Several years ago, I went to an Anthony Robbins seminar and walked across a bed of hot coals that was glowing with the heat of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tony had spent most of the night telling us how hot the coals were, how tough it should be to get ourselves to walk across them, how scared we should be, how hurt we could get, etc. He told us that he was trying to get us all to believe that we couldn’t do it.
And the reason he spent so much time trying to plant all that doubt in us is so that after we did it, we could look back on it for the rest of our lives as something that we overcame when we didn’t think we could.
There have been other things in my life that were no where near as scary or hard to believe.
Like the time I went to the store with our vacuum cleaner that we had accidentally rolled over some fishing line with.
The fishing line burned through the roller brush and ruined the vacuum.
The store we got it from had a pretty good warranty, so I took it back to them just to see if there was any chance they might be able to do something (but believing that they were just going to tell me it was our fault and we were out of luck).
Well, to my surprise, they not only gave me a brand new vacuum, but since that model was no longer sold there, we got the newer model instead. No further cost to me. Wow. Score!
So whenever I start to doubt or fear, I really just need to remember a time when I won. Big win, small win, whatever. We can almost always find a way to believe we can win again if we just look at our past and remember all the times we win.
Because big or small, they all count as wins and they all show us what’s possible if we believe – even just barely enough to try in spite of our doubt.
