“You’ve got to believe in yourself” is one of the most well-worn and established statements in business, and in life, as a whole.

No matter who we are, or where we are from, we’re all pretty familiar with the concept that success and accomplishment in all domains of life seem to have something to do with having a clear vision that we can believe in, and that can guide our actions in a productive and positive manner.

In fact, one of the main lessons that frequently gets conveyed by business gurus and entrepreneurial Titans, when they get interviewed, is exactly the fact that it’s essential to have this kind of clear and focused vision, in order to drive things forward consistently, despite setbacks.

And of course, people who have managed to overcome major obstacles in their lives – on a personal level – to become fit, healthy, and confident, always find the path more straightforward and manageable when they have some clear vision they can believe in.

So, whether in your personal or professional life; here are a few reasons why it’s essential for you to develop a clear vision you can believe in if you want to achieve great things.

You often need to believe in yourself before other people can believe in you

Sometimes, you will be lucky enough to have people in your life who believe in you and your potential, even when you yourself don’t see it.

In many other cases, though – and especially when it comes to business environments, where fewer people are likely to be personally emotionally invested in your success – you essentially need to believe in yourself, before other people can believe in you.

Channel marketing, for example, can be a powerful way of improving sales for your business. But, the strategy depends entirely on getting intermediary parties to do marketing on your behalf. And, how likely do you think it is that those intermediary parties are going to be interested in spending the time and energy marketing for your product or service if it’s clear that you barely believe in it yourself?

People are naturally pretty good at reading each other’s energy, cues, and their subtle behaviors and reactions to things. A large part of what makes charismatic people charismatic is that they seem to have a strong sense of direction, and confidence. This, in turn, leads other people to feel positively emotionally invested in their “vision” and “persona.” And this can result in some pretty amazing achievements.

Often, it’s exactly this kind of clear belief in a vision or project that rallies people together and makes significant innovations happen. It’s unlikely that Steve Jobs would have been so successful with selling the concept of the iPhone if he hadn’t managed to do such a good job of convincing everyone around him that he was really presenting a revolutionary new concept to the industry.

This phenomenon is perhaps most evident in the business world, but it plays out in all sorts of other dimensions of life, too. Even if you just wanted to encourage a few friends of yours to join you in a new hobby you were planning to take up, you would be far less likely to succeed in this endeavor if you didn’t seem genuinely enthusiastic, optimistic, and motivated by the idea.

“I feel like going to the gym regularly would be a good idea, but I don’t know, and I think it would feel pretty awful… do you want to come along?” Isn’t a good “sales pitch.”

A clear and motivating vision will give you the resilience you need during the tough times in business and life

It would be pretty nice, all things considered, if it was “easy” to pursue and achieve your goals, once you had decided on exactly what it was you wanted to accomplish.

Of course, the problem – and the reason why we so often falter in our results – is that it’s always bound to be the case that we are beset by difficulty, setback, and frustration, in the pursuit of any sufficiently ambitious goal in life.

One consequence of this is that “grit” is essential in order to achieve just about anything worth achieving. But “grit” is difficult to muster up in the absence of a clear and motivating vision that can justify all the work we’re putting in, and all the setbacks and blunders we have to deal with en route to our final destination.

A clear and motivating vision will give you resilience. It will give you a reason to get out of bed each morning and keep hammering away at a project that might long ago have seemed to become “more trouble than it was worth” otherwise.

The importance of this kind of resilience cannot be overstated. To a large extent, success in any endeavor is really a matter of stubbornness, rather than insight, brilliance, or anything else.

When you believe in your vision, you can be creative in pursuing it

This might seem like a bit of an odd point, but there’s a good argument to be made that when you believe in your goal and vision, you’re much more likely to be creative and innovative in your attempts to achieve that goal or vision.

The path that leads to success in various endeavors – especially those that are not necessarily clear-cut and straightforward – often requires plenty of novel thinking and creative insight.

When you are desperately motivated to achieve a particular goal, and you come up against a hurdle, obstacle, or stumbling block of one sort or another, you are less likely to give up prematurely, or to simply try to do things “by the numbers” as a way of “getting it out of the way.”

Instead, you want to actually do your goal justice and to genuinely innovate and change things. That means you’re more likely to sit around brainstorming, working out creative problem-solving strategies, and doing whatever you can to push the envelope in ways that can really have a major impact.

Part of this is connected to resilience – as mentioned in the previous point. But a lot of it also has to do with the simple desire to live up to the grandiosity of your vision.