“Borrow the belief of one brave soul who sees your future clearly. Stay close to that vision until it becomes your own, for we rise not merely to our ability, but to the level of expectation spoken over our lives.” – MJ Martin
Introduction: Language, Expectation, and Human Becoming
As a business consultant, I spend my professional life studying how words shape meaning, how meaning shapes thought, and how thought shapes behavior. Language is not merely descriptive. It is generative. It does not only record what is. It participates in what becomes. Few ideas illustrate this truth more powerfully than what modern psychology calls the Pygmalion Effect, the phenomenon in which human performance rises or falls in response to the expectations placed upon it. At its core, this effect reveals that belief is not a private mental act alone. Belief is a social force. It is transmitted through tone, vocabulary, posture, attention, patience, and silence. It is carried in what we say, and perhaps more importantly, in what we assume.
The term is lifted from my favourite play. Pygmalion is a renowned 1913 play by George Bernard Shaw, inspired by the Greek myth of a sculptor who falls in love with his statue, Galatea. It follows phonetics professor Henry Higgins as he wagers with his confidant, Colonel Pickering, that he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, into a refined lady, satirizing the rigid British class system and exploring themes of language, identity, and independence. It was made into a stage musical in 1956, and then the classic feature film, My Fair Lady (1964).
The central theme can be stated simply. All you need is one person to believe in you more than you believe in yourself. When that happens, something fundamental shifts. You begin to borrow their vision until it becomes your own. You begin to act in alignment with a future that previously felt unreachable. Conversely, when surrounded by people who expect little of you, who speak in diminishment, who frame your identity around limitation, the opposite occurs. You internalize a smaller version of yourself. Over time, you become what the environment expects.
The Philology of Belief
The word belief descends from Old English geleafa, carrying connotations of trust, loyalty, and worth. To believe in someone, in its earliest sense, was not simply to think something about them. It was to hold them as valuable. This linguistic root matters. It reminds us that belief is relational. It binds two people into a shared field of expectation.
Language performs belief long before it announces belief. Consider the difference between these two statements. “You might succeed if you try hard enough.” “I expect you to succeed, and I am here to help you get there.” Grammatically, both concern the future. Semantically, they are worlds apart. One frames success as conditional and uncertain. The other frames success as assumed and supported.
Humans are exquisitely sensitive to these distinctions. We absorb them not as logical propositions but as identity signals. Over time, repeated exposure to language of expectation builds an internal grammar of possibility. You begin to speak to yourself in the same patterns you have heard from others. Their words become your inner voice. Their grammar becomes your destiny.
Expectation as a Creative Force
Expectation does not merely predict outcomes. It participates in producing them. When a teacher expects excellence, they provide more feedback, more patience, more complex material, and more opportunities. When a manager expects competence, they delegate meaningful work, invite participation, and tolerate learning curves. When a parent expects growth, they frame mistakes as information rather than identity.
None of this requires conscious manipulation. It emerges naturally from belief. People invest where they expect return. They withdraw where they expect failure. Over time, the person receiving this treatment responds accordingly. They either step into expanded possibility or retreat into contraction.
This is why a single believer can outweigh a thousand doubters. One consistent voice of expectation can become an anchor against a sea of discouragement. It offers a stable narrative when internal narratives collapse. It whispers, You are not finished. You are becoming.
Borrowed Vision and the Scaffolding of Self
Early in life, no one fully authors themselves. Identity is scaffolded by others. We learn who we are through mirrors. Some mirrors distort. Some clarify. Some enlarge.
When someone believes in you before you can believe in yourself, they temporarily hold your future on your behalf. They see a version of you that you cannot yet access. They speak to that version. Slowly, through repetition, that version becomes familiar. Familiarity breeds plausibility. Plausibility becomes action. Action becomes identity.
This process explains why proximity matters more than motivation. Motivation is volatile. Environment is persistent. You become who you spend the most time with because you absorb their language patterns, their assumptions about what is normal, their definitions of success, and their tolerance for effort.
If excellence surrounds you, excellence begins to feel ordinary. If mediocrity surrounds you, mediocrity begins to feel inevitable.
