"Everything is possible to him who believes" is not restricted to theists

[Khaleesi]

"Everything is possible to him who believes." Mark 9:23

I find it amazing how basically the entire new testment is so useful to people's lives, even if they do not believe in God; regardless of their lifestyle, actually. I'll briefly show you how.

Oftentimes, the mistake we make is to compare ourselves to other people. We think they are our competitors. We want to be better than, or at least as good as, they are. Then, we rate our performance according to theirs. We’re happy whenever we do better than they did, and we’re sad when we don’t. Our thinking is completely wrong, because our biggest competition is in fact, ourselves. We have to be the main focus of what we want to overcome.

How many are those who overcome super strong enemies, but succumb to their own selves? Mike Tyson, the famous American boxer, conquered every title that a boxer can have. He had an astounding career. He pulverized his opponents in the ring, one by one. At times, all it would take were a few seconds. He became a famous, millionaire sportsman. However, outside the ring, Tyson could not overcome himself: he was married and divorced three times, convicted of rape and sent to prison, assaulted people on the street, became an alcoholic and a drug addict; he eventually declared bankruptcy and recently confessed that he almost died because of his addictions. The score of his fight against himself is yet to be decided.

Yet we're no better than he is. We all make the mistake of trying to succeed by overcoming external enemies, but what we accomplish on the outside depends on what we have inside: faith. What makes everything possible is what we believe, and belief is something that is within each individual. That is why the biggest victory is to overcome yourself.

Using this power, which is within you, everything will be possible for you.

What if you start to compete against yourself from now on? And, what if you determine to overcome yourself, by each day becoming a little better and greater than the day before?

You'll experience amazing changes, especially the way you see your own self and the way others see you.

We're losers as long as we believe so.

(referenced some of this post from this website)

[dragtom]

What is the point you are trying to make?

Without any competition, Tyson wouldn't have become as good as he was.
Humans live in groups. 'Becoming better' is no clear goal, and not a great motivation.
If you want to become 'this good', how do you decide what 'this' is? You compare to what others achieved.
When you first start with high jumping, you do not say that in 10 years, you want to be able to jump 5 meters.
It isn't even possible to know that's not realistic without looking at others.

However, success on one field does not mean success on all fields.
I don't see how Tyson's private life is a result of the competition in the ring.

Also, I don't see what this has to do with believing.

[Dm]

This thread is entirely useless and it's easy to realize from the title on the get-go. "Belief" hasn't been associated solely with religion for what I believe to be quite a few centuries now, so saying "I believe" does not necessarily mean you believe in god and has not meant that for, again, what I believe to be quite a few centuries. Maybe if I were in the age of the expansion of the church where it reigns supreme and atheists get killed and butchered, but I think this thread is a few hundred years too late to make an impact - not that it'd have too much of a public to cater to back then, anyway.

You can believe in anything and have faith in several different things that are not related to God or any form of theism. Mike Tyson's personal life is something I would also find hard-pressed to find relevant in this discussion, as in no point whatsoever did you mention belief in that little anecdote.

But that's not even where this thread goes wrong, because you're not talking about belief, you're talking about competition. So the title and the original premise have nothing to do with what follows. The main point of this thread isn't "Belief", it's "You should try to compete with yourself and not with others for you are your best comparison". Or, in what's been popular in Facebook and other social media as a happy-go-lucky one-liner since 2000 and whatever, "Try to become better than what you were yesterday!", "I only try to beat who I was yesterday!", "I only wish to surpass myself every day!", and other corny stuff like that which holds no relevance to belief whatsoever unless you come with the total out of left field argument of "they have to BELIEVE they want to surpass themselves and that they can do it!", which, again, is just naturally already inside the statements and is nothing but repetitive and useless.

Now that we've established that your thread post and your title hold absolutely zero relevance with each other, and that from the beginning that biblical passage there on the top of your post is nothing but useless flavor that does not add to the remainder of the topic at all, there's the question of whether you should even be frowned upon for competing with others. If you compete with others you can still improve regardless and be happy regardless, so long as you do not try to imitate his method of improvement to a fault, as even imitation holds it's merit. Competing against others is natural of the world and absolutely necessary in society whether you want to or not. If you surpass someone that means you've grew and you've surpassed your previous self already - so no matter from what point of view you're looking from, you're improving, and that's the end of it. Regardless of whether you're competing with your previous self or with someone else, as long as you're competing with someone you're tied with or ahead of yourself, your improvement will happen once you surpass it, period.

