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Many
people continually portray a negative view of future events.
A common statement is “wouldn’t it be awful if (and a
description of something terrible and ghastly follows)?” In sporting
circles or life, one will create a more positive future by focusing on
pleasant and enjoyable future events.
In
psychological terms, you create your own self-fulfilling prophecy,
through prophesying for good or bad.
Negative and personal prophecy can be particularly damaging
because constant pessimistic or self-denigrating mental input keeps
piling up.
By
loading up thoughts with negative statements such as “I’ll never be
as good as John”, or “I’ll never get this right”, or “It’s
just too hard for me” or “I bet we lose this game because of me”
your emotions will also feel the strain, reducing self-confidence and
self-esteem.
This
negative mental and emotional diet may continue your spiral downward, so
that you fall into the category of a ‘low-expectation’ person.
Low-expectation because you don’t expect much of yourself.
Once a poor foundation of low-expectation has been laid, it is
challenging to strengthen a weak infrastructure, but it can be done.
Positive
reinforcement
A
healthy mental diet of positive reinforcement of your achievements,
capabilities, willingness to learn and practise, aids in creating
positive self-fulfilling prophecies. This of course feeds positive
emotions and increases your self-confidence and self-esteem. Additionally, you expect more of yourself and can be
classified as a “high-expectation” person.
Interestingly,
people around you respond to your own expectations with positive
reinforcement and increased time, instruction and coaching for “high
expectations”, but decreased attention, poorer quality of time and
fewer instructions for “low expectations”.
To get the attention you need, you have to want it, and expect
it, and look for it, with increasing happy and even grateful
responsiveness.
The
bottom line is this “It’s up to you”.
Individually, you want to maintain a healthy mental and emotional
diet ALWAYS, in order to create a positive self-fulfilling prophecy.
A famous quote (so famous I can’t recall who said it), is worth
thinking about: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll
always get what you’ve always got!”
Is your future looking good?
Give me a call so we can make it look great!
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