The Silent Violence of Low Expectation
Low expectation is rarely announced explicitly. It hides inside jokes, raised eyebrows, faint praise, and strategic silence. It shows up as being overlooked. It shows up as being spoken about rather than spoken to. It shows up as ceilings disguised as realism.
From a philological perspective, the most dangerous words are not insults. They are diminutives. “Just be realistic.” “People like us do not do that.” “You are not really that type of person.“
These phrases perform identity reduction. They narrow the semantic field in which a person is allowed to exist. Over time, this narrowing becomes internalized. The person stops reaching not because they lack ability, but because reaching no longer feels linguistically legitimate.
To remain in environments saturated with low expectation is to slowly consent to erasure. This is why avoidance is not cruelty. It is survival.
Choosing Your Linguistic Ecosystem
Every human lives inside a linguistic ecosystem. This ecosystem is composed of the words, metaphors, stories, and assumptions that circulate around them daily. You cannot control every voice. You can control which voices you keep close.
Staying near people who believe in you is not dependency. It is calibration. These individuals tune your internal instruments. They remind you of who you are becoming when you forget. They challenge you when you settle. They refuse to collude with your smaller self.
Such relationships are often uncomfortable. True belief does not only soothe. It demands. It pushes. It insists that you live up to what it sees. This discomfort is not rejection. It is recognition.
The Threshold Between You and Your Potential
Between who you are and who you could become stands a surprisingly small barrier. It is not intelligence. It is not luck. It is not background. It is expectation.
Expectation shapes effort. Effort compounds into skill. Skill builds confidence. Confidence invites opportunity. Opportunity reinforces expectation. The cycle feeds itself.
When someone expects you to reach your potential, they implicitly grant you permission to try. They make striving morally acceptable. They normalize ambition. They remove shame from desire.
Once this permission is internalized, the believer becomes less necessary. Their voice has become yours. You now expect from yourself what they once expected for you.
Summary: The Ethics of Believing
To believe in another person is an ethical act. It is a declaration that their future matters. It is a refusal to define them by their present limitations. It is an investment in a story not yet fully written.
Equally, to curate your environment toward belief is an ethical responsibility to yourself. You are not obligated to remain in spaces that shrink you. You are not required to accept definitions that feel false. You are allowed to seek mirrors that tell a larger truth.
All that stands between you and your potential may indeed be someone who expects you to reach it. Sometimes that person is a teacher. Sometimes a friend. Sometimes a partner. Sometimes a stranger who speaks a sentence that rearranges your internal grammar.
And eventually, if you stay close enough to belief long enough, that person becomes you.
About the Author:
Michael Martin is the Vice President of Technology with Metercor Inc., a Smart Meter, IoT, and Smart City systems integrator based in Canada. He has more than 40 years of experience in systems design for applications that use broadband networks, optical fibre, wireless, and digital communications technologies. He is a business and technology consultant. He was a senior executive consultant for 15 years with IBM, where he worked in the GBS Global Center of Competency for Energy and Utilities and the GTS Global Center of Excellence for Energy and Utilities. He is a founding partner and President of MICAN Communications and before that was President of Comlink Systems Limited and Ensat Broadcast Services, Inc., both divisions of Cygnal Technologies Corporation (CYN: TSX).
Martin served on the Board of Directors for TeraGo Inc (TGO: TSX) and on the Board of Directors for Avante Logixx Inc. (XX: TSX.V). He has served as a Member, SCC ISO-IEC JTC 1/SC-41 – Internet of Things and related technologies, ISO – International Organization for Standardization, and as a member of the NIST SP 500-325 Fog Computing Conceptual Model, National Institute of Standards and Technology. He served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) [now Ontario Tech University] and on the Board of Advisers of five different Colleges in Ontario – Centennial College, Humber College, George Brown College, Durham College, Ryerson Polytechnic University [now Toronto Metropolitan University]. For 16 years he served on the Board of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Toronto Section.
He holds three master’s degrees, in business (MBA), communication (MA), and education (MEd). As well, he has three undergraduate diplomas and seven certifications in business, computer programming, internetworking, project management, media, photography, and communication technology. He has completed over 60 next generation MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) continuous education in a wide variety of topics, including: Economics, Python Programming, Internet of Things, Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive systems, Blockchain, Agile, Big Data, Design Thinking, Security, Indigenous Canada awareness, and more.