Have you ever had a time in your life when you were really worried that something might happen, and it ended up happening? For example, when you were worried that you would be nervous in a job interview, you got stressed and performed worse than you could have.
Situations like this have happened to many of us, and in psychology, such cases are called self-fulfilling prophecies. This is a psychological phenomenon where our expectations or beliefs lead to those expectations being realized in practice.
Simply put, if a person is convinced that something bad will happen, they may subconsciously behave so that it will actually happen.
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The concept of self-fulfilling prophecies has a huge impact on our lives, both positive and negative. In the following, we will delve into the topic in more detail and focus on how to avoid the negative impact of self-fulfilling prophecies, increase your work and creativity performance, and improve your motivation.
How Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Works
The roots of any self-fulfilling prophecy start within ourselves and our hard self and ability to realistically assess our capabilities.
The problem is that people susceptible to this phenomenon often receive little approval and support in childhood and tend to accept negative comments as reality. For example, if a person from childhood hears from parents or teachers that he does not cope well with his studies and therefore will grow up a failure, the child can lay a subconscious block, and unconsciously, a person can make mistakes that lead them to failure.
Let’s talk about the psychological aspect of this phenomenon. It consists of the fact that a person forms a stable picture of the world, pays attention, and considers only those events that confirm his ingrained beliefs significantly.
For example, suppose a person was previously told that they sang poorly and took it very personally but later studied vocal performance for a long time and became a real vocalist. In that case, they will pay much less attention to praise and focus only on negative reactions, which may eventually undermine motivation for further achievements.
The social aspect of this effect has to do with bias. For example, suppose a teacher or boss, for some reason, decides that one under their charge is doing worse than the others, even though it is not true. In that case, they may subconsciously change their attitude toward them and behave in a more biased manner, pushing the person in reality to actual mistakes that will confirm the stereotype.
Examples of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Probably the best-known experiment is that of Rosenthal and Jacobson, who in 1964 told teachers that certain students had been identified as possessing high intellectual ability, although in fact, the children had been randomly selected. The point is that by the end of the school year, the selected children actually performed much higher because teachers and children were subconsciously told that the selected students could achieve more.
How to Avoid the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Effect
The first stage of overcoming the self-fulfilling prophecy effect could be controlling and seriously evaluating one’s expectations and capabilities.
Often, we make decisions ourselves without realizing what conclusion they are based on. It can be a decision not to try out for a new position, even though our qualifications allow us to do so, or a fear of publishing our poems or paintings without any evidence that they will be poorly received.
Keeping a diary where you write down your thoughts and attitudes about different life situations is useful. In situations where a major event occurs, and you are constantly expecting failure, write down your fears in a log and try to understand where they originate from.
The next technique is cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring is one of the main techniques within cognitive behavior therapy and serves to change negative attitudes. Instead of constantly repeating the thought, “I will never succeed,” it is worth replacing this thought with a more rational and consistent reality, such as: “I have faced difficulties before, but I managed to overcome them.”
Another effective way to handle self-fulfilling prophecy is the blank slate principle, which states that every time you begin a new task or aim, you do so with a fresh mind and a clean slate, not from the mindset of past failures.
The bottom line is: let the past be in the past. It should not determine your future, and that’s one important thing to always bear in mind. You can start the clean slate exercise with the awareness of rereading your goals each time and setting yourself up to succeed, no matter what has happened.
Well, of course, it is important to shape your environment. If you are in an atmosphere of constant criticism and belittling of your achievements, even the most resilient can lose their bearings.
As they say, if you tell a person for a long time that he has a green nose, they will eventually believe it, even though it is definitely not true. On the contrary, surrounding yourself with positive, supportive people will help you form more positive expectations and break the self-fulfilling prophecy effect.
Conclusion
Positive thinking fights the self-fulfilling prophecy effect with much greater success. One who deliberately sets oneself up to succeed and harbors positive expectations is more likely to succeed.
To discover how to make positive predictions, try one simple beginning trick: each time you entertain negative thoughts, consciously rephrase them into positive thoughts. Instead, tell yourself, “I am learning and improving daily.”
Success lies in building positive expectations; by following some simple, practical tips, you will be able to overcome the self-fulfilling prophecy effect and boost your motivation toward your goals.
