The power of belief

I was talking with one of my fellow twitterers this aftenoon about belief - he said he no longer believed in himself...which rather shocked me, so I said "but if you don't believe in yourself, how do you expect other people too?"

Now it might just have been a throw away comment after all I don't know the person "personally" after all it is hard to convey emotion in 140 characters or less. BTW if you are on twitter and want to follow me - ellegb - then DM me so I can follow you back. And if that is pure gobbledegook, apologies, but it is one of the better web 2.0 social networking sites around (IMHO). I'm also on Facebook (Elle Bradshaw) if you want to join me and my other friends. Again, tell me you are a reader so I know its you.

Where was I?

Oh yes, the power and importance of belief.

It shouldn't come as any surprise to you to know that if you believe in yourself and what you are doing, then you will achieve whatever it is much easier and faster than if you doubt your every move. Sounds like common sense doesn't it. And it is. The problem starts in my opinion when we have one or two knockbacks, when things don't go quite as we had hoped. It doesn't help also, when the naysayers start... I knew you'd give up, You never finish anything, what are you doing that for? etc etc. I mean they don't mean to knock us back, but our newly acquired confidence can take a beating if we let it and if we listen to these people. It can take an immense amount of faith in ourselves to say, you know what - that way didn't work, so I guess I shall just have to give up and sit in a corner...no., I mean I will have to try a different way, a different way of thinking about this. Remember Eddison? He may have sat in a corner for all I know, but I also think he took a notebook and a pen with him :-)

I'll give you two very personal examples of the importance of belief in my life. I am one of those people who are annoying to the point of never stopping. You know - always on the go and never having a rest. The time between Christmas and New Year is my time away from my day job and a time when I can get one or two major projects completed. This year it is my son's bedroom which was looking very sad and a little tired....and untidy. Well the first of the pics are up - go to - http://www.motivateme.info/gallery/edens-bedroom-renovation-project-december-2008/i'm also in the process of making curtains for the house after getting some curtain tracks put up last month. So a busy, physical time for me. Last night after making and putting upmy daughters curtains, Ineeded to make the second curtainfor my son's bedroom. But the thread kept breaking - so I stopped and got out the notes for the novel I am currently writing notes for. This morning, after completing the third coat of base paint and the major paint job for the room - I then made the second curtain. The thread this morning was fine. Don't ask me, no idea. But if I had kept going and tried to persevere with it last night it would not have been a good outcome. So what am I saying - sometimes you do need to stop and rethink what you are trying to do. Have a break and then get back to it in the morning.

The other example I will give you involves my day job. I am the editor of a rather large legal manual. Now I have been asking to see if we can get this document - all 2,500 pieces of legislation and 700 pages of text into some kind of database, so it can be searched and put onto the Internet. One of the computer experts in the company had a look at it, and had a problemworking out the relationships between all the fields. So it sat for a while, whilst they pondered the problem.In the meantime Ire-created the book the "old" way as the deadline was fast approaching. If there is one thing you cannot procrastinate with is a publishing deadline. Anyway, towards the end of the year, when I had some time, I looked at the problem my way...and have created a spreadsheet of the fields we need for the major part of the database. To my mind, once we have the fields, we can work out the rest...and that is the way I have always created my databases....work out the fields, and then work out how to search it afterwards. Now other people may work differently, but that is the way I know works for me. Two people, two very different ways of looking at the same problem - both of them right.

What problems have you looked at once and given up with because sometimes they seem too hard, and then gone back to them a while later and you didn't have a problem with? The difference I feel is the belief we have in ourselves to achieve them.