I don't even know why I'm replying. Probably the fact that your Title and your Post are just so wholly off and unrelated, and to top it off, both wrong, made it a bit hard for me to not read through it without laughing, but alas. I guess it's a common read though, even if it reeks of self-help generic talk which is overused and boring.

[Khaleesi]

This thread is entirely useless and it's easy to realize from the title on the get-go. "Belief" hasn't been associated solely with religion for what I believe to be quite a few centuries now, so saying "I believe" does not necessarily mean you believe in god and has not meant that for, again, what I believe to be quite a few centuries. Maybe if I were in the age of the expansion of the church where it reigns supreme and atheists get killed and butchered, but I think this thread is a few hundred years too late to make an impact - not that it'd have too much of a public to cater to back then, anyway.

You can believe in anything and have faith in several different things that are not related to God or any form of theism. Mike Tyson's personal life is something I would also find hard-pressed to find relevant in this discussion, as in no point whatsoever did you mention belief in that little anecdote.

But that's not even where this thread goes wrong, because you're not talking about belief, you're talking about competition. So the title and the original premise have nothing to do with what follows. The main point of this thread isn't "Belief", it's "You should try to compete with yourself and not with others for you are your best comparison". Or, in what's been popular in Facebook and other social media as a happy-go-lucky one-liner since 2000 and whatever, "Try to become better than what you were yesterday!", "I only try to beat who I was yesterday!", "I only wish to surpass myself every day!", and other corny stuff like that which holds no relevance to belief whatsoever unless you come with the total out of left field argument of "they have to BELIEVE they want to surpass themselves and that they can do it!", which, again, is just naturally already inside the statements and is nothing but repetitive and useless.

Now that we've established that your thread post and your title hold absolutely zero relevance with each other, and that from the beginning that biblical passage there on the top of your post is nothing but useless flavor that does not add to the remainder of the topic at all, there's the question of whether you should even be frowned upon for competing with others. If you compete with others you can still improve regardless and be happy regardless, so long as you do not try to imitate his method of improvement to a fault, as even imitation holds it's merit. Competing against others is natural of the world and absolutely necessary in society whether you want to or not. If you surpass someone that means you've grew and you've surpassed your previous self already - so no matter from what point of view you're looking from, you're improving, and that's the end of it. Regardless of whether you're competing with your previous self or with someone else, as long as you're competing with someone you're tied with or ahead of yourself, your improvement will happen once you surpass it, period.

I don't even know why I'm replying. Probably the fact that your Title and your Post are just so wholly off and unrelated, and to top it off, both wrong, made it a bit hard for me to not read through it without laughing, but alas. I guess it's a common read though, even if it reeks of self-help generic talk which is overused and boring.

funny how this post is so "full of bs" but yet you wasted your time writing such a long reply, eh?
I actually didn't read the whole thing, too long. just skimmed through it
ask a mod to delete it if you believe the thread is useless or wrong ^^ that's fine by me. I don't plan on going against the rules if that's what I'm doing.

What is the point you are trying to make?

Without any competition, Tyson wouldn't have become as good as he was.
Humans live in groups. 'Becoming better' is no clear goal, and not a great motivation.
If you want to become 'this good', how do you decide what 'this' is? You compare to what others achieved.
When you first start with high jumping, you do not say that in 10 years, you want to be able to jump 5 meters.
It isn't even possible to know that's not realistic without looking at others.

However, success on one field does not mean success on all fields.
I don't see how Tyson's private life is a result of the competition in the ring.

Also, I don't see what this has to do with believing.

That's not the point though. The point is overcoming your own personal difficulties, your own traumas and your own issues. It's not about becoming god and being good at everything, but simply believing in yourself.
Of course you can look at others, but for inspiration rather than comparison, y'know? That was my point. ^u^ Do forgive me if I didn't make that clear, though.