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Thoughts on the Power of Belief and Making Things Happen

“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and in the belief in a thing makes it happen.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects resulting in more than 500 completed works, recognized by the American Institute of Architects in 1991 as the greatest American architect of all time (1867-1959) It may sound like a case of circular logic, but the quote by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright is, in fact, an example of what often happens in life. Others have said words to the effect that imagining your future is the first step toward making it a reality. The unspoken part of that line of thinking, however, is that nothing just happens to allow us to achieve our goals. It requires action of us to make it a reality. Still, there can be no denying that having a positive outlook strongly impacts or influences what actions we do take. Whether our actions are already what we have set down as a deliberate plan to take, step-by-step toward a particular goal or they are those that we revise as we are actively working our plan in anticipation of achievement of that goal, when we look forward with optimism to the realization of those goals, we are more strongly motivated to keep pushing ahead. Positive thinking and belief that we can do something also helps us overcome challenges along the way that may otherwise discourage us and deter us from staying the course. The power of belief and its ability to help us make what we want and dream about a reality does not, however, imply that this will always happen. Sometimes it is our belief that is misguided or outright wrong. For example, if we believe that we can overcome our addiction simply by the strength of our willpower or just because we said we want to do so, we are likely to be destined for both disappointment and possibly relapse. The opposite of positive belief is also true. If we believe with every fiber of our being that we are doomed to failure, that we don’t deserve happiness and will never achieve it, that we are evil and condemned to live a life of pain and suffering, guess what? The reality that may very well be our future is strongly tinted by such dark beliefs. In that case, believing in a negative outcome influences what actually happens. Why is belief so powerful and what can we do to make sure we employ it to help propel us forward? Belief is like water that helps plants grow. Without it, we would wither and shrivel up, becoming desiccated and shrunken vestiges of what we could have been. With it, we have the chance to flourish and thrive, to grow in stature and abundance, to glisten and radiate life and energy. Think of the power of belief, then, as part of our essence. Strive to find that which we strongly believe in and allow that belief to energize and motivate us to take action to achieve our desired goals. If we find that we lack the ability to believe in anything right now, either because we have never felt our beliefs held any weight or we are simply beat down and trying to climb back up after addiction, just give it some time. Allow for the possibility that we can believe in something, and seek guidance and counsel so that we may be able to recognize the first signs of our beginning to believe when they do occur. And they will. Recovery doesn’t happen in a single day or week or month. We have a long time, literally the rest of our lives, in recovery. We have time to begin to believe and to make things happen.

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