Could you stand in a packed stadium and speak to over 100,000 people?
Yes, you can.
"No I can't, I'd be too scared", you say? Well what if the message you had for those 100,000 people was incredibly important. Perhaps if you were to tell them the most important lesson you learned from a great tragedy in your life. Would you be able to do it then?
I think you would. Your compassion and certainty would give you the confidence to get up there, speak to them, and delivery your important message.
What changed? It wasn't the environment and physical circumstances. It's still a big stadium with 100,000+ people. It's not you physically. You didn't become taller, better looking or suddenly get a nicer-sounding voice.
All that changed was in your own head.
You know how to put words together to make sentences. You know how to string sentences together to tell stories and make logical arguments. You know how to vocalize those words, sentences, stories and arguments. Sure, you might not be the most polished presenter but you have enough ability to get your important message across. What changed was your assessment of ability and suddenly what you are capable of is "good enough".
"I think I can, I think I can" isn't enough. But it is critical.
There some things that are "necessary and sufficient". You must have it, and once you have it, that's all you need to accomplish your objective. Given where you are and how you are at this very moment, if you're thirsty, a nice drink is all you need to slake your thirst.
There are other things that are "necessary but insufficient." You must have it, but it is not enough on its own to accomplish your objective. Given where and how you are at this very moment, if you suddenly realize you're feeling lonely, putting someone next to you to talk is good but not enough. You want a human being to connect with, but It's not enough that they be a human being, there are more requirements than that.
Belief in yourself and your abilities is necessary but insufficient. It isn't enough on its own for you to perform well, but it is necessary.
I've written before about the mastery curve and the how it isn't a smooth curve. There are ascents and there are corrections followed by plateaus.
Those corrections, where performance dips back down, are not "reversion to the mean".
Reversion to the mean is when you or your team have an instance of aberrantly superior or inferior performance and then go back to your mean (average) performance level. Let's say you do 120% your usual performance, or maybe 70%. Is that the start of a new and wonderful (or worrisome) trend? Did you just level up or crash back down a level?
You can't tell from just one instance. As Six Sigma practitioners will tell you, if you have 7 data points you know something has definitely changed. Just 1 or 2 or 3? Too early to say. Why? Because usually you're going to get reversion back to the mean. Things go back to where they usually tend to be.
But what we see on the mastery curve, representing skill development, is not reversion to the mean. Your skill development is not an effort to maintain a constant process with consistent performance. You're actively trying to improve your performance.
So why, after you experience a noticeable increase in your skill does it dip back down? Why is there a correction?
That correction has to do with your self-image. It has to do with what you believe about yourself and what it's like you to do.
When your skill level noticeably improves, it is often due to an expansion in your subconscious ability. You're suddenly able to piece together component skills better than you could before or in a way that had eluded you before. You consciously knew what to do, but the slow, linear conscious mind just couldn't make it happen. When your subconsciously gets it, though, its powerful parallel-processing lets you do something you clearly couldn't before.
And now what? Your self-image hasn't caught up yet. You still think of yourself the same way you did before your subconscious got it. You think maybe it was a fluke, and you expect reversion to the mean.
Did I just do what I couldn't do before? Did I just do what had eluded me for so long? Maybe it was a fluke.
That thinking then diminishes your actual performance afterwards. Your performance reverts not back to the mean but to your self-image.
The performance plateau after the correction results in part due to time necessary to expand your self-image. As long as you believe it's like you to perform at a certain level, even if your actual potential is beyond it, you stay at that level of your self-image. Your performance potential has expanded but your mind holds you back so you perform at a level that is consistent with your self-image.
"I think I can, I think I can" makes is seem like believing in your abilities is all-or-nothing. That's overly simplistic. The effect your mind has on your performance is multi-faceted, not simply binary. Your self-image affects how you do something, not just whether you do it. It determines how well you perform along any dimension you want to consider, and isn't just a matter of "do or do not".
When it comes to your actual performance, you want to pay attention to physical, mental, and emotional factors. Within the mental, you want to pay attention to the interaction between the conscious, subconscious, and self-image.
Self-image is a powerful throttle on how you perform. You can grow it if you know how and then remain attentive and deliberate.
You can definitely speak to a crowd of 100,000 people. You can do so powerfully. But if that wasn't your first thought when you first imagined it at the start of this post, I suggest your self-image probably hasn't received as much attention as it could.
Now's a good time to start. It's vital to your living your identity and experiencing the fulfillment you desire and are meant to have.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Yπερνικᾶτε ἐν Χριστῷ. "Let us go be more than conquerors in Christ"