On Turning “I’ll Believe it When I See it” Upside Down.

Unique Perspectives: On Turning “I’ll Believe it When I See it” Upside Down.

By Kim Stevens

I was driving to work the other day and thinking about a phrase that gets thrown around a lot: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Wait, what?

If we had to see something in order to believe in it, then how could there possibly be anything new in the world? Someone would have to see that thing or else, according to this funky formula, it simply wouldn’t exist. 

I turned a corner, just minutes from the office, and reworded the saying in my mind: “When I believe it, I’ll see it.”

Ahh, there we go. Now that’s the perspective I subscribe to every day. 

I love the idea of beliefs forming the foundation for everything I see in the world. If they didn’t, then whatever I witnessed or experienced in life would be based on beliefs that were probably not even my own, a byproduct of those concepts taught to me or inadvertently learned.

I’ve been playing with this “when I believe it, I’ll see it” perspective for a while now, and I’ve found that one of the coolest things about it – beyond the inherent empowerment of choosing what I believe – is that when I start to choose my beliefs, I start to see them appear in my life and I start to have experiences based on the particular beliefs I’ve selected. 

Some of my biggest beliefs are all about the word “ease.” Beliefs like:

• “Things are easy for me.”

• “I'm at ease in all situations.”

• “It's easy for me to maintain a healthy mind and body.” 

To clarify, a belief is different from an affirmation. There’s nothing wrong with affirmations but believing something is different from just telling yourself something you’d like to believe. A belief is powerful. It gets ingrained in us, becoming part of our very being and twisted up in every experience we have in our lives. 

I parked the car, opened the door, then stepped outside. “When I believe it, I’ll see it,” I repeated, looking up at the cloudless expanse above and reminding myself that the sky’s the limit when you live life by choosing what you believe.