It Only Takes One

The year was 1999 and the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, was at the tail-end of his criminal indictment process, facing prison and innumerable financial penalties.  In addition, as it turned out, Jordan had been informing on his partners and colleagues at the brokerage firm and by doing so, trying to reduce his own anticipated prison term.  Yes, he was ratting on them.  But that’s not the most fascinating thing about Jordan Belfort.

During his years of running the brokerage firms, he had employed as many as 1,000 brokers and had had many partners and associates.  Each and every one of them absolutely loved and adored Belfort, and literally would give up their lives for him.  And for most of them that fact had not changed even after they learned that he had been informing on them!  How is that possible?  How was he able to get them all to love him so unconditionally, as they were all ready to literally take a bullet for him?

Simply put, they loved Jordan Belfort because he believed in them.  He believed in them so genuinely and unequivocally, they felt empowered like never before in their lives.  They suddenly could tap into their own hidden abilities and accomplish anything they wanted!  Unfortunately, what they wanted to accomplish was help thousands of people lose their hard-earned millions of dollars, but that’s a story for another day.

The amazing thing about someone believing in you – it changes everything!  You instantly feel enormous amount of confidence in your own abilities.  Why?  Well, in case you didn’t know, most of us are human and we have doubts, almost all of which are self-doubts.  “Can I really do that?”, “Am I really good enough?” – and when someone believes in you and says: “Yes, you can!  You are awesome!”, you know for sure that your doubts were all false. 

The thing is: your abilities were already there, like a flame waiting to be ignited.  Most of us just don’t know how.  As Jordan Belfort proved time and again, all it takes is one person who believes in you more than you believe in yourself to turn that slow-burning hot coal into a raging fire.