The single most important determinant of outcomes is your belief in that outcome.

I know it sounds like more manifesting-your-dreams-through-thought BS, but I swear it’s not.

I am an introvert, a keen observer of human behaviour and excellent with pattern recognition.

Over the last 40 years of my life, I have observed as people have transitioned into jobs, family and career life that was set for them back when they were kids.

I want to be clear here… I am not saying that we lack free-will. Of course we have free-will. Anyone can change their circumstances, BUT in order to want to do that, you have to believe that a different outcome is possible, right?

I mean that belief that a different outcome, in fact a better outcome, is possible is what drives motivation. No one would be motivated to do anything if they truly believed they would be significantly worse off in the end.

I believe that people end up being really good at something because that trait was recognized and reinforced over-and-over from a young age.

And I don’t even mean reinforced through practice. Of course, practicing will make you better at something. But I think that even without practice, the human brain will get better at something if you tell it that it is good at that thing.

For example, if a very young child learns to read early on and they are praised by teachers and overhear their parents bragging to friends and family about their reading ability, I believe that is enough to turn that child into an extremely well-read adult and even a life-long-lover of books.

I think the positive reinforcement is all that is necessary to make someone good at something.

I will take this one step further.

I believe that if a parent learned that a child was average or not doing well at math at an early age, that simply telling them how awesome they are at math, and even fibbing and telling them that they have ALWAYS been good at math could turn their page on their troubles.

Obviously it would be unethical to actually run this study on children, so I will never know… but I bet it would work!

Think about any time in your own past when you didn’t think you were good at something as a kid or even as an adult… and then someone told you “no, actually, you are really good at it”… didn’t it give you more confidence? Didn’t it actually change your mind?

Really think about it.

Did it make you better at that exact thing?

Know why? Because you believed it. You told your brain that you were good at it, and your brain was like “okay great, we are good at this”. Positive reinforcement is amazing.

I will give you an example from my own life.

When I was a pre-teen, I played in a co-ed softball league. There was usually only one or two girls at most on each team. I wasn’t the best, but I wasn’t the worst. I could catch and throw on par with most of my teammates. I played 3rd base and I was comfortable in that role. I had always played 3rd base, so I knew the rules of 3rd base. One day, I got to my game and my uncle (was an assistant coach on my team) told me our pitcher had broken his arm at school and I was going to be the new pitcher. I froze. No way. I didn’t know how to pitch. I didn’t think I could throw the ball accurately enough. I didn’t want to embarrass myself or be the reason my team lost. My uncle persisted. He told me I was the best female player in the league and that I could outthrow nearly every boy on the team. He told me he would practice with me for 15 minutes before the game started. The most important thing he said though? He said that I know how competitive he is and that he wouldn’t be putting me in that position unless he thought we would win.

That was all it took. I believed him.

We won the championship that year and I was a pitcher every year following.

But when I look back on it realistically now, I know that he was building me up but didn’t actually believe all of that. But it doesn’t matter, it worked.

Ironically, it is that same uncle who always told me I was a great writer, and is a big part of why I started writing this blog! Oh man, looking back on it, was he just being nice about my writing skills too? Haha

That is a positive example, but it also works in reverse.

If a child is struggling with something, and they overhear teachers and parents always referring to their struggle, they will internalize that.

It becomes who they are.

So it is no longer Johnny who is having a hard time with division…. Instead they internalize it as Johnny who sucks at math and will never be good at math so why even bother because it’s hard and it makes me feel like garbage to fail.

I bet that if those parents encouraged Johnny that he actually is good at math, his brain would get on board.

I know it seems far-fetched. And I will also recognize here that learning disabilities interrupt this theory…

But I am living proof that this exact scenario can happen and be reversed.

From a very young age I struggled with math. However, I always good at reading and writing and languages.

My teachers were shocked when I showed up to junior kindergarden speaking French. My aunt had me watch French kids programs and practiced basic French with me and I caught on.

So over the years, in my report cards it showed the same thing… great at reading, writing, language and horrible at math.

My math teachers were always telling me I wasn’t putting the effort in and that I was going to fail. In fact, I failed both grade 9 and grade 10 math and barely passed grade 11.

By the time I got to University, I was fully 100% convinced that I was simply not capable of doing math.

This posed a problem because in order to get my undergrad in psychology and business, I would need to take and pass both a basic and advanced statistics course.

I managed to pass the first one but could not pass the second. I tried three separate times. I don’t know why I bothered three times because never once did I believe I would be able to pass, and so I didn’t. I ended up graduating with a 3-year degree instead of a 4-year degree as a result.

I went on to do a public administration diploma afterwards which had an accounting course in the second semester. In between semesters, I spoke with the accounting teacher who had taught us two different courses in the first semester to share with him my fear of math.

He was effusive in his praise for my work in the other two courses and said he didn’t think I would have any trouble at all in the accounting course based on my other grades. He told me that if at any point I felt like I was struggling, he would help me out but he very much doubted that I would need his extra assistance.

That conversation had such an impact on me.

This professor who is knowledgeable enough about accounting and math to be the teacher has faith in my ability to complete the course and he hasn’t even seen me do any math yet.

It really made me think.

It really boosted my confidence in myself that he thought that highly of me.

I went into the course with this newly found confidence in math and I crushed the course. And he was right, never once did I need to ask for extra help.

And the story doesn’t end there.

I was so encouraged about my abilities after that course that I decided to go back to school again.. this time I did a diploma in research analysis and statistics. Yes, you read that correctly.

I went from not being able to complete a single advanced stats class, to doing an entire diploma on stats and analysis.

And the story doesn’t even end there, believe it or not.

I took that confidence and turned it into a now 15-year career in policy, stats, and funding modelling for the government!

The little girl who couldn’t do long-division works on a team that splits their time between policy and funding for multi-million dollar programs.

Who would have thought?

 A great take-away here is that it is never too late to turn a negatively reinforced belief around to a positive one.

I think though, the main thing I am trying to get through here, is that if you don’t believe in the outcome than there is no way it will happen.

If you think you are going to fail at something, you probably will.

So what should we do for our children?

Let your kids overhear you bragging about them, especially stuff they are struggling with.

Jane is having a hard time reading? Let her overhear you talking on the phone to a friend about how much her reading is improving and how proud you are.

Shane isn’t the world’s best soccer player? Let him hear you telling his uncle how awesome he played in his last game.

I get that some people may think this is lying… I would rather think of it as “gentle encouragement” or “passive positive motivation”.

Of course practicing and studying play a part. I don’t expect overheard conversations to turn every child into a piano virtuoso… but what I am saying is that the child will be more motivated to keep at it if they feel good about the possible outcome.

Wouldn’t we all feel more motivated if we knew our effort would be rewarded?

Remember, you don’t need to be an expert to have an opinion.