If we change the belief, the performance follows. If you change the belief, you can change the way you run your life; the way you run your company; the way you run your family. You build the barriers. It’s often only the belief that makes something so.

As Shakespeare wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

See the “why” and “what.” Don’t worry now about “how.”

Ordinary people do things in ordinary ways. They follow rules; they wait in line; they come and go in well established patterns; they get stuck in ruts and routines.

One day I decided that “ordinary” wasn’t good enough for me, so I went right after my vision. Based on my current reality, and how far my vision was from that reality, I might have thought, “How can I possibly make an impact?” I didn’t know how I would do it; I just knew that I would invent a way to achieve my goal.

You can’t cunningly plan yourself into your ideal situations. When you set a goal, you immediately feel compelled to ask, “How do I do it? How can I get it?” And you start planning. But from where I started, there was no plan that could possibly have put me into my present situation. It took something else.

It took a willingness to let myself get off the old track and to leap frog my present reality. The idea of leap-frogging present reality might seem like magic to you. When you watch a magician do an amazing card trick, you see the end result, not the process. You don’t see the magician slide the card up his sleeve. It looks amazing because you can’t see the “how.”

Once when I was a high school teacher and coach, I needed to raise money for the school athletic program. After considering several ideas, I decided to get 20 kids to fight each other in a boxing tournament. I figured that they were going to fight anyway, so why not sell tickets.

Well, I sold most of the tickets, but five days before fight time I still didn’t have a boxing ring, boxing gloves, or referee. People were starting to say, “Lou, forget this crazy idea, and give the money back.” I couldn’t; I’d spent some of it for advertising.

At that time, I was teaching a night class of adults. I mentioned my problem to the class, and one person said, “You know, I used to be a boxer when I was in the army.”

I said, “Oh.”

He said, “And I’ve got a friend who runs a boxing club here in Seattle.”

I said, “Really. You don’t suppose your friend could find me a boxing ring?”

He gave me the guy’s phone number, and I called it when I got home about 10:00 that night. The man said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help you, but my friend has a boxing club, and he rents his ring out.” I called that guy next, and he said,

“Yes, I’ll rent it to you, for $50.”

I said, “I’ll take it, but don’t bring the boxing ring if you can’t find me a referee.”

He said, “Okay, I’ll referee the fights.”

I said, “For the same price?”

He said, “Yep.”

I said, “Well, there’s no sense in bringing the boxing ring or coming to referee if you don’t know where I can get some boxing gloves.”

And the guy said, “What do you have?”

I said, “I have the tickets sold and the kids ready to fight. By the way, if you have any headgear and drinking bottles and a bell, you’d better bring those things, too.”

I had no idea where I would find a boxing ring and referee when I set the goal and sold tickets. Many people need to know where the resources are at the time they set the vision or goal, and that’s why they achieve so little in life.

Don’t be too concerned with how you’re going to be what you want to be in the future; you’ll learn how to create and invent the process along the way. You’re creative, intuitive, and powerful inside you’re a creative genius. But you’ve got to allow yourself to get off the old track.

Right now, I want you to be more concerned with why and with what. If you get that right, you will invent the how.

The best way to control your future is to invent it. How do high performance people invent their future? How do they get off the old track? How do they leap-frog their current reality and drop themselves into their vision? By fixing on the vision, the mission, the affirmation, and initially ignoring the how.

To transcend current reality, you can’t be too concerned with the how. Otherwise, you’ll shrink your vision. If you can’t logically, realistically tell yourself how to reach your goal based on what you think you can do at the moment, you will deny what you’re capable of doing in the future because it seems unrealistic. “Oh, it’s just a pie-in-the-sky dream anyway.” “Where will the customers come from?” “Where will I get the money?” “Who will help me?” ”I’m not qualified. I need a degree first.”

You will invent a hundred rationalizations to keep you from doing what you want to do. You will tell yourself that your goal is out of reach, and then you’ll back it up to where it seems more realistic, more attainable, more comfortable. Even then you might take years to achieve that goal and you might never use your vast creative potential to make a better life.