Faith is a Source of Strength

This is a chapter of my book. I hope that this message may help you to believe in yourself and to achieve your dreams

When you believe in yourself, you have the strength to get what you want. Faith is a source of energy. If you have faith, you’re strong, you’re courageous, and you’re powerful. Faith gives you the motivation to pursue your goals. It’s the vitamin of the soul. You wake up every day excited about your activities, you perform tasks with passion, you initiate new projects with boldness and courage, and you aren’t afraid of risk.
If you don’t have faith, you’re weak and don’t have the motivation to pursue your goals. You’re afraid to start new projects, and you feel lazy and discouraged. You don’t want to get out of your comfort zone to risk something new.
The most important thing you need in order to fulfill your destiny and to be successful is faith. You may have money, you may have influence, and you may have talent, but if you don’t have faith in yourself, you don’t have the power to see your dreams come true.
People who don’t believe in themselves are stuck in their comfort zone. The years go by, but they stay in the same place. They don’t seek to advance, because they don’t believe they can. They don’t learn anything new. They’re afraid to open a business because they don’t have faith in themselves.
When you have faith in yourself, you don’t stay in the same place. You’re always progressing. You’re always investing in something new. You don’t hold to the status quo.
Your mind works according to your faith. If you don’t believe in yourself, you don’t have ideas and thoughts of progress. You assume unconsciously that it’s a waste of your time to invest in your dreams, since you won’t be able to reach them, anyway, so you don’t give yourself the right to dream or to make plans to reach your goals.
On the other hand, when you believe in yourself, your mind is always dreaming and making new plans. Brilliant ideas are constantly bombarding your brain. You become exceptionally creative. You give yourself the right to dream and to believe that you can realize these dreams.

Faith brings action

People who believe in themselves are action-oriented. They don’t live out their lives just planning and dreaming. Since they expect positive results for their plans, they want to get started as soon as possible. They act upon their dreams because of their faith in themselves. They’re fueled and empowered by their sense of competence and capacity.
There’s a danger in excessive dreaming and planning. If you’re always dreaming and planning and you never act, it shows that you don’t believe in yourself. Your dream may seem too unrealistic and too good to be true. You may think “how good it would be if” or “it would be marvelous if I could,” but deep inside you don’t think it can become a reality because you don’t think you have what it takes. You stay in the dreaming stage and never go to action.
When you dream, take your dreams seriously. Dream about already making plans and establish a date when you’ll start realizing your dream. Don’t put that date too far away. If you dream about doing something more than one year from now, it may signify that you don’t believe you can achieve your dream. There’s a probability that one year from now, you’ll postpone the realization of your dream for another year. The best thing to do is to get started now.
Don’t wait for things to be perfect to start acting upon your dreams. Don’t wait for someone to believe in you or help you, don’t wait for the right amount of money, and don’t wait for the ideal opportunity. Don’t make excuses to postpone the realization of your dreams. Do whatever you can now with the resources you have. Just get started, and you’ll see that the resources will come your way.

Fear is the opposite of faith

“He who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” (James 1:6)
While faith makes you expect the best, fear does the opposite. If you don’t believe in yourself, you expect something bad to happen. If you have a job interview, you think they won’t accept you, and if you get the job, you think you’ll be fired.
Fear causes suffering. You become stressed because you fear defeat. If you have an upcoming test, you get nervous and worried because you think you’ll fail. When you study, you’re anxious because you doubt that you can learn. Then, when you’re taking the test, you sweat and shake because you don’t believe you can pass. Those fears may have nothing to do with reality. You may be prepared and know the material, but you still doubt yourself, and because of that doubt, you’re nervous.
It may be even worse when you have to do something in public, such as speaking, singing, or playing an instrument. You have the talent and you’ve practiced hundreds of times, but you’re still afraid. Everyone in the audience believes in you but yourself. Your lack of faith causes you to shake, your hands are cold, you stumble over the words, and you forget what you had to say. You make mistakes just because you’re afraid.
Sometimes you’re afraid of losing something. You may have a job, but fear losing it. You may be afraid your spouse will divorce you or that you’ll get sick and die. You can’t enjoy the good things in life because you’re constantly afraid of losing them.
Not believing in yourself brings fear, stress, and suffering. Instead of celebrating your job, your marriage, or your health, you live in fear of losing them. Everything you do is a source of anxiety because you don’t believe in yourself.
To have faith is to overcome fear and to expect the best. Don’t assume against yourself. Assume in favor of yourself. Always believe that the best will happen to you, and don’t be afraid that you’ll lose the good things you have. You’ll go into an exam believing that you’ll pass. You’ll make your speech, you’ll sing, and you’ll play your instrument confidently. You’ll get good results in everything you do.

