Self-fulfilling prophecies influence our everyday life significantly.
Possibly more than you thought.
If you ever got in touch with psychology you I am sure you have heard of self-fullfilling prophecies before. For those of you who do not know yet what they are about, let me briefly explain:
'A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior.' (quoted from wikipedia)
This sounds like an interesting psychological theory at first sight. It postulates that predictions directly influence action. The simplified version of the above definition would be something like:
'If you believe you will fail then you will fail'
'If you believe you will succeed then you will suceed'
Let me explain hat kind of implications does this have on our lives.
we create our own reality
Sounds crazy, but actually it is true. Think of financial markets or the stock market in particular. Or crypto markets. A person with a decent reputation (lets call him Mr. X says 'the price of Y will fall.' The fact that this person has either reputation or power in any way makes people believe that Mr. X is right and they begin to sell. At least some. The price begins to fall. People keep selling and price falls even lower. Mr. X made a prediction and induced activity in a way that fulfills his prediction. He created the reality he wants. It would work the other way. If the herd is bullish about an asset they buy, the price rises and the prophecy the asset is valuable became reality just because of the beliefs.
Another commonly know example for self-fulfilling prophecies is the placebo effect. If you think that a specific medicament will help you, you will feel better - regardless of what you get (the actual medicament or e.g. just a piece of sugar)
The empirical research also confirms the existence of self-fulfilling prophecies. Look at the following experiment: Some psychologists went into a class, made a fake intelligence test and randomly picked the winners without considering the actual results. They predicted that those children would be the most successful ones. And interestingly exactly this became reality. The researchers made the children believe they are intellectually gifted and induced the success of the children.
This is absolutely fascinating!
Knowing the psychological basics we can now look at our everyday life. My philosophy and advices to trick my brain are:
believe and trust in yourself
If you think 'I am not sure if I can do it...' you will never achieve what you want.
imagine your goals as detailed as possible
I will reach 200 lbs at bench press in two years from now!
Always have a positive mindset
I really like this idea. If you think you will fail, you will fail. If you believe that today is a good day, it will become good.
and the last tip (do not take it too seriously^^ ) :
If you read horoscopes - just believe in positive and ignore the negative ones
You have reached the end.
I hope this inspired and sensitized you a little bit for the need of everyday positivity.
