Success Principles

The Theory of Self-fulfilling Prophecy

November 10, 2008 , 6 Shawn

Some interesting experiments have been carried out by Dr. Robert Rosenthal, a Harvard University psychologist, to prove the truth of this theory, the self-fulfilling prophecy theory…

This professor went in to ghetto area of San Francisco where school children were undisciplined, non-achievers, poor students. He picked at random 24 students and divided them into 2 groups.

He put half of these children in the hands of certain teachers, telling them that these children had tremendous potential. He assigned the other 12 children to another group of teachers, telling these teachers that the children lacked any real potential, that doubtless it would be impossible to accomplish anything with them.

Then, he prescribed a series of training exercises for all these students to be put through.

6 months later he returned to check on results. The students in the charge of teachers who had been told to expect good things were doing spectacular work, while the other children were, if anything, more listless and desultory than before.

So what does this tell us?

What people think you expect of them, they will usually deliver. And what your own psyche, your own unconscious mind thinks you expect of it, it will deliver. When you hope strongly enough, expectancy goes to work for you.

Therefore, before you even achieve the success you want, you must first ‘accomplished’ it in your mind. Tell your mind that you’ll definitely achieve it and you’ll expect it to be done. You will become who you think of most of the time. If you think that you’re poor, you’ll be poor.

If you think that you’re going to be a millionaire, chances are, you’ll eventually become a millionaire. Why is this so? This is simply because the theory of self-fulfilling prophecy works.

Everything starts from your mind, from your thinking. Look at the monitor screen you’re looking at now, it was once an invention in someone else’s mind. Look at this blog of mine, it was once an idea in my blog, and then it became true, I created this blog and you’re reading it now.

Fake It Till You Make It

You need to adopt the ‘act as if’ habit. With that means, if you’re not a millionaire but you want to be one, then you’ll have to ‘act as if’ you’re already a millionaire. This is what most of the successful people will do. The moment they haven’t accomplished great results in their life, they keep on acting as if they’ve achieved all the amazing results that they desire.

If you still remember Roger Bannister, you’ll know that he used this theory of self-fulfilling theory to help him to break the world record. Never before people break the record of running 1 mile in less than 4 minutes. He is the first one who did it because he practiced by keep on visualizing that he had successfully did it.

In other words, he act as if he had broke the record. If you want to create the same amazing results just like Roger Bannister, you’ll need to leverage on this theory.