Faith vs. pessimism

To be pessimistic is to believe the worst. When you’re pessimistic, you think you’ll fail. You think you won’t succeed because you aren’t smart enough. You always expect a negative result.
The problem with being pessimistic is that you attract what you expect. If you expect the best, you attract the best, but if you expect the worst, you attract the worst. Faith is like a magnet that attracts good things, while pessimism is also like a magnet that attracts bad things. You have the power to bring to yourself whatever you believe.
If you want to have good things in your life, you need to expect the best. Faith has the power of transforming dreams into reality. If you expect the best, the best is what you’ll get. If you’re optimistic about your future, your future will be crowned with success. The more faith you have, the more you’ll attract good things. Thus, every dream you have and every plan you make needs to be mixed with faith. Set a goal for yourself and believe you can reach it.

Look for the easiest way

Something that prevents people from reaching their dreams is the thought that it has to be hard. They don't like it when the process is easy and smooth. They don't feel thrilled. They like it only when it’s hard, slow, and full of setbacks.
Such people have a victim mentality. People who act like victims have a tendency to value things that make them suffer. They’re addicted to pain. If it’s easy, smooth, and pleasurable, they try to make it hard, rugged, and full of pain. They thrive in suffering because it makes them feel superior.
Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid pain. We will always encounter difficult moments on the way to success. However, we shouldn’t search for pain. We always need to look for the easiest, fastest, and most pleasurable way.
If you can reach a goal in a week, don't take a whole year. A good example was this book. For more than a year, I wrote only a page or two every now and then. I realized that I was being influenced by my old tendency to do things the hard way. Instead, I decided to write the greatest possible number of pages every day. I created a motto: "Just one more." I started writing at least five pages a day, and then increased the number of pages, just to extend my comfort zone and to prove to myself that things don't have to be hard and slow.
If you can double your income right now, don't wait until next year. If you can improve your relationship with your family, don't wait for things to get worse. Now is the best time to be all you can be. Just do your best today and make the most out this day. If you make your goal to use your time wisely in order to get the best result possible every day, you’ll make giant steps that will cause you to achieve your dreams much faster.

Insecurity at work comes from a lack of faith

When you don’t believe in yourself, you think you have to work more to compensate for your incompetence. You work longer hours and neglect your health and family. You think that more hours will make up for your limitations. You run in all direction to avoid failure. You’re a firefighter, trying to extinguish fires caused by your insecurity.
Working more hours won’t do any good if you don’t believe in yourself. Your lack of faith will catch up to you. Working more can’t compensate for a lack of faith. When you believe in yourself, you become more balanced. You aren’t stressed or afraid because you know you can handle things. You can rest confidently, knowing you’ll succeed.

Don’t limit yourself

When you don’t believe in yourself, you don’t realize how capable and intelligent you are. You’re blind to your talents and you take yourself for granted. You don’t see your potential. There’s a gap between what you are and what you think you are.
The result of limiting yourself is that you don’t reach your maximum potential. Your lack of faith holds you back. It’s like the cruise control in a car. If you set the cruise control at fifty-five, whenever the car goes a little bit faster, the cruise control pulls the speed back to fifty-five. The same happens to you if you don’t believe in yourself. For example, if you only believe in yourself eighty percent, that means that you’ll reach twenty percent less of your potential than if you believed in yourself completely.
A symptom of limiting yourself is when you think something is too hard for you to accomplish. When that happens, you feel overwhelmed by your responsibilities, which causes you to be stressed and worried. You fear that you’ll perform poorly and that you’ll let other people down. That fear is caused by limiting yourself and will probably bring about the exact thing you fear.
When you limit yourself, you see your tasks as being beyond your capacity. You look at yourself as if you were too small, and you look at your goals as if they were too big for you to achieve. You exaggerate the size of your dreams, you diminish yourself, and you amplify your tasks. You have a distorted vision of yourself and your goals.
Sometimes, you may face new situations in your life that you think you won’t be able to handle. I was married for one year when I learned that my wife was pregnant. Although I was already twenty-nine, I considered myself incapable of raising a child. I didn’t believe in my own maturity and still considered myself a child.
To overcome your self-imposed limitations, you need to think well of yourself. The less you limit yourself, the more successful you will be in everything you do. Don’t think that your spouse is too good for you, that your child is too stubborn for you to control, or that your goal is too big for you to accomplish. Don’t feel overwhelmed, and don’t feel that you’re incapable of performing anything. Believe you can handle anything that comes your way. You’re bigger than your goals and you’re stronger than your problems. Nothing will submerge you if you think well of yourself.

