To begin with, may I ask you how you plan to improve this year? A lot of us believe that getting better means working harder, getting better at things, and doing more things. Even if these factors are important, maybe a better way to look at it would be to dig a little deeper and find the confidence to believe in oneself.
My book "SOULFUL TRIBE" revolves around my Catholic school-educated upbringing in Mumbai, India. I remember it clearly from my 7th grade sports lesson, when our teacher addressed us following a disappointing loss in cricket. Every time self-doubt rears its head, his comments, "The reason you lost today was not that they were better, but because you didn't believe in yourselves," reverberate in my head. He told a story of a farmer who lived more than a century ago to demonstrate this point.

This uneducated farmer maintained a little property next to a small river in a small Indian village. While taking a morning dip in the river, he happened upon a peculiar stone with a distinctive luster. He instinctively thought it was a diamond and told his wife about it with great excitement, but she was not convinced. Unfazed, he asked his closest buddy and a nearby jeweler for confirmation, but both of them rejected the notion.
The farmer held onto his beliefs in spite of the lack of support. After bringing the gem to a knowledgeable jeweler in the town, he was informed that though cleaning and inspection by a Japanese specialist were necessary for a final determination, the rock might be a diamond. The inspired farmer, with little money, borrowed money on his property and bought a ticket to Japan.
Following an extensive evaluation, the Japanese specialist deemed it to be the biggest diamond he had ever laid eyes on. A whooping twenty million dollars was offered to the farmer for the rock. After the diamond was eventually cut, a stunning pink diamond was revealed, and it was placed on Queen Elizabeth's crown.
Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, "What lies within us is greater than what lies before us or behind us."
The farmer's tale is a timeless lesson on the ability of self-belief to change our circumstances, even when others disbelieve it. Let us take a cue from this story as we confront the difficulties of a fresh year, realizing that self-belief and determination within ourselves are the real keys to realizing our full potential.
Our belief can spark extraordinary events in the broader scheme of things, as it did for the poor farmer who saw the diamond hidden inside an otherwise ordinary rock.
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