If you've watched TV shows like the "X Factor", you'll know that there's a big difference between those who are talentless with no "X" factor and those who go all the way to the final with heaps of the "X" factor.
In fact, much of the show's attraction lies in the contrast between the early no-hopers with no talent for what the show is looking for and the later-stage finalists who have it in abundance.
The result is that, in our own lives, many of us are more likely to identify with the talentless no-hopers than the glamorous stars.
But this doesn't mean that you personally don't have the X, or extra, factor. You do. It's just that for much of the time the mix isn't quite right.
In our Maximising Your Potential courses at ManageTrainLearn, we like to quote Mark Victor Hansen who says that the really successful person who finds his or her place in the scheme of things and can draw to themselves what they want with apparent ease, has simply aligned 3 things:
- their intention, or what they want
- their intuition, or what they sense about who they are
- their conviction, or what they believe about themselves.
If any one of these is short by even 0.0001%, things won't click. When they are all rock solid 100%, there is congruence, a magical alignment of who you are, what you want, and what you believe, that moves worlds.
This is what we call the X factor and every single one of us has it. But it depends more on belief than on talent.
Some years ago, a major oil company were worried about the lack of creativity in some of their engineers. So they decided to employ a team of psychologists to find out why.
After 3 months' work, in which they looked at the engineers' backgrounds, training, and job roles, the psychologists produced a report. The conclusion was simple. There was only one difference between the creative engineers and the non-creative: the creative engineers thought they were creative without even questioning it while the non-creative engineers thought they weren't.
It was all about belief.
When you watch the latest rounds of the current TV talent shows, and look for those with the X factor, it is likely that the "winners" will be those with the congruence and certainty of who they are, not just those with some kind of ephemeral skill or talent.
For in life you always get what you truly and unhesitatingly believe you'll get.
Eric Garner runs ManageTrainLearn, one of the top e-learning sites for managers, trainers and learners on the Internet. Blow yourself away with learning like you always dreamed it could be.