Personal development addresses a fundamental quest. Everyone wants to be successful in life, in personal situations, in relationships, at the job or career or business.
The law of human achievement is fundamentally the law of belief. It suggests that you always behave in a manner consistent with your beliefs. If you believe you are a good person, then you strive for that. If you believe that you are an intelligent human being, then you are. If you believe you can accomplish a task, then you put forth the effort to accomplish that task. If you can’t ride a bicycle, as long as you believe, you can.
James 1:2-8
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
A more powerful aspect of believing is negative belief. In relation to personal development, if you believe that you cannot do something, you will not be able to do that. You will persist in failing until you actually change your belief. Unfortunately, once you decide that you can’t do something, you can’t. Even though we are all capable of riding a bicycle, once you believe you can’t ride a bicycle, you can’t.
Negative belief (the destroyer of personal development and not to be confused with non-belief) will cause you to suffer from self-limiting belief. You believe that you just cannot do it. Your belief is not based on fact it is based on social conditioning. We always behave in a manner consistent with our beliefs, even though our self-limiting beliefs are not based on fact, we still believe that we can’t.
Personal development helps us change our mindset or our belief system. If you believe you are creative, you will put forth the effort to be creative. In personal development, we learn to set goals and implement those goals according to a successful life strategy. We learn a personal self-marketing strategy and begin our marketing campaign with ourselves. We create a sell strategy and sell our talents, negotiate, be a leader, understand the financial implications, manage our time well, etc., then we begin to master all these skills.
Initially, having not mastered these skills, we must believe that we are excellent, then we will make the necessary efforts. We will set goals, design a personal development plan, and set personal goals, family goals, financial goals, life goals and resolve to pay the necessary price.
A vitally important aspect of the law of belief is that we can believe anything that we want to believe. We were given choice. We can believe that we have the ability to be brilliant at marketing, selling, finance, relationships and time management. We can believe that success in business is within us. We can believe that we have the ability to be a millionaire. As long as we truly believe, then we will hang on to that belief, despite setbacks, until our beliefs become our reality. Without a doubt, our beliefs are our reality.
Make a decision to adopt beliefs that are consistent with achieving your goals. All successful people believe consistently that they are successful and focus on what they want to achieve. Join them! Make a decision to change your mindset and personal development beliefs. Your beliefs are responsible for the position you hold at this moment. Changing your negative beliefs will change your reality. Changing your beliefs about yourself means changing your self-concept or self-perception. Your self-concept is your bundle of beliefs about yourself. Make a decision to adopt the self-concept that is consistent with achieving your goals.
Your beliefs come from your cultural environment, how you were raised and what other people tell you. When we are young our most significant others tell us things which define the image of ourselves that we hold as true. If your parent tells you that you are useless, you will grow up believing that you are useless and you will manifest that uselessness in your life. If you are told you are beautiful and sings like an angel, you will grow up believing that you are beautiful and sing like an angel, whether it is true or not.
Everything starts with thoughts that become ideas. Thoughts and ideas express themselves as feelings, which eventually become beliefs. Your beliefs have a powerful effect on your expectations. Your expectations have a powerful effect on your attitude. If you believe you are destined to become successful then this has a strong effect on your expectations, which in turn become very positive. Your positive expectations are translated into a very positive attitude. Your attitude is the major determinant of your success in achieving your goals.
Everything comes back to beliefs. Successful people have the beliefs of successful people; unsuccessful people have the beliefs of unsuccessful people. Make a decision to adopt the beliefs consistent with being successful. Make a decision to shake off self-limiting beliefs and negative emotions. Replace the negative with positive beliefs and positive emotions. Believe in yourself!
The very best way to implement a positive self-image is to base your beliefs on the teaching and examples of Jesus Christ given to us in the Holy Scripture. When you realize that in the eyes of the Creator of everything that exists, you are adored, your self-image has to improve. When you realize that, not only does this magnificent loving God care about you personally, He was willing to sacrifice Himself and suffer an agonizing physical death to give you personally an opportunity to live forever with Him. You are a valuable person, you are loved, you have worth, you are important. You need to believe in yourself because the God of the Universe believes in you.
