Have you ever felt fear so crippling that it paralyzed your movement? Or have you made the mistake of not doing something because you were afraid to fail or look foolish? Fear is a primary motivator in our careers and our lives, but it has a counterpart that produces the opposite result of paralysis: faith.

Many people see and understand faith as it relates to religion, but not its role in achieving success. Faith isn’t something you have; it’s something you use. Faith is the principle that causes you to act, because it removes limitations from your mind so you can move forward. 

Agents who know what they want, make a plan to achieve it, and have a state of mind that refuses to give up on their goal will always be the best performers. They don’t fail, because they have the confidence that comes with having faith in themselves. 

This confidence requires you to embrace courage, optimism, and the will to always move forward, building a foundation of success through the ABCs of positive momentum. 

A: Action

Nothing happens until an action is put into motion, followed by another one and another one until your goal, objective, or purpose is achieved. 

A car is not going to move without a number of actions taken to make the engine run. Have you filled it with gas, have you started the ignition, is it in the right gear, are you pushing the pedal? Taking actionable steps embraces courage and optimism to build momentum. 

B: Belief

Setting a goal, having a plan, and taking action will only get you so far. Without belief, your effort is only half-hearted. When you believe in your goal and your actions, you expect success — just as we expect our car to start in the morning. 

Positive thoughts fill your mind with images of accomplishment, leaving no room for fear and doubt. This belief is motivating not only for ourselves but those around us. And with steady forward motion, belief becomes reality. Make sure to boost your team members’ belief in their goals by recognizing their forward progress.

C: Conditioning 

Having faith in yourself means you’ve conditioned your mind to receive a flow of intelligence and activate those ideas to achieve your goals. It takes effort to keep those positive thoughts flowing; however, focusing on the positive will propel you forward over and over again. 

Practice how to recognize positive thoughts to act upon and create new possibilities. We have to exercise and fuel our faith muscles just as we must maintain a car to keep it humming. 

Even when we stumble and let fear get the best of us, you don’t have to wallow in that fear. Defeat is only failure when you accept it as such. A temporary setback is a chance to recalibrate and convert adversity into the next opportunity. Every success story is riddled with what seems like insurmountable challenges, only to later be recognized as the things that unlocked the door to possibility.

It’s much easier to change direction when you are moving rather than getting something started from a stop. Faith is the practice of believing by doing — so get moving! 

David Ibarra is a managing director for Portfolio, a leading provider of reinsurance and F&I programs, and a nationally recognized leadership consultant, entrepreneur, speaker, and author.