LEADERSHIP AND THE POWER OF BELIEF by NAPOLEON HILL

LEADERSHIP AND THE POWER OF BELIEF

Leaders are those individuals who live by empowering beliefs and teach others to tap their full

capabilities by shifting the beliefs that have been limiting them. One great leader who impresses me is

a teacher by the name of Marva Collins. You may have seen the 60 Minutes program or the movie that

was made about her. Thirty years ago, Marva utilized her personal power and decided to touch the

future by making a real difference in the lives of children. Her challenge: when she got to her first

teaching job in what many considered to be a ghetto of Chicago, her second-grade students had

already decided that they didn't want to learn anything. Yet Marva's mission is to touch these

children's lives. She doesn't have a mere belief that she can impact them; she has a passionate, deep-rooted conviction that she will influence them for good. There was no limit to the extent she would go.

Faced with children labelled as dyslexics and every other kind of learning or behavioural disorder, she

decided that the problem was not the children, but the way they were being taught. No one was

challenging them enough. As a result, these kids had no belief in themselves. They had no references

of ever being pushed to break through and find out who they really were or what they were capable of.

Human beings respond to challenge, and these children, she believed, needed that more than

anything else. So she threw out all the old books that read, "See Spot run," and instead taught

Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Tolstoy. All the other teachers said things like, "There's no way it can

happen. There's no way these kids can understand that." And as you might guess, many of them at-

tacked Marva personally, saying that she was going to destroy these children's lives. But Marva's

students not only understood the material, they thrived on it. Why? Because she believed so fervently

in the uniqueness of each child's spirit, and his or her ability to learn anything. She communicated

with so much congruency and love that she literally got them to believe in themselves—some of them

for the first time in their young lives. The results she has consistently produced for decades have

been extraordinary.

I first met Marva and interviewed her at West side Preparatory School, the private school she founded

outside the Chicago city school system. After our meeting, I decided to interview some of her students.

The first young man I met was four years old, with a smile that would knock your socks off. I shook his

hand.

"Hi, I'm Tony Robbins."

"Hello, Mr. Robbins, my name is Talmadge E. Griffin. I am four years old. What would you like to

know?!"

"Well, Talmadge, tell me, what are you studying these days?"

"I'm studying a lot of things, Mr. Robbins."

"Well, what books have you read recently?"

"I just finished reading Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck."

Needless to say, I was pretty impressed. I asked him what the book was about, figuring he'd say

something like it was about two guys named George and Lenny.

He said, "Well, the main protagonist is ..."

By this time I was a believer! Then I asked him what he had learned from the book.

"Mr. Robbins, I more than learned from this book. This book permeated

my soul."

I started to laugh, and asked, "What does 'permeate' mean?"

"To diffuse through," he said, then gave me a fuller definition than I could give you.

"What touched you so much in this book, Talmadge?"

"Mr. Robbins, I noticed in the story that the children never judge anyone else by the colour of their

skin. Only the adults did that. What I learned from this is that although I will someday become an

adult, I'll never forget the lessonsof a child." I started to get teary-eyed because I saw that Marva

Collins was providing this young man and so many others like him with the kinds of powerful beliefs

that will continue to shape his decisions not only today, but throughout his life. Marva increases her

students' quality of life by using the three organizing principles I talked about in the beginning of

this book: she gets them to hold themselves to a higher standard, she assists them in adopting new,

empowering beliefs that enable them to break through their old limitations, and she backs all this up

with specific skills and strategies necessary for lifelong success. The results? Her students become not

only confident, but competent. The immediate results in terms of their academic excellence are

striking, and the processional effects generated in their everyday lives are profound. Finally I asked

Talmadge, "What's the most important thing that Mrs. Collins has taught you?"

"The most important thing Mrs. Collins has taught me is that SOCIETY MAY PREDICT, BUT ONLY I WILL

DETERMINE MY DESTINY!"

Maybe we all need to remember the lessons of a child. With the beliefs young Talmadge expressed so

beautifully, I guarantee that he, as well as the other children in the class, will have a great opportunity

to continuously interpret their lives in a way that will create the future they desire, rather than the one

that most people fear. Let's review what we've learned so far. We're clear that there's a power inside

us that needs to be awakened. That power starts with the capability to make conscious decisions that

shape our destiny. But there is one core belief that we must explore and resolve, and this belief can be

found in your answer to the question . . .