Truly unleashing your maximum personal effectiveness requires faith. Not faith in a religious sense. Faith in yourself and your abilities. Faith that you have unwavering hope that your goals can be accomplished. This is different from having faith that a supernatural being or external force will cause everything to work out for your best. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But having faith in yourself is a much more reliable strategy than hoping for the best.

This kind of faith is the belief that you can achieve your goals. It is the faith that you can stick the path and not be distracted. And having the strength to resists attempts to divert you from your path. It is faith in your ability to learn what is necessary for success, and in your ability to know when you need to learn something new. It is faith in your ability not to lose faith.

You will face many attacks on your faith. Maybe the one that has the most potential to interfere with your personal effectiveness is attacks from other people, because that is so personal. One kind of attack is from people who attack your goals as fantasy or unattainable. Another type of attack is from people who are basically negative about everything. These people criticize your choice of goals, predict that there will be insurmountable obstacles, and point out that the goal is not worth the journey. You will be attacked by people who want you to fail, either because they think it helps them or merely because it hurts you. There are also the well-meaning but ultimately destructive types who try to lower your expectations. Finally, there are always people who think they lose if you succeed, and will stand in your way to prevent what they think is harm to them.

Finally, maybe the harshest attacks on your faith are internal. Your memory constantly reminding of times you failed in the past, as if that means you will fail this time. The reality is that you can counter this with memories of each time you succeeded in the past. Facing each past failure gives you the opportunity to learn form them and not repeat any errors. This should then actually increase your faith in yourself to succeed. You can also look at past successes and see what you did right and what you could do better.

Author's Bio: 

Rick Carter created STRESS JUDO COACHING, aggressive stress management coaching for maximum personal effectiveness, based on his 17+ years of experienced in the courtroom and 25+ years of experience in the dojo (martial arts school). Rick is a certified coach and attorney licensed in 3 states. If you want to develop the mindset of a black belt martial artist toward stressful situations, go to STRESS JUDO COACHING.