Seeing is believing.
But if you saw a fat man in a red suit come down your chimney, you’d be more likely to get a baseball bat than a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. So contrary to popular opinion, sometimes seeing is not enough to believe.
What would get you to believe in Santa Claus at this point in your life? I personally would have to go on that Christmas Eve journey with him. House to house. Down the chimneys. Around the entire world in one night.
If you live through something. If you actually do it, you believe it.
Experiencing is believing.
But as that experience gets further in the past, that even starts to be questioned. And we rely on things we know.
We all have a set of beliefs formed in our heads. Already hardened. There are things that we absolutely know. And it is futile most times when someone tries to change what you already know to be the absolute truth.
Knowing is believing.
Until you are proven incorrect. Until things you thought of as truths, or common sense, or even your natural instinct, are shown to be wrong. In those times you cannot trust your own brain. You must rely on something else. Or someone else.
Your most trusted ally in the world can tell you something and you would believe it. That could be your best friend, your mom, your sibling, your husband, your boss. If someone who would never lie to you tells you something that is even somewhat sane, you oftentimes take that as fact.
Trusting is believing.
Until it is revealed that even trustworthy people lie. Or that people sometimes are as incorrect with what they know as you are. At some point you realize that you need to rely on a belief of yourself.
I read somewhere, that the average self-made millionaire was bankrupt or nearly bankrupt 3 separate times in their lives before they made it. Think about that. Think of the belief in oneself needed to be at the brink, even once, and to dive in headfirst again. To push yourself to that lower-level again. Think of how sure you must be of a vision. How sure you must be of yourself.
Confidence is believing.
But even confidence, at times, in a confident person, can be shattered.
Then what are you left with…? Sometimes, there is no evidence as to why you believe. It might even be contrary to logic. Or contrary to factual science. There is something inside of you…in your head and heart, that just believes…strongly.
Faith is believing.
And faith is strong. But not unbreakable.
At some point, or in bad times, some people just stop believing.
When I think back to why I started Urban Samurai, I didn’t know it at the time, but I think now that I just wanted to believe again. To believe in myself. To believe in hope. To believe in life happily ever after. To believe in my dreams.
If you have stopped believing, you need to look inward and ask yourself the question, ‘Who do I want to be?’ Then go after being that person with everything you have.
Visualize that person so you can see him or her every day, know that you have the power to become that person, trust in the fact that your loved ones will be there to help you along the way, gain knowledge about the path so you can walk, talk and act with confidence, which will ease and speed your journey, have unwavering blind faith that your actions will lead you to where you want to go, and you will go through the experience of a lifetime. You will either become the person you always wanted to be, or the person you never even knew you wanted to be.
If you believe that it would take a miracle for you to achieve your dreams, you need to start believing that you can make miracles. With hard work, you can. Just believe.