Belief
First of all, welcome to those who clicked through from Facebook. Now, on to the meat…
I find belief to be an interesting thing. It has absolutely no impact on fact. Whether or not you believe in gravity will not affect whether or not you hit the ground when you step off the roof (please stick to stepping off single story buildings. I don’t want any injuries due to my blog postings.). Whether or not you believe in God does affect whether or not He actually exists. I find it rather humorous that people will debate facts as if they are opinions. You can choose not to believe a fact (some still believe the earth is flat and some believe we never landed on the moon…despite all the stuff we left behind still being visible).
On the flip side, belief plays a huge role in effort and accomplishment. Henry Ford said, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” If you begin something (whether it’s a project, a game/sport, or anything) believing you’ll succeed, you have a much better chance of succeeding. You will see every obstacle as a challenge to be met to achieve your goal. If you go in believing you’re going to fail, you won’t put as much effort into it. You will see every obstacle as a stumbling block in your way.
While I will let you believe whatever you like about facts (they are usually easy to prove, disprove, or lookup), I will fight tooth and nail against you believing you’ll fail. The first step to success is believing you’ll succeed. Once you’ve conquered that, it just gets easier from there. Laterz!
Update!
Oh, irony of ironies. Check out Scott Adam’s (creator of Dilbert) blog posting today. Not exactly the same, but very much along the same lines.