Belief to Believer

I've been hearing Chet talk about his favorite quote at Build to Lead since I first started, and this quote that he loves so much is, leaders are believers. And it's true, if you think about any strong leader that, you know, they know what they believe. You know, I mean, even though half the group that they're talking to might disagree with them and half the group might agree, at the end of the day, the leader usually knows what they believe. You hope they know what they believe. The strongest leaders know definitely what they believe, but that doesn't mean that you're a believer. And I remember when I first heard Chet say that, I kind of did a double take, and I said, what do you mean? You know, how do you believe but you're not a believer? And he pulled out the Matrix. The movie, the Matrix. If you haven't seen it, you're going to see it now. There's a little clip that you're going to watch, and it's so powerful. I'm going to try to explain this so that you understand it, because it took me a little bit myself, but I feel like my melody line hopefully will make it more clear now that I've thought about it, and hopefully I can clearly give it over to you. And here's the concept. The concept is, is that as you build out your worldview and you start to get strong and you start to become your own biggest influence because you've thought about things, you understand why you believe what you believe, and you challenged what you've been taught your whole life, because again, most people won't do this. So putting pen to paper and writing out different topics about anything and then getting clear on what you believe so that as you experience life, you can filter that through your worldview and then act accordingly. And if you don't do that, you're just basically going to be part of the herd and following whatever everyone else does, or unconsciously not even realizing it and doing what other people want you to do. But once you start getting clarity and once you start living out your core, you. You start to have this strength, and it's very attractive. People will move closer to you and some will be repelled, because sometimes that could be scary for some people around you. And it's all because you become stronger, because you are a believer. You start to really believe in whatever it is that you've been working on. If that means being a better employee or being a better leader or being a better husband, wife, mother, mother, whatever it is that you're working on, your life Getting clarity on. But what we say is it's a continuum, meaning you're going to continue to get stronger as you work. And where you are today is not where you're going to be next year, the year after. And so when you watch this clip, and if you've ever seen the Matrix, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when I explain it. But as you watch the clip, there's two different clips. In the first clip, you're going to see Neo, who is saving the world, up against the bad guys. And Neo's team has been running from the bad guys the entire movie because they know that the bad guys are going to kill him. And at this point in the movie, Neo starts to believe and he stays and he fights. And it's a cool fight. And you're going to see he kind of wins this fight. But then something happens at the end of the fight that's really interesting because he still runs, and that's that nuance. He started to believe and he was. He. He had strong belief to the point where he stayed and fought, but he still ran. And the reason that he ran was because he wasn't a believer. He wasn't there yet. Which is most likely where you are. Most of us are. It depends on if you've put 10,000 hours in, how hard you've worked. And as you're going to see in the next scene, this is when he became a believer. This is the part in the movie where you see him just with confidence and grace, do his thing and basically kick the enemy's ass in a way that just looks so cool. Because when you're a believer and you've put in the hard work and you've worked through this continuum where you just keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger, the fact is, you don't arrive unless you're Neo. But since none of us are Neo, we have to keep working. So you can. You can believe. And you may think you're a believer and you may look at different areas of. In your life, maybe spiritually, emotionally, with your relationships. And you may feel like you're a rock and you've got it down solid, but I would challenge you because you're probably not a believer. And if I was working with you one on one, I would do what I can to find those blind spots, those gaps. Hopefully you can kick your own ass and you can find them yourself, because that's what built lead leaders do. They root out where they can get better. They humble themselves and realize, I haven't arrived yet. There is more. There is another level of belief that I can get. And so this is not something that you check off on a piece of paper and just say, yep, I wrote my worldview and I believe all the stuff that I have. Each one of those little nuances is complex and has layers of depth and can be challenged. And so you have to be honest with yourself and have some self awareness about where you fall on that continuum. And all I can tell you is that when I learned this concept, this nuance, I was at a practice at the Ohio State wrestling facility. And these wrestlers who are the best in the country, the ability to wrestle at Ohio State, which is so hard to get onto that team, you know, Chet was calling out the wrestlers for not being believers and for pretty much any other average Joe out there. And the thousands and upon hundreds of thousands of wrestlers in the country who look at these guys and they are the studs. They are the highest. They've reached the pinnacle of their sport. At the end of the day, these guys know they haven't because there's always another level. The people who are in the Olympics, the people who are, you know, wrestling at the highest. The highest levels. But at the end of the day, we always have many layers that we can jump when it comes to our belief. And you have to be honest with yourself to see where you are. And so enjoy the clips, take a look at it. You'll see what I'm talking about, hopefully. And then post any thoughts that you have about this concept, read the builder's insights that Chet has shared and become a believer and humble yourself and realize you're not one yet.