Your attitude determines your altitude.
It’s all in your head.
Wishing won’t make it come true.
What makes you such a big deal?
There’s an almost endless litany of messages that pound away at us. While some of them are energizing and motivating, the majority of them, typically and unfortunately, are horrendously counterproductive. As Sally Kempton once said, “It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.”
Are your thoughts propelling you to success? Or do they continually sabotage your best intentions?
In this article, we’ll be exploring self-fulfilling prophecies and the language of victimhood. In the follow-up articles, you’ll learn about distorted thought habits, including distortions of definition, responsibility, and perception. Best of all, you’ll get specific suggestions that will enable you to start changing the way you think and act, which, in turn, will change the results you get. Woohoo!
So let’s get started.
1. Do you hit every light red or every light green?: The Pygmalion effect.
In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with his ivory carving of a beautiful woman. (Okay, so he had some issues.) He wished so strongly that this beautiful statue would become a living woman, that the goddess Aphrodite granted his request. This led to the term “Pygmalion effect”, also known as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We tend to see what we look for and experience what we expect to. For most of us, this means we notice all the red lights and none of the green, thus “proving” that “the light always changes to red when I’m in a hurry”. Does that mean the light truly is always red? Absolutely not. It simply means that we expect to get stopped by red lights, and therefore we notice when we are. Conversely, we tend to ignore all the lights that remain green as we approach an intersection.
Norman Cousins once said, “Expectation rules outcome.” While this might result in short-term annoyance, such as getting stuck at a red light, it can also have lethal consequences-literally. Karl Wallenda, the patriarch of the world-famous Flying Wallendas, fell to his death in 1978 at the age of 73 while crossing a high wire without a net. Was it his age? His condition? The wind? According to one account, when his wife was asked this question, she simply replied, “No. He thought about falling, and he did.”
If you choose to expect positive outcomes from your actions, you’ll enjoy increased creativity and energy, decreased stress, and-very often-those positive outcomes you’re looking for. On the other hand, choosing to look on the dark side and expect your efforts to fail decreases your willingness to take risks, increases your stress, and-very often-creates the very negative outcomes you feared.
Which route do you choose to take?
2. Do you talk and act like a victim – or a victor?
The language and attitudes of victimhood are remarkably common in today’s society. Just listen for some of these classic victim comments:
- I can’t.
- I have to.
- I should.
- I wish.
- If only…
- I hope…
- I’ll try…
- What if such-and-such bad thing happens?
- But…
- Why did this happen?!
Underlying all of these of these comments is an unspoken helplessness and/or an acceptance that something or someone outside yourself is controlling your actions and decisions. That’s pretty much the definition of “victimhood.”
If it turns out that you hear yourself using some of these phrases, don’t despair! These are really just habits of thought and speech. With a moderate amount of effort on your part, you can change these energy-sucking habits into powerful, winning ones.
- I can’t becomes I can.
- I have to becomes I want to or I don’t want to.
- I should becomes I could.
- I wish becomes I will.
- If only… becomes When…
- I hope becomes I know.
- I’ll try becomes I’ll do it or I won’t do it.
- What if this, this, or the other bad thing happens? becomes Whatever happens, I’ll find a way to deal with it.
- But becomes and…
- Why did this happen?! becomes What can I do to address this situation?
This is far more than “a matter of semantics.” These words actually create a positive self-fulfilling prophecy, in which you describe yourself as a competent, confident person in charge of creating your own desired outcomes. And the more clearly you see yourself as that person, the more quickly you become that person.
Not convinced? I challenge you to monitor and change your language for just a week and see how it makes a difference not only in how you speak, but in how you feel and act, as well. Happy experimenting!
(c)2012, Kathleen Watson, MBA
AUTOPOST by BEDEWY VISIT GAHZLY
