By Jack Speer, BizWatch Publisher

Lance Armstrong, Cancer Survivor and 6-Time Winner of the Tour de France is a testimony to the miracle of belief in yourself.

Can physical performance be enhanced by what you believe about yourself? Can your belief in yourself actually influence your performance?

It can. I proved it as a bicyclist who improved by “mistake.”

I bought an old speed bike a few years ago and got into cycling. At first I just rode and recorded the amount of time riding.

That was good, but I couldn’t tell if I was improving or not—you can’t improve if you don’t have a measurement.

So . . . I went out and bought a speedometer that would tell me my speed. That motivated me and I worked to ride at a faster rate of speed.

I knew, however, that if I really wanted to improve my performance, I needed to know if my speed throughout my ride was improving, so I went down and laid out my money for a better speedometer/odometer which told me my overall average speed for the trip.

But now things really got interesting.

The computer I bought told me a tale I wanted to hear. Suddenly I could hit 25 miles an hour on a flat street, 40 down a hill. I loved it. I pumped harder and faster than I ever had, and averaged as much as 20 miles an hour for a trip, even on city streets. On the odometer side, the distance that I had thought was 12 miles turned out to be 20. My speed continued to increase dramatically.

I was suspicious, however.

It seemed I had run into the old principle “if it seems too good to be true it probably is.” Was I really going that much farther and faster or was there something wrong with the way the computer was functioning? I went back to the bike shop to find out. “Oh, no,” said the owner, “the distance you are traveling is much greater than you thought. I set the computer exactly according to the instructions, and I know it is right.”

I went back to the trail with the strength and determination of a Lance Armstrong. My performance had now improved dramatically. But I still had suspicions about the computer and meant to check it out with my car. I just liked what the computer was telling me, and didn’t get around to confirming its data.

On a bicycle trip to the country with Carol, we rode a difficult loop. At the end of the loop my odometer told me we had traveled about 20 miles. When we got back to the car I decided to bite the bullet and check the route—alas, we had traveled just 13 miles.

That meant that not only had my computer been incorrect about distances, but since it records speed in relation to distance, I hadn’t been traveling nearly as fast as I thought either. The wind was knocked out of my sails.

For the next few days, I found myself slowing down in response to the fact that my computer had been whispering sweet lies to me. I didn’t pay attention to it any more and went back to my original system of timing how long I spent on the trail.

Back to the shop again, I told my genial repairman that I had checked the odometer, and as much as I wanted to believe in it, the facts had proven to be very different. He said he’d take a look at it, and sure enough, the setting was wrong.

The next trip took me back to mortal status. My speed and distance was about 40 percent less than I had thought.

But--the surprise came when I found that because I enthusiastically embraced the overblown speeds my speedometer told me I was going, I had pushed myself as I never had before. I had seen myself as quite the speed rider. I had actually increased my speed during the few months I had believed my prevaricating odometer by about 40%.

Believing that you are doing well can be deadly denial that will take you to disaster, but believing you are doing well can be one of the most powerful forces to help you improve dramatically in any area of life.

That’s why we believe that positive feedback in the workplace is one of the most empowering and compelling forces. You may have performance reviews that suck and 360 feedback that makes you feel punched in the gut. You need to work through that tough feedback, take it seriously and grow from it.

Yet, in order to enhance performance, you also have to believe in yourself and gather a group of people around you who do. Some organizational experts believe that self-concept can be an overworked concept. I believe there is nothing more important for success in business and in life.