How to Activate a Positive Mindset That Leads to Success

Have you ever woken up with a gut feeling that something terrible was going to happen that day? Shoving the feeling at the back of your head, you dress up and go to work as usual. On getting there, everyone seems to be in a bad mood, and negative things seem to happen. If so, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our beliefs can shape our choices and reflect our actions. A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when expectation or belief results in that expectation that is being met. That perspective promotes certain behaviors that the result becomes true. Another example is, if investors think the stock market will crash, they will buy fewer stocks, prices will start to decline, and the market will actually crash.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a false definition of the situation posed by a new behavior, creating the false original conception. In other words, bad things happen to us because we have engraved a bad feeling at the back of our minds. The same goes when good things happen.

Are the zodiac signs connected to thought process?

Every 30 days, the Sun visits a new zodiac sign. As a result, everyone feels prevailing energy during this season, regardless of which zodiac sign you were born under. Sometimes, the zodiac signs seem pretty accurate. It is almost as if you can already see what signs people are before they even opened their mouths.

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” — Lao Tzu

Nowadays, people look at the zodiac signs for guidance and wisdom in the decision-making process. Some decide whether they will pursue a promotion or have a good day according to what their astrological sign says.

If the actions of people are influenced by predictions to which they are exposed, those who believe in astrology may be more susceptible to self-fulfilling prophecies — which indicates that once they hear an astrological prediction for them, they are more willing to believe it.

My zodiac sign is Capricorn. Reading my sign is not something I normally do. When I woke up this morning and saw my sign app tell me that I was having trouble with creativity, I was immediately discouraged from writing my article for today.

It may sound ridiculous to change your rhetoric around something because of an app, but it’s something I do whenever I’m feeling cranky or need motivation.

One peculiar aspect of self-fulfilling prophecy is that, first, we make a hypothesis: how the situation will turn out. And so, we start looking for the signs to back up our prediction.

How self-fulfilling prophecy can change your life

Our feelings about, expectations, and actions surrounding an event will affect how we perceive it and how it happens. The mind is a powerful thing, and we can convince ourselves of anything.

Enhances career focus

When an individual, say an entrepreneur, has a meeting with potential investors for a startup they are working on, the goal is to win over investors.

If the entrepreneur thinks that investors will love his ideas and want to invest in his startup, this will probably lead him to have more confidence in himself and in his presentation.

Entering the meeting with confidence helps the entrepreneur stand his ground, offers an excellent presentation, and is less awkward when he speaks one-on-one with investors. Ultimately, this trust affects how the entrepreneur behaves and how investors view him.

Tips: Write your professional goals using concrete explanations such as “I want to work with like-minded people who support my ideas” or “I do an X quantity in X City.” And, of course, the action is important here. If you want that promotion, ask yourself: “What would the promoted me do?”

Fosters good relationship

Our biases can influence every area of our lives, and relationships are no exception. If a man begins a relationship with a woman with whom he feels strongly connected, he may feel that person is “the one.” Hoping the relationship will last