The Power of Your Beliefs and Disciplines

It is hard to describe the power of beliefs, the lens through which you view the world.

Most people reflexively defend their beliefs, much of them making up their identity, even if they don’t recognize that they didn’t choose them but were in fact infected with them. They mistake their beliefs as a universal reality for which there can be no alternative. The results they produce, or more accurately, that they don’t produce are the result of an unawareness of alternatives or a stubborn instance that their beliefs are true.

One looks at the world through their beliefs. That view creates a sort of filter that identifies conflicting beliefs as wrong or finds reasons to suggest that the results someone else produces are unavailable to them because of some other intractable difference.

It is equally difficult to describe the power of disciplines, those things that you do without fail because they are foundational to long-term results.

The reason some people fail to produce the result they want in some area is that they fail to take disciplined action over time. They’re inconsistent in their actions and they dabble instead of committing. Those who struggle to produce some result they want so not take consistent action to create the outcome they want.

The results one produces are generated by the consistent actions they take, not the occasional action. The reason that others seem to have an easier time producing that same may in part be a different level of skill or some natural attribute, but that will count for less than their disciplines over time.

If you want the recipe for producing the result you want faster and with greater certainty of outcome, you first must be willing to believe something different. A stubborn resistance to looking through a new lens is a commitment to stagnation and frustration. Looking through a new lens provides new opportunities, new possibilities, and with them, new potential.

You also need to behave differently. The actions that you take consistently now are responsible for the outcomes you are producing now. If you want different results, you must take a different set of actions consistently over time.

If you want something different, you are the only thing that has to change, and thankfully, this is within your control, should you decide what you want is worth the price of change. This is the power of your beliefs and your disciplines.