In My Shoes Monday with Michele: The Business of Believing

This season is all about what we believe in. 

I recently found a random post on the internet about the difference between the words belief and trust. Which of these two words hold more meaning? Well, what I took away is that belief is the first part of trust. Belief is when you hope that something is going to happen to you, but trust is when you’re open to the outcome no matter what it is. The difference is that you have to have full trust in the process. You have to surrender, or submit, to your belief knowing that you’ll be fine no matter what the outcome might be. Belief, the post I read explained, is only halfway to trust. You need some action to get you all the way to trust. It’s the action you put into your beliefs that takes you to trust. 

This tapped into something really big for me, which is that people who are in direct sales start with a belief in themselves and a company, the belief in network marketing. And then when they translate that into action, they’re open to the outcome and are consistently acting on that belief. 

A lot of times what happens is they do the action and belief but they don’t get the outcome they like, and that’s not trust, that’s manipulation of belief. This is what I think is the secret sauce to being successful. It really boils down to when you believe in that, a relationship of trust, and you do that consistently, you’ll be surprised at the results you can achieve. 

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What’s interesting is when I came into my position, the model of what a successful company looks like and what you’re sort of taught is not at all what’s in that arena. Most of the companies you hear about that are really successful are ones with competition and ego and lots of elbows in both directions. I had this conflict because I didn’t know how I’d align and reconcile compromising my core values and beliefs with that. So when I looked a little deeper into what successes were really out there, I found what I was looking for: companies that were successful with this paradigm. 

It gave me a little belief that I didn’t have to compromise and I could make this work all in alignment. I had to actually find that level of trust in the process. I always like that compromise of jumping off a cliff and hoping your wings come out. I didn’t know if we were going to start to fly or I was going to fall flat on my face but when I allowed the Beauty Guides to become more actionable in their beliefs, they trusted and they knew it was all aligned and that has been the root of our success.

And what we’re finding now it’s not just the financial gain. That’s been secondary to the evolution to the Beauty Guides. If we weren’t open to the outcome, if we were only open to financial gain, we would’ve missed the real gem of the success. They have changed my life in so many ways, and especially the way I think about things. Somehow I’ve become a leader, and it’s shown me that everyone can do this too, everyone can operate in this way of believing and trusting in those beliefs