After a flurry of emails in response to my blog post on passion, I reached a disheartening realization: Passion is useless if you don’t already believe.
You see, what we can achieve is limited by what we believe. Henry Ford knew this: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.”
So here I was, passionately committed to become the world-class business guru, best-selling author, the speaker who fills stadiums. And yet there was voice telling me, “You can’t do it. Keep trying, trying is fun, but in the end you will fail.”
You’ve probably heard that voice as well.
I’m making progress–my book sales are accelerating, my keynote audiences are growing, and I’m sharing the stage with people like Jack Welch and Robin Sharma–but in the back of my mind the voice pulls the reins: “You can’t do it.”
Great “outthinkers” seem to overcome this voice. Their belief matches their passion. Napoleon believed he was the greatest general of his time and so he was. Steve Jobs believed his people could achieve the impossible, so they did. Richard Branson believed he could win against British Airways, and so he won, even though every airline that tried over the prior three decades failed.
Belief is contagious. It wins supporters. It’s self-fulfilling. As Harvard professor Rosebeth Moss Kanter shows in her book Confidence, the belief you can win creates momentum which improves your chances of winning.