A cult of ‘self-belief’ seduces more and more victims everyday. Like this guy, trying to break a wooden board over his head. It’s good for a laugh, but there’s some lessons here too.
Some one sent me a link to this video the other today. When I watched it I laughed so hard I snorted cab merlot through my nose:
If you don’t have time to watch it, the short of it is this guy wants to inspire you by doing something amazing – breaking a piece of wood over his head. He wants to show you the power of ‘believing in yourself’.
Turns out there are limits to this idea.
Doesn’t stop him from giving it a red-hot go though.
Oh wow, where to start? This bloke obviously has a few challenges in life, but let’s look at where his methodology of self-empowerment falls over.
As he outlines it, there’s a 3-step program for success:
- Believe in yourself
- Formulate a plan of action
- Follow through with it.
Anything wrong with that? You’ll hear the same thing on any 1800-GURU hotline. It seems reasonable. It’s the fashionable way to think.
But I think while it may be ‘a’ road to success, it’s not the only road. We put a lot of emphasis on self-belief and visualisation, but I think that’s often because we don’t understand where success actually comes from.
People ask successful people where their success came from all the time. I think most have no idea. They just got lucky.
Unless they were following a clear plan – and I think most aren’t, they’re just doing their thing – then they look back and point to vague concepts like ‘believing in yourself’ and ‘following your passion’.
And I think a lot of success actually comes ‘messy’ processes. Like the guy just tooling about in his shed. Penicillin growing on dirty petri dishes.
It’s driven by curiosity, and trial and error. Play. More by ‘what if’ than ‘I believe’.
So I think it’s easy to misdiagnose the ingredients of success. I think this is where this guy goes wrong.
I’m guessing that he must have tried this before at some point. And it must of worked, otherwise he wouldn’t have decided to do it in front of a camera. (Ok, I might be assuming too much intelligence there…)
But I think the thing about plywood (if my reading of the comments is correct) is that it has a grain. It breaks in one direction, but just bends in another.
So I’m guessing the first time he tried it, he went with the grain, and it worked.
But then he misdiagnosed his success. “I broke the wood over my head. It must have been because I believed in myself.”
We want to believe in self-belief. We want to believe that self-belief turns us into Gandalf staff-waving magicians who can do anything.
Why?
Because it’s easy.
Self-belief doesn’t take any energy. There’s nothing to it. It’s just a vague statement of fact we make with our inner monologue.
Visualisation at least takes effort. It requires some focusing of the mind – some energy put into concentration.
But self-belief doesn’t even take that much. It’s practically free.
So if we’re told that self-belief gives us the power to do anything – fly, manifest Ferraris, lose weight, smash wooden boards over our heads – it’s incredibly appealing.
All that power and I don’t have to do a thing to earn it? Where do I sign?
And so we want it to be true. Desperately. And so we push away the work we really need to do.
No, I’m not going to do any exercise. I have faith that self-belief will make me thin and give me a butt you can crack walnuts on.
If I actually invested in exercise, then I’d be saying that I don’t think self-belief alone can’t do it. It’s a blasphemy. A self-belief fairy dies.
I would be denying the magical power of self-belief, and I really want it to be true.
So we live as if it were true, even if we’ve had no evidence that it is. We sit on the couch, avoid investing in skills and experience, waiting for the self-belief fairy to come and save us.
But evidence keeps mounting that self-belief alone can’t do it. The world-view starts to crack but we rush to its defence. We deny and de-legitimise any evidence that contests the world view we’ve invested in. We refuse to see it.
And that leads us into worlds of pain. Like this guy. Pain should be a signal that something isn’t working. It’s a signal to pause, take stock, and re-evaluate our strategies.
But our man can’t do that. Because self-belief is the only necessary ingredient. So if it isn’t working, the only possible meaning he can accept is that he needs more self-belief.
Even as he approaches the point of crushing his own skull with a wooden board, his faith that it’s going to work if he can only muster a little more self-belief, is unshakeable.
Bong! Bong! Bong!
Oh, poor dear. Did you hurt yourself?
This is one of the great quirks of human nature. We reach for world views that are easy – low-energy holidays. But once we get there, we’ll go to incredible lengths to defend them – against evidence, reason, even pain and suffering.
And we laugh at this guy, but how many people are beating themselves up with self-belief? How many people are staying on the sidelines, not getting messy in the world of mistakes? Not taking risks, not learning, not growing?
How many people are not participating fully in life, because they want to believe in the power of self-belief?
My feeling is that it’s a lot, and the number is growing. 1800 GURUS, selling nothing but seductive easy-ways-out, add more and more people to the list of suckers every day.
But you’re not going to be one of them, are you now?
Helen says
another Friday . .another of your wonderful blog articles (and a good laugh) ! Thanks Jon
JUST SAYING! says
AHh yes! The power of propaganda… lets not let the truth get in the way of a good story. I note that is also a favorite tool of gubberments everywhere. Just like “team australia” come on please..really!
JUST SAYING! says
Just like the cult of “Obama” and his slogan “Yes we can!”… which soon translated into no we can’t not long after strangely enough…lol
Kathy says
Same thing appears to be happening to the Syriza party in Greece.
Kathy says
Just wanted to say I laughed myself silly at the video.
Ken says
Sorry Jon, but I couldn’t laugh at this stupidity if I tried. I guess I’m too much of a realist. (1) The sheet of ply was not a board, (2) so it has more than one grain and that means it is too flexible. There is a trick to every trade. I do have a sense of humour, (oxford version), and get your point though.
KatM says
I think the protagonist parroting the slogans tried to “smash the bored” because his self-belief was “F*@$, this sheet of ply’s gonna break m’ neck!”
Extreme example of a harmful & self-defeating way of doing things.
Ian says
Success comes with long and consistent hard work – and the best advice I can give is – do the most productive thing possible at every given moment.
Steve Christo says
As a manufacturer of formwork plywood I can tell you that the thin plywood he chose (9mm) will never break on his head … he was smart enough to see a video of some seminar speaker breaking wood but not smart to actually attend and see that they used 18mm thick solid pine which is a whole heap easier to break (along the grain as everyone has pointed out) than any cross laminated plywood … and he obviously doesn’t come from the building industry or he would have known that already … and he doesn’t come from a scientific background or he would have questioned his testing methods prior to conducting the experiment … and he’s not a journalist or he would have asked more questions, done more research and remembered his three points prior to having someone record the event … and I could continue but you get the point.
The message is … Stay at school kids and learn a bit about everything those annoying teachers want to teach you until you find something that kinda captivates your interest then get really good at that thing !!!
And don’t do silly experiments like this at home and have your father video it for the world to see …. almost as stupid as sexting and wondering why your photo has been splattered all over the internet and your credibility has gone to zero in 24 hours flat !!!!
End of rant.
Thank you Jon for another NO B.S. extravaganza.