Think big

A good way to increase your faith in yourself is to think big. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Don’t satisfy yourself with poor goals. Have a large vision, a big dream, and believe you can reach it.
Throughout my life, I’ve encountered many people who said that if they could play the piano only half as well as I do, they’d be satisfied. They considered me a good pianist and thought that being like me would be impossible. I explained that if they could play half as well as me, they’d want to play better. After all, I don’t think I’m as good as I can be, and I’m still trying to improve.
I’ve set some musical goals for myself, one of which is to have the technique of a concert pianist. I also dream of playing jazz and improvising like the best jazz pianists. Those big dreams have helped me to be the pianist I am, and they give me the motivation to pursue my goals.
Two years ago, I was playing in a restaurant and had the opportunity of meeting Jefferson, a young Mexican man. He worked there as a waiter and had a dream of opening a business in a tourist area in Mexico where there are many other hotels. He worked about two years and saved the money he needed to open his business. Now he’s enjoying his life as an entrepreneur in Mexico.
Don’t set limited goals. Don’t think about having a small apartment. Instead, dream about having a two-story house. If you’re a student, don’t be satisfied with just passing. You can get B’s and A’s. Don’t dream about an income of $40,000 or $60,000 a year. Think about getting more than $100,000.
The problem with some people is that they think big achievements are for other people and not for them. When they think about something big, they discourage themselves with phrases like, “I don’t have what it takes,” or “This may be fit for other people, but not for me.” They even make fun of themselves, saying, “Who am I to think something so big?” As a result, they don’t take themselves seriously.
You need to have a deep respect for yourself. Don’t make fun of yourself and don’t criticize yourself. Whenever something big comes to your mind, don’t demean yourself. On the contrary, support yourself with words of faith and encouragement. Take yourself seriously. Don’t think that you’re too childish or too immature to think something so foolish. Think you can reach what you are dreaming of—or better than that.

The power of visualization

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)
Most things that happen to you’re a result of your visualizations. You bring to yourself what your see in your mind. Therefore, having faith means being able to see yourself achieving something. First you must picture it in your mind. What you see through the eyes of faith, you’ll attract.
We don’t realize it, but our mind is always visualizing something. We’re always dreaming about the future. The problem is that most of us visualize negative things. We expect our marriage to fall apart, our children to be rebellious, and our boss to fire us. We feed our mind with negative thoughts twenty-four hours a day and then get what we expect. We don’t have strength to achieve anything, since we don’t believe we can get it. We bring to ourselves all the negative things we see. Our marriage goes downhill, our children become rebellious, and our boss fires us.
You can change the course of your imagination. You can stop those negative images from coming to your mind and change them to positive ones. If you’ve been seeing yourself as a failure and incompetent, incapable of achieving anything, and destined to mediocrity, you can change that image to seeing yourself as a winner. You can change the course of your thoughts and have all the things you want.
You need a detailed picture in your mind of what you want. Imagine colors, smells, sensations, and sounds. If you want a house, think about its size, the types of floors, and the plants in the yard. It may be on a beach or on a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley. Imagine your children playing and you seated in the yard talking to your spouse.
Your brain has the power to make your dreams come true. That means that you can talk your brain into obtaining what you want. Positive visualization, mixed with faith, is the secret to success.
In August 2004, I started visualizing myself directing a children’s choir. At the beginning, it was hard to believe. I thought it was beyond my capacity. However, I talked to Miramonte School’s secretary about my vision and she believed in me. She kept encouraging me and saying I was able to do it.
When I thought about the choir, I felt excited, but it was a dream that seemed almost impossible to reach. However, I continued to visualize it and to take myself seriously. I fought against the idea that I wouldn’t be able to do it. Then, in January 2005, I was invited by a pastor to start a children’s choir at his church. I accepted his invitation and a month later, I started another choir at Miramonte School. On May 14, 2005, we put on a concert in which both choirs sang together. The event was successful and attracted even more children to my choirs, which already had twenty kids each. It was a dream come true. I visualized it, I believed in it, and it happened as I’d seen in my mind’s eye.
I could have buried my dream in the beginning. I could have indulged the doubts that came to my mind, but I believed in myself and envisioned my dream. I mixed my visualization with faith, and they stopped being mere dreams and became reality.
To achieve your dreams, mix your visualizations with faith. When you dream, take yourself seriously and believe you can achieve your goal. Then the next step is making plans. Establish goals and schedule them chronologically. You need an order of steps to follow.
The final step is to take action. You’ve dreamed and you’ve made plans. Now it’s time to act upon your dreams. Work out your plan. You must get the job done in order to get the desired outcome.
Even after realizing a dream, you need to continue dreaming. Have other visions to give meaning to your life. To stop dreaming is the same as dying while you’re still alive. A person without dreams is a person without purpose, so keep dreaming and visualizing new things every day.
When I was a chaplain, I worked in a nursing home where I met many people who had lost their purpose in life. They’d stopped dreaming. Many of them were still able to work and be productive, but they felt life had lost its meaning. They considered themselves incapable and useless. They didn’t believe they were still able to realize their dreams.
If you want to be successful, think good thoughts and dream good dreams. What you think and what you see in your mind is your choice. You have control of your mind and you can make it think positively.

© 2006 Claudio Vargas Silva