Faith

The only thing holding you back from becoming the kind of person who changes things is this: lack of faith. Faith that you can do it. Faith that it's worth doing. Faith that failure won't destroy you.

People who challenge and then change the status quo do something that's quite difficult. They overcome resistance of people they trust, people they work for, people in their community. Every step of the way, it's far easier to stop and accept thanks for finally giving up than to persist and risk the humiliation of failure.

So why do it?
Faith is the unstated component in the work of a leader and I think faith is underrated.
Faith goes back a long way. Faith leads to hope, and it overcomes fear. Faith gave our ancestors the resilience they needed to deal with the mysteries of the (pre-science) world.
Faith is the dividing line between humans and most other species.

We have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, faith that Newton's laws will continue to govern the way a ball travels, and faith that our time in med school will pay off twenty years from now because society is still going to need doctors.

Chris Sharma is able to to do a dyno on a rock face one hundred feet above ground because he has faith that it'll work out okay. If you watch kids learning how to dyno, you'll see that the secret to developing the skill isn't about building their muscles or learning some exotic technique. It is merely about developing the faith that it'll work.
"Merely," of course, is a huge step. It's nothing but a few neurons' worth of faith, just the knowledge that you can do it.

But without faith, the leap never works.



Faith is the cornerstone that keeps our organizations together.
Faith is the cornerstone of humanity; we can't live without it. But religion is very different from faith. Religion is just a set of invented protocols, rules to live by.
Heretics challenge a given religion, but do it from a very strong foundation of faith.

If religion comprises rules you follow, faith is demonstrated by the actions you take.
When you lead without compensations, when you sacrifice without guarantee, when you take risks because you believe, then you are demonstrating your faith in the tribe and its mission.