To continue last month’s subject of visualisation, I was recently reading about Richard Branson in his early days. Whenever journalists visited his small office, he’d have the phone ringing constantly with people saying: “It’s Ted Heath/David Bailey/Mick Jagger on the line for you, Richard!” to which he’d reply “Tell them I’ll call back – I’m just in a meeting.”
A good friend of mine, who had a new interior design business in the 90s, when having one of the big DIY stores visit him to consider stocking his goods, he set up a conveyor belt where orders were filled by one team, then pass through a wall where another (hidden) team would unpack it and send it back through, making it seem his business was doing incredible numbers of orders.
Some may consider this deceit. For me, what they were doing is helping others believe in their product as much as they did. For Richard Branson, the result is historical, and I can assure you, my friend got that all-important order, too, and went on to run 26 stores of his own stores throughout the UK.
Having belief in yourself is essential if you’re to reassure someone else of your dream. Helping another visualise what working with you could be like, is half of the battle. The other half is being able to deliver that dream, of course.
I have been exceptionally lucky to have tried many things in my life, and been moderately successful in some of them. The secret? As some people around me were busy saying “You can’t just write a song/write a screenplay/become a radio producer…” I was blindly diving in and doing exactly that, believing I certainly couldn’t do those things if I didn’t try.
Sometimes in life, we have to fake it to make it. Do whatever you believe you can. Give it 100% and dive in without listening to the naysayers (in your head, as well as from others). There’s only one way to find out if you can fly: spring. And if you’re lucky, the net will appear.