfer who ushered in a new era of South Korean dominance in professional golfing. She won the Rookie of the Year on the LPGA Tour in 1998 and, at the time, was the only South Korean golfer in the world’s top 100. Fast forward to today, and over 35% of the world’s elite golfers are South Koreans.
How Does The Psychology Behind Belief Work?
So, how does this happen? Well, they didn’t suddenly have technological advances in those respective countries, nor did they become genetically predisposed to play golf or tennis. It was simply a transformation of their belief and their approach to the sport. Sure, they had the underlying skill that they’d be nurturing, but now they had the self-belief to push them into an elite state.
Beyond sporting success, there are countless examples in business and entrepreneurship where belief has fueled success. Seventy-five investors rejected Instagram before securing investment; 50 investors rejected Spotify; 1,000 investors rejected Netflix; 217 investors rejected Starbucks. The list goes on. What keeps that drive and passion? Belief.
Whilst belief can push us forward, it can also pull us back.
In the mid-1960s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower received a beautiful, rare white tiger named Mohini on behalf of the American people. The tiger was sent to live at the Washington, DC Zoo and was kept in a 12-by-12-foot enclosure. For many years, His beautiful animal paced her care cage walk in the exact figure-of-eight loop hundreds of times a day, turning the grass brown. Several years later, a wealthy benefactor bought Mohini and gave her a new home. There were trees, grassy hills, many acres of land that she could roam in, a large pond, and a wealth of other wildlife. Mohini could run, play, explore, and stretch to her heart’s content, and her habitat resembled her original habitat in her Native India. However, when Mohini arrived at this new sanctuary, she behaved in a way that surprised everyone; instead of running, jumping, and exploring her new habitat.
She made her way to a corner of the enclosure, marked off a 12-foot-by-12-foot square, and stayed in that small area, pacing in a similar figure eight until the ground was bare, as it had been before. When Mohini was taken from her first enclosure, she believed her place was a 12-by-12-by-12 square. Her beliefs and physiology told her that she must stay in this self-imposed cage, even in this larger enclosure, to the age of 20, when she died crippled with arthritis. This is a sad story that echoes so many of us when we, too, become stuck in our own self-limiting beliefs, hemmed in by the stories we’ve told ourselves, and prevented from stepping out of our comfort zones. We, like Mohini, the beautiful Indian tiger, can step out of our invisible cage. Unlike Mohini, we can take those small incremental steps outside our invisible belief cage, which we’ve confined ourselves to, until the invisible bars and boundaries that hem in our beliefs no longer determine our ability to act or enact.
To Summarise About The Psychology Behind Belief
If we believe we are confined, we act accordingly. But if we believe in our ability to grow, to explore, and to break free from old patterns, our behaviour will change, and so will our outcomes. To unlock our ability, we must free ourselves from the self-imposed cage or boundary of doubt, fear, and limiting beliefs. Only then can we tap into the well of unlimited potential and in doing so the cage or boundary no longer exists – only our belief in it does.
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Duncan shares more tactical insights and strategies about finding more belief, achieving success, cultivating a high-performance mindset and fulfilling your potential on his YouTube Channel on Youtube.com/duncanstevens – To discover more about unlocking your power to believe in yourself and others or to even hire him to speak about high-performance leadership, influence or collaboration at your event you can follow the link below. Duncan is a professional keynote speaker and global authority on high-performance leadership, influence and collaboration.
