By Patrick Robinson

When I was a very young boy, my family had a tradition. In a family of five boys, we all slept in what my Mom called The Angel Bed. We were taught to kneel at the side of the bed, hands together and say our prayers.  

It was just a simple mattress on springs, nothing fancy. But it was infused with her belief that each of us, in our own way were her angels. She expressed many wishes as we each grew older about us, for us and from us. Most of which went without fulfillment. We were rascally boys after all. But her belief. That continues in my life today. 

When you think about a wish, it’s often a standalone thought. You wish something would happen, or that someone would love you, or that your team would win the game, or you’d get that job. It’s a free floating desire. There’s nothing wrong with wishes. And on the odd occasion they come true. But they carry little power beyond the dimensions of your own mind.

But belief, true belief is something else again. Beliefs start with information, education, assessment, evaluation, and often the support and direction of others, whose own beliefs can initiate, or reinforce your own.

You might think plans come first. But they don’t. You can’t make a plan without a belief.

In his remarkable book The Magic of Believing, Claude Bristol talks about things that at first seem far fetched. How people achieved goals, or reached a remarkable level of success simply through the power of a belief. But the more you weigh it, see it operating in the real world, and try it yourself, the more you realize it’s completely true.

So it comes down to learning how to foster a belief. What does that mean? To foster means to encourage or promote the development of something. So.. to do that think about the limiting factors and what stands between your current status and

your belief. If it’s education, learn more. If it’s money, you will need to save but also stay open to opportunities. If it’s who you know or more importantly don’t know, get out in the places where you can network with people and be of service to them.

But as you embark on any of these paths, start with the belief you can make it. Accept NO negative self talk. Practice a nightly ritual. Create the realization of your belief in your mind complete with the smells, sights, sounds and feelings. See it in your mind as hyper real. That imaginary world needs to be seen as realistically as you can make it. In short you must believe it. Make this the last thought you have before you fall asleep.

What happens when you do this is something quite extraordinary. The universe (or at least your part of it) begins to align in the direction of your beliefs. It really, actually does. These are not wishes mind you. Those have no hooks in the fabric of reality. But beliefs do. It might even startle you how powerfully this technique works. But it has been the basis for the success of many thousands of people, even if they did not do this in quite this concious a fashion. 

Everything humans have made, our entire society has been built on beliefs of one kind or another. They are all the products of the human mind. Every car, desk, house, dinner plate, window or anything you own, came out of someone’s imagination. They had to believe it, to see it. 

That’s how all of this works.