Can you think yourself to success? The quick answer, I believe, is no. Success is a culmination of hard work, time invested, and the experience gained through mistakes. But it’s not just about you. It’s about the people you surround yourself with, the successful people who can inspire and guide you. Your thought process and attitude are the critical factors that could lead to your success.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”
Henry Ford
The narratives we create in our minds are crucial in our journey to success. We are what we repeatedly tell ourselves we are. To be successful, we have to tell ourselves that we are successful. This extremely powerful concept underscores the significance of self-reflection and positive affirmations in our personal growth and success.
It’s not a magic trick. What you’re doing is affirming your goals. If your aim is to achieve success, by affirming your success, you’re essentially reprogramming your mind to spot opportunities and take calculated risks. These affirmations serve as your compass, helping you stay focused and resilient in facing challenges.
By consistently telling yourself that you are capable of obtaining your goals, you are planting the seeds of confidence, ambition, and resilience you need to complete the continuous journey required.
Our subconscious mind absorbs this and acts on the information we feed it. Feed it with positive thoughts of success, and we will build the mental foundation to support your efforts. Remember, this does not mean avoiding hard work. This is not a free right. You are not just going to wish yourself to success.
Start each day with affirmations. Tell yourself you will be successful, complete the book you are working on, lose five pounds, or run those five miles. Visualize your success.
See yourself reaching milestones, celebrating wins, overcoming obstacles, and learning from mistakes. The more you reinforce this message, the more you set a mental foundation that works in your favor and helps make it all a reality.
A Famous Person’s Perspective
Scott Adams, author of “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” and host of Coffee with Scott Adams, is a powerful advocate for self-affirmation to reach his goals.
- Personal Experience: Adams often references his affirmations as helping him become a successful cartoonist, author, and podcaster. He directly calls out in his books and daily podcast examples of his affirmations and how they led to many of his career successes.
- Practical Approach: Adams suggests writing down a specific goal in the form of an affirmation and then repeating it many times each day. For example, write, “I, Scott Adams, want to be a successful cartoonist.”
- Mindset Shift: According to Adams, affirmations help you to make a mind shift. They help you to take the mental steps toward believing in the possibility of your goals. They can shift you from a casual observer of watching your life pass you by to a mental shift that can influence your actions and make you more likely to take the steps you need to lead to success.
- Repetition and Consistency: Adams emphasized the critical nature of consistency and repetition when practicing affirmations. The repetition when using affirmations reinforces the mindset and helps to reprogram your self-consciousness.
- Empirical Observations: Adams acknowledges that scientific evidence has not proved that affirmations work. He cites his personal success and the success stories of others who use affirmations and suggests that they can be a powerful tool.
Overall. Scott Adams believes that self-affirmations can be a valuable strategy for achieving success. By consistently repeating specific goals, you can train your mind to focus on and work towards those goals. While the exact mechanisms might be unclear, the positive impact of affirmations on his life leads Adams to advocate for their use.
My Perspective
I also believe there is no scientific proof that affirmations work. It might be impossible to think ourselves to success, but there appears to be a lot of anecdotal evidence or personal experience that leads me to believe they are a critical part of a successful life or any kind of personal development.
My twenty-two years of living in Japan would not have been possible had I not first visualized my ability to go to Japan and be successful. I might not have been as deliberate as Adams to write my affirmations down and repeat them daily. Still, I remember visualizing and having confidence in the outcomes during each step in my successful Japan journey.
Combined with the following steps, affirmations can increase your ability to obtain your goals.
- Set clear goals: Begin by defining what success looks like. Try to become as specific as possible. Make them measurable, and set a schedule for achieving them. This clarity will be the basis for your affirmations. It sets a clear direction and purpose, making it easier to stay focused.
- Implement good systems: Goals on their own can be meaningless without a clear system in place to keep you focused and help you through the daily grind to obtain them. There are some people out there who have that magic touch, win the lottery, and boom, they are successful. Most successful people put systems in place to improve a little bit every day and build the experience they need to become and maintain success. Daily affirmations can become part of your system of success.
- Visualization of Success: I am not a meditation guy. I walk 10,000 to 20,000 steps daily, which is where I visualize. Spend time each day visualizing yourself achieving your goals. Picture the steps you need to take. Visualize yourself overcoming adversity and building experience from the mistakes you will make along the way. Think about yourself standing on the pedestal of success. What does it feel like? Visualization helps to create the mental images and foundation of success. It programs your brain to think it is possible.
- Cultivate a Growth Mindset: Embrace challenges and remind yourself that it is through failure that we build the experience we need to run our business, educate our kids, write our first book, or run our first marathon. Failures lead to opportunities for growth. Adopting a growth mindset, combined with affirmations, can help us understand that abilities, intelligence, wisdom, and experience can be developed over time with dedication and hard work. This mindset will foster a love for learning and the resilience we need for long-term success.
- Surround Yourself With Positive People: I do not mean blindly positive people. Surround yourself with supportive and positive people who believe in your goals and aspirations. These should be people who not only believe in your goals but can help you to become a better version of yourself. These people should help you build the experience and ability to think critically to succeed. Engage with books, podcasts, and content that motivate you. The environment you create and the affirmations play a critical role in shaping your mindset and attitude toward success.
By implementing these steps, you can train your mind to focus on success and build the confidence to achieve your dreams.
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Napoleon HIll
Remember, self-belief and affirmations are not arrogance. That can be the foundation of all your current and future great achievements. When you tell yourself you are successful, you align your actions with your aspirations, and that alignment is the key to unlocking your true potential.
Nurture your mind with positivity, and watch as you transform into the successful person you believe yourself to be.
Get after it! Let me know what you think so we can all transform and become better versions of ourselves.
