I am a huge Superman fan. You can actually look back over every age range in my life and see something related to Superman. In fact, I did not realize how much I was into Superman until my wife threw me a big surprise birthday party one year. She posted pictures of me all over the walls going all the way back to my newborn pictures. It was at that moment I realized just how much Superman was a part of me.
More recently, I realized superpowers are not just in comic books or movies. In the opening of the Justice League movie, Wonder Woman is kicking some major tail and one of the bad guys asks her “I don’t believe it. What are you?” To which she replies, “A believer!”
She is referring to the fact she believes in humankind and that motivates her to perform these great feats and fight for good and justice. For a long time she had lost her belief, and all of her knowledge, skills and abilities were going to waste. It was not until she saw Superman sacrifice his life for the people of Earth that she believed in humanity again. Her belief sparked her greatness once more.
As you know, my personal tagline I use all the time is “Be Great…Today!” but after hearing her reply I realized that to be great today, you must believe.
You must believe in yourself, in others and in what you are doing. Belief is a truly great power. In sports, coaches will tell you to visualize success. Visualize making the catch, throwing a perfect strike, or hitting a long and straight drive off the tee box.
When I golf, I have a tendency for my drives to fade off to the right or in golf terms a slice. One day on the course, I came up to a tee box and along the right hand side of the fairway was a line of houses. In the backyard of one of those houses, there was a homeowner doing yard work.
My first thought was, “oh no, I am going to hit him.” Then I thought no way because I will not be able to hit it that far. The image was in my mind though, and so much so I literally turned my stance to aim way left to try to make up for my slice.
Guess what happened? I hit the ball and it flew right into his backyard. Luckily, he had gone inside the house or I probably would have hit him. I believed I was going to hit it in that yard and I did.
I can give multiple analogies, but the message is the same- believe in yourself, in others and in what you are doing and great things will happen. Do not let negative, self-fulling prophecy or the comments from naysayers get you down. If you want it, believe in yourself and work hard to get it.
Therefore, I have finally realized I do have a superpower, which is “my power to believe.” If I believe, then I know I can “Be Great…Today!” The cool things is ‘believing’ is not only to be had by me. We all have this superpower inside of us.
Be Great…Today!!!
Brandon Brazeel, MBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP