Compliments of Raw Faith 02 via Flickr

Faith is the act of stepping out on nothing and landing on something – Cornell West

Belief in a better future catapults us forward. In The Happiness Advantage, Anchor suggests that it’s not the actual events that shape our stress level, but rather our mental construction of them which determines how we feel.

Our propensity to use whatever left overs we find from adverse fallout to construct a 180 degree turnabout is the ultimate test of character – the ability, fortitude, and willingness to “make lemons from lemonade” using the grist of experience to vault us even further. Faith is thus the lens through which we see an already realized event – acting “as if” something has already occurred. The mental control exercised in “seeing” an envisioned positive relieves our stress level, placing us in the driver’s seat of our lives, providing fuel for a successful end product.

Beliefs are some of the most powerful determinants of behavior (Robbins, 1986). Confidence is then the motor fuel of faith – the belief in our self-efficacy to achieve the desired results. Daily visioning, removal of self-defeating thoughts (e.g., through five minute meditation) and five pounds of pressure – in which we make concerted effort to ensure our ephemeral dreamscape takes place – all contribute to a recipe for success.