According to Wikipedia, 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.”
In other words, it means that something happens, just because it was prophesied to be.
This is true about human behaviour too. If you expect others to do good, it is quite likely that they will. On the other hand, if you expect others to do evil, it is equally likely that they will.
As Goethe said, “If we take man as he is, we make him worse. But if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be”.
In the field of management, a self fulfilling prophecy happens when an employee’s performance increases simply because the boss expects him to do better. The employee’s performance improves because he works harder than usual to live up to the expectations of the boss.
On a very basic level every individual is his own boss, and the individual’s performance, therefore, depends on what he expects from himself.
A sportsman can be the best in his game only if he expects himself to be the best. If he expects himself only to be good enough to play in the major league, he will always be good enough and never the best.
It is therefore of vital importance that we expect ourselves to be capable of doing great things. Often, in life, we tend to get disheartened with the way things are happening, and we begin to accept things as they are, instead of working towards making things as they can be.
Sometimes, people around us tell us that what we dream of achieving is not possible, that it requires special talent to do those things, and that we don’t have that kind of talent. Though, deep in our hearts, we don’t want to give up, but we do because we begin to believe that we really are not talented enough.
It is, however, a strong belief in our capabilities that can help us push such negativity away and keep surging ahead on the path that leads to our dreams becoming a reality. We have to believe that we are capable of doing great things, good things, and in no time we will find that we are doing those things.
We, too, can make a prophecy that comes true. All we need to do is believe in the prophecy and ourselves.
Wouldn’t you agree?
(Image: gravityx9 from sxc.hu)
Agree with your self fulfilling prophecy ideas. But I agree with you when you say that our performance depends on what other think about us. Its the way they perceive us, so if they expect to do good they perceive good and if they expect evil things out of us, they perceive it so. So it all depends on their perception but on the actual actions. They are neither good nor evil but just natural. If one perceives with the eyes of love then everything looks fine. What is needed the most is strong belief in our capabilities and keep weeding out negative thoughts and impotent feeling others have put in our minds and keep doing what we feel like doing and one day the world changes its perception but you remain the same balanced and strong willing person as you were always. This reminds me of famous quote that goes – “Effective people are not problem-minded; they’re opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.”
After all, if there is a sense of purpose and determination closed doors would open and whatever you believe with feeling becomes a reality.
Nice information provided… thank you for sharing the information. I will be looking forward for more.