Self-fulfilling Prophecy

More often than not we have a predetermined mindset when we face a barrier or challenge. Thoughts like, “no this is impossible to achieve,” or “this is beyond the reach of someone like me,” easily sets in before we even attempt to tackle the challenge itself. Most experienced people that have achieved success in life would probably agree with me, that when you fail to achieve on the many occasions in your life, the mindset is the culprit of your failure, and this is what I am going to talk about today. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Many of you might have come across the term before. It is fine too if you have not, you learn a new term today and that is nothing bad. Generally, the self-fulfilling prophecy is the cause and effect from positive feedback between your belief and behaviour. Putting it in simpler terms, there is a direct, positive correlation between your belief and behaviour which in turn influences your rate of success. Having the mindset that you will not perform well in the upcoming paper from the start of preparing for it for example, leads to achieving grades below what truly reflects your ability, as you expected to begin with. That is exactly the problem there.

Personally I came across this theory first in my Economics class back in high school and it makes a lot of sense in the scenario described of course. The people expect inflation and decide to consume more in the present time period, jacking up demand in the market for goods so much that it exceeds the productive capacity and supply growth rate over the years, causing inflation to really occur. For many, you might understand completely the logic behind this phenomenon too but have you constantly applied it to your daily life too, even to the smallest issues and conflicts?

It could be things as trivial as learning to cycle or something more important in life such as applying for a job post. When you cycle with the fear and thought that you will fall if you lift up and put both legs on the peddle, indeed you are more likely to fall as your fear causes your body to be unstable in handling the balance on the bike when all you had to do was actually hold on with confidence, peddle on for speed when you have both legs on and you will be able to achieve balance. From then on with practise you will learn how to cycle pretty quickly. Similarly, during a job interview this fear can cripple your speech and response to the interviewers, which in turn really make the interview a bad one for you.

Therefore, always keep in mind to stay mentally strong, have a positive mindset when you encounter difficulties. However, do not mistaken the purpose of this and end up being overconfident or being impractical at achieving what is really impossible to, at your present state at least. Maybe it is possible in the future, and it is never too late to start working on it and prepare early for a  better chance of success.