There is a famous quote that is attributed to Napoleon Hill, which goes like this:
“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of man can achieve.”
When you really take a good, hard look at this phrase … when you truly study it, you can get a bit of an understanding of just how profound it is.
The interesting thing about this phrase, however, is how difficult it is for people to make this happen for them.
There is no question that the human mind is powerful. There is no question that the human mind is amazingly creative. So, why is it so difficult for humans to achieve what their minds create and believe?
The problem for most people stems from our understanding of the word “Believe”.
Ask yourself this question, “What does it mean to believe?”
Also ask this of yourself, “What is your personal definition of belief?”
I’d be willing to bet that most everyone will come up with answers like, faith, trust, and confidence. People think of “belief” as a sort of “knowing” about how things will work out. If someone is going to believe something, they need to know that it is true. They need to know it for a fact.
Here’s a little exercise for you:
Think of something that you know that is absolutely a fact!
Then, after you have done that, ask yourself this question:
“How do you know that?”
Suppose, for example, you said that you know for a fact that the world is round.
How do you know that?
Answer that, and then ask again, “How do you know that?”
Keep answering, and keep asking that same question after every answer.
You will soon find yourself getting pretty frustrated. What this little exercise does is show us that we truly don’t know what is going to happen in the next moment, or the next day, month or year.
If our definition of belief is equated with our knowing something for a fact … if it is equated with knowing that something is going to come true, then we have a problem. If we can’t know something is going to happen, then we can’t believe it, right?
There is a way out of this predicament. What we have to do is adopt a more empowering definition of belief … one that gets away from the concept of having to know something in order to have belief in it.
So, let’s look at the word “belief.”
Belief has two parts. The first part is “be” … as in “To be or not to be.” The dictionary says, to exist in actuality, have life or reality.
The second part of the word belief is “lief,” which derives from the Indo-European “leubh,” which means … love!
Now, think about this for a moment … could belief really mean, “to exist as love?”
Is this an interesting concept, or what?
So, if you could revise your definition of belief to mean “be love,” how does that work for you?
First of all, you don’t have to absolutely know something for a fact in order to believe that it’s true.
You just have it exist and love it!
Now, since you can’t know for sure that your goals will happen, you can have those goals exist and you can love them. Can you fall in love with your dreams and aspirations? Sure you can.
When you say to someone, “I believe in you”, what are you actually saying to them? Were you saying, “I know you for a fact” … or were you just letting them know that you love them?
If we take another look at Napoleon Hill’s famous quote and revise it a little, like this:
“What the mind of man can conceive and love, the mind of man can achieve” … it starts to make a lot more sense.
Do you have any doubt about the ability of the human mind to achieve any goal or dream, or accomplish any task, when it is coupled with the power of love?
What you are doing is taking what your mind can create, which is all-powerful … and putting that together with the power of the heart to love.
With this combination is there anything you that you couldn’t achieve?
~~~ DBL-R
