One of my most influential mentors, Gerry Cramer,
asked me once what I attribute my success to. And
that’s a fair question.
I had been learning about the online business world
for years, and I hadn’t seen anything really come of
it at all.
What changed so dramatically in my life that I
started to see my first $100 day? $1000 day?
$10,000 day?
How did I make such a dramatic shift
in my success levels?
And to that, I can only say one thing. I truly believed that I could do it. I really put all my belief in myself
that I could get it done.
I had tons of haters and naysayers around me who
were trying to take me down.
They told me I couldn’t do it, that this was wasting
my time, that they knew better. I’m so glad that I
chose to believe in myself first above all else.
Because I held on to that self-belief, I started to see
change happen.
Maybe it was because I was down to my last
(borrowed) $500 to make this all work out.
Maybe it was because I couldn’t stand going to one
more flooring gig. But all of a sudden, my mind just
shifted into a powerful belief that I was able to do it.
I won’t lie. It was those first small wins that really
showed me that I was onto something. It was those
moments when I had small payments of $10 keep
coming in that helped my self-belief.That helped, but it wasn’t what made the difference
in my life.The difference came when I stopped dabbling and
started believing.
This wasn’t going to be something that I made work
because I was doing it part-time, using just part of
my efforts when I felt like it.
I was sailing full speed ahead, burning my boats
once I landed, and putting everything I had into this.
I HAD to succeed, and I just KNEW that I would.
I remember when I was very young that I knew I was
going to be a millionaire.
I would tell my mom all the time. I’m going to be
a millionaire one day. I’m going to make a ton of
money one day.
I’m going to be incredibly rich. That self-belief
started when I was very young, but for some reason,
I left it behind when I started working my 9-to-5 job.I realised that I was going to go nowhere unless I
started believing in myself again.
I needed to find a
reason to succeed, and it started with when I knew
that I would.In her book Mindset, Carol Dweck talks about this
attitude.
There are two people.
You have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. The
successful people in life are the ones who have a
growth mindset, knowing that they have to become
more in order to succeed.
People with a fixed mindset believe that they are
who they are, and nothing will change that.
I had a friend of mine go to India. He told me that
they have a saying there that really tugged at my
heart.
Basically, people say that “It’s been written on my forehead”, implying that who are born is what you’ll
be for the rest of your life.
It’s this self-limiting belief
that they are who they that keeps them from trying
to achieve more in life. It’s a sad way to live.
But before you feel too bad for those people, the
truth is that a huge percentage of the population
believe the same thing.
They have a fixed mindset, that they are who they
are. A lot of it comes from what you’re told when
you’re young.
Kids who get told that they’re average end up
believing that they are average, never going to
amount to much. They believe that the answer to all
their life’s problems is somewhere out there.
Where?
I don’t know. *Points vaguely* Out there
somewhere.But I think that Dweck also says something
interesting in her book about the fixed mindset.
You can change it. You can change who are you are.
And that change doesn’t come from somewhere else. Nobody holds the resource to make you
different.
You ARE the resource.
I don’t know if you got that because it’s HUGE when
you understand it.
If you’re like me, buying book after book, course
after course, you probably are suffering from that
fixed mindset, the belief that you are who you are
and someone else can fix you.
But when you understand that you are the resource,
that you have the power already in you to make
things happen, to actively pursue growth, that’s
the life-altering self-belief that will transform your
everyday into something extraordinary.If I started a business and came to you saying that I
was expecting to fail, you would think I’m crazy.
Unfortunately, many of you are suffering from
thinking this way.
You start whatever plan you have
with a mindset that you expect to see it crash and
burn.
When Warren Buffett was in university, he
approached his lifelong mentor who was a
professor at the university.
This man, Benjamin Graham, helped shape Buffett
into one of the richest men on the planet today.
Why did Graham spend hours upon hours of his life
working with this man, who had no experience, no
capital, no plan to make money?
Because Buffett believed that he would succeed.
Buffett started out with nothing already knowing he
would be a billionaire.
Get that?
He didn’t start working with Graham to
learn to invest HOPING that he would make money.
That’s essentially planning for failure.
He started
out KNOWING that he would be a billionaire. Could
you do what Buffett did to make the same money?
Sure. But not many people have enough self-belief
to know without a shadow of a doubt that they
would become billionaires.
That’s a whole new
level.
The real power of self-belief is that those who
understand it grasp this very powerful concept.
They don’t let the outside world affect what they
believe. They let their beliefs affect the outside
world.Most of grow up believing the world is one way.
Steve Jobs wasn’t that guy. He believed that life
was, well, moldable.
You could shape it to what you wanted it to be.And his indomitable will made things happen that
others thought impossible.
He became known for
hating phrases like “it can’t be done” or “I don’t have
enough time”.
Those he waved away like flies. He imposed his
will on the world and the world changed. You
might think that Jobs’ best achievement was the
smartphone, but that was just one-third of it.
He also introduced personal computing to the world
as well as changed the way we think about retail
stores.
This was only possible because he didn’t let the
outside world, even the so-called “experts” tell him
otherwise.
He believed that his thoughts could change the
world.So he did.
Now go and do the same.
If you hear a voice within you say ‘you
cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and
that voice will be silenced.
— Vincent van Gogh
Jose Amoros
