Power of Positive Beliefs

“If you really want to achieve something in life, the entire world conspires in helping you to achieve it” a quote from Paula Cehlo’s famous book The Alchemist. I didn’t realize the power of positive beliefs, until I read this book a few years ago. There are several occasions where we would’ve tried our best, but still … we might not have seen the results. The missing variable in the formula is belief. May be, our subconscious mind thinks that we cannot do it! For ex., you may be working hard as a VP PR, but you aren’t able to bring members to your club. You might have come up with the best speech ever, but you still lose in Speech Contests. You might’ve done the best campaign ever, but you still lost the club elections. I would like to share with you an interesting experience from my Toastmasters journey which highlights the power of positive beliefs.

Also read: Are shortcuts worth it?

It was 2 years back. I had a mentee by name Priyanandhan. He had just joined HCL, after graduating from college. One day he came to me and said “Saro! I want to do a High Performance Leadership project, before I go to US for higher studies. I wanted to organize a speech craft program for the community”. When a volunteer comes to me with an idea, I don’t stop him/her. I said “Priyan … great idea go for it”… though, I had my own doubts whether Priyan would be able to pull off a community speech craft. We hadn’t organized many speech crafts 2 years ago. Especially, we had never organized a community speech craft at that time. However, Priyan was so positive about organizing a speech craft. He started putting flyers in Facebook to get enrollments. As usual, he just got “likes”… and “comments” … but, no enrollments. He started sending emails to club officers and members… as usual… no response. When I thought he would get demotivated and give up… he said “Saro! I’m very confident and positive about organizing this speech craft. I won’t get demotivated by this short term setbacks”. He increased his pace of marketing… He started knocking doors of people he knew… he started placing advertisements in community newspapers… he started posting ads in books shops… he started reaching out to college students. Boom… in just 3 weeks, he got 30 enrollments. In fact, he had to say “No” to a few people, because the maximum capacity that we could accommodate was just 25 members. Priyan managed to pull off the first community speech craft in Tamilnadu and contributed nearly Rs.25,000 to Ovations. People who were part of the Ovation 2013 team would know the value of that Rs.25,000.

Also read: 3Rs of a Successful Toastmaster

In your leadership journey in Toastmasters, you may run into a number of tough people, number of tough problems and a number of tough situations. With positive beliefs, positive actions, and positive words, you can chase the obstacles out of your door. Positive beliefs can turn mountains that stop you from achieving your goals, into moles. Believe in your goals, believe in your team and believe in yourself….to make your distant dreams, a reality. What are you waiting for?! Stop worrying… start believing…

[Copy of an article that I wrote for a club newsletter]