Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Your beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophecy, literally shaping the way you perceive your world. Let’s consider people (not you, of course) who believe that the world is a rotten place full of disgusting folks. What do they see when they look at the world? All the rotten and disgusting things. At work, they see only what’s bad. When they talk to co-workers, their main topic of conversation is who’s sabotaging whom.

At home, they watch the news on TV so that can see and hear all the rotten and disgusting things that happened in their community and around the world. Then they watch Cops so they can feel like they’re riding around in the police car as they chase terrible people. Finally they switch to Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake so that they can see and hear rotten and disgusting people “up close and personal.”

How does this make them feel? Rotten and disgusted. What kinds of actions do they tend to take when they feel this way? Do they take any action at all, or do they just give up? What results do they get in their life? Rotten and disgusting ones. This reinforces their generalized belief that the world is a rotten place full of disgusting people. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy principle in action.

From Strategies for Fast Changing Times, by Nate Booth