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The Power of Belief

Belief is a powerful thing. It is one of the core aspects of my life that has changed it completely. The more that I believe in myself, the more that I find I can tackle larger and larger challenges that previously would have seemed insurmountable to me.

Like most of my life, my power of belief emerged playfully from my video game experiences online. While playing Counter-Strike, I curiously questioned what was possible within the game world by defining self-limits and seeing what I could achieve within those limits. My personal mantra for this is “Limit yourself to expand your possibilities.”

For example, I decided to consistently utilize the MP5 submachine gun so as to attain a mastery over it. For many within the game, the MP5 is a crap gun that has no penetration power. I, however, looked at its strengths (low cost, high stopping power) and maximized them to my advantage. At my peak, my mastery of the MP5 stunned many opponents as I had the capability of dropping them at long range with extreme accuracy, something that was normally reserved for an AK47.

The MP5 effectiveness was maximized at close range though so I continually practiced closing rapidly with an opponent. Again at my peak, I mastered the ability to use erratic maneuvers to out predict the targeting of many opponents. My favorite way of showing my effectiveness in this area was by closing with a sniper opponent who was continually firing me as I closed the distance with him and dropping him less than ten feet away.

The culmination of these abilities and the strength of my belief was in creating a maneuver which I named after my online character’s name, “Gentle Nova”. My goal wasn’t actually to drop an opponent but to “flow” and move through them so that I could hit their other teammates from behind after encircling the map. For this to work, it required a combination of techniques similar to jujutsu, whereby you’re using the opponents own firepower and crossfire to their disadvantage by “dancing” into the midst of them and through them.

Later in my life, I decided to take these same principles of belief and put them into practice within my work life. While doing freelance web design work utilizing the Squarespace web publishing system, I was severely frustrated by the lack of functionality of the system and continually blamed the company for its lack of vision. However, once I stopped blaming them and empowered myself into believing I could come up with a solution, it was as if walls starting dropping all around me and solutions starting revealing themselves almost overnight.

The greatest single use of belief in my life though was when I finally stopped looking at myself as being part of the problem (i.e. a victim of fate) and started looking at myself as part of the solution (i.e. a catalyst of change). You see, my entire life I had felt like I was out of place, an alien within a strange world. It wasn’t until I realized that in my youth I had felt normal and natural growing up within the countryside of Alberta that it dawned on me that I wasn’t the alien but the natural entity living within an unnatural societal system that sorely needed cultivating and balancing to bring it back to its roots of human nature.

All said and done, my advice to others in this area would be stop seeing yourself as a victim of fate, adrift on a chaotic sea with no sense of navigation or control. I realize this is extremely difficult to do within our world today especially with marketing and advertisements telling you that you aren’t a complete person unless you buy their product. You are naturally whole though. Everything you need for your journey is within you. Thus disregard the Sirens of Disempowerment and Distraction that continually call to you and believe in your self, your inner identity. Once you do, a momentum of belief and empowerment will build and emerge within your life like a great wave that you can ride upon.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Wikipedia

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