“If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
~ Henry Ford
It all starts with attitude, which is the foundation for Psychological Swagger. There are countless quotes and motivational stories related to the importance of attitude. Quite simply it is the differentiator between those who complain and those who train. Everyone faces challenges in their pursuit of success, but few have the grit to stay the course and maintain their focus. A core aspect of attitude is belief, your belief in yourself as well as your belief in how the world works. The lens through which you see things takes you either toward your success or away from it.
We all have insecurities. Those of us who use them can lose them. Insecurities can limit our progress in life. An example of this is letting a thought about the past predict your future. For me a major insecurity was my lack of “traditional intelligence.” I always struggled with standardized tests and getting good grades. Earlier in life, this was what I focused on because it’s what most people valued and where emphasis was placed. Over time, I made my insecurity my greatest strength.
A story I heard years ago illustrates this point rather well. A husband and a wife were driving along the highway and the husband was complaining about the windshield being dirty. He pulled off to a rest stop and asked a gas station attendant to clean the windshield. After the windshield was cleaned, the man started complaining about the incompetence in the world and how the windshield was still dirty and all he could see was dirt and blurriness. When the husband was done with his rant, his wife leaned over and took off her husband’s glasses and asked “How do you see things now?” To the man’s surprise, everything was crystal clear. It wasn’t the windshield that was dirty it was his glasses. This little story is a great illustration of how the lens in which we see things through impacts our experience.
