A self-fulfilling prophecy is established when someone predicts something about another person and that person, having heard the prediction often enough, begins to believe that what’s being said about them and behaves as if it were true. So fulfilling the belief.
Good or bad. It
becomes true.
Hard to believe? Think about what can happen to children in
a school class. If the teacher tells the class that they can achieve great
things, that they are highly capable, then in a majority of cases, the grades
go up. Learning becomes fun. If the teacher tells them that they can never
achieve anything, that they were graded wrong and their results really show
that they are underachievers, then in most cases the grades will go down.
What was said comes to pass.
Doesn’t happen in real life?
Just look at what happens to the lives of some people after
years of hearing what some parents tell them as children, or peers tell them as
they grow through adolescence, or bosses tell them as adults. “You’re useless”.
“I should have known it was you”. “I knew I couldn’t trust you”. “You always
break things”. “You’re nothing but trouble”. “Typical!” “That’s just like you”.
All of us would know of someone who has lived down to those predictions made of
them.
And we probably all know someone who has fulfilled the
opposite type of prophesy: “Of course you can!” “You’re fantastic”. “Go for
it!” “You can achieve anything”. “I knew you could”.
Because this can happen, it is vitally important that you
become aware of what is said to you and what you believe about what is said to you.
For, even more important than what others tell you about
you, is what you tell you about yourself.
Sometimes our own worst enemy is ourself; because we will
spend more time talking to ourself than any other person will spend talking to
us. If we can be affected so deeply by what other people tell us, imagine how
much more effective we are at creating our own
self-fulfilling prophesy.
If we are not careful we can begin to believe that we are
not capable of achieving, or don’t deserve to achieve, the things in life that
in our soul we so dearly want. We begin to fear achievement itself – because we
fear failure so much more!
There is a wonderful line in the Australian movie “Strictly
Ballroom” (1992; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp), where the heroine tells the
hero, “A life lived in fear is a life half lived!” Is it any wonder than that
far too many people resign themselves to a life half lived, rather than risking
the possibility of failure, of losing? We fear failure that much.
Guess what? The only thing we really have to fear is fear
itself!
Make Your Dreams A Reality
Colin
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