Lesson on the power of your belief in yourself from an experiment in the 1990s.

In an experiment conducted from the 1990s, a group of Asian-American women were asked to take a math test. Two popular stereotypes came into play.

The first was the expectation that Asians are good at math. The second was the expectation that women aren’t.

All test subjects took the exact same math test. Before the test began, though, some of them were asked to fill out an unrelated survey about ethnic heritage, while others were asked to fill out a survey about gender.

This seemingly random task primed their minds to concentrate either on being Asian or on being female.

What happened next is scary.

The women who’d been reminded that they were female scored significantly worse, on average, than those who’d been reminded that they were Asian.

The first time I found out about this experiment, the implications distressed me. I knew unconscious biases harm us, but the idea that we do it to ourselves was awful.

Unconscious biases harm us

The idea that we stand in our own way terrifies me. In the above experiment, the American women entered the math test with unconscious biases in their minds. We cannot pass this test. The survey we took reminded us, women cannot succeed.

Their unconscious biases harmed their test results. They failed the math test because they entered the test room with failure in mind.

In the survey the Asian women filled out before their math test, their minds remembered that Asians are good at math. This reminder increased their belief in themselves. They entered the classroom believing they could pass the test.

And they did.

When you don’t believe in your potential, the job you want, the business you want to build, the partner you want, distance themselves from you.

When you don’t believe in yourself, you do not actualize a successful life.

You stand in your way of actualizing a successful life, when you don’t believe you can succeed. This doubt in yourself is painful and self-destruvtive. You steal the life out of your efforts.

Show you. Show you what you can do.

For several years leading up to starting my blog, I ruthlessly eliminated anything that even suggested I was powerless and replaced it with concrete proof that I wasn’t.

I llistened to podcasts and audio books that told stories of people accomplishing incredible things for 5-6 hours. My goal? Drown out the negative.

I refused to hang out with people who did not believe in themselves. Not because I thought I was “better” than them, but because they represented what I was, rather than what I wanted to become.

I replaced TV time with reading time. TV is full of stories of murder, betrayal, and pain. It’s riveting, but it also messes with your mind.

The result?

Day by day, month by month, year by year, I started to believe in my potential. Not just because of positive thinking, but because I had replaced everything in my reality that suggested anything less.

After actualizing a successful life, I was certain I couldn’t actualize, it turns out believing in yourself paves the way to progress in life.

Saying you don’t believe in yourself is a cop out. It’s defeatist. It’s more than just pessimistic. It’s fatalistic. It’s turning your back on you, on your ability to better yourself, to grow, to learn a lesson, and to succeed in life.

It’s giving up on you.

Show you. Show you what you can do. Bit by bit, you will become a different person, a better version of yourself, someone capable of achieving things the old you couldn’t.

The best way to live a successful life is to believe you will have one.

That alone isn’t enough, of course, but without that first step, the rest of the journey is a lot harder.

Imagine your society, your family, your partner, and you believe in yourself. Only then can you work to match your reality to a successful life you dream of.

To your inspiration,

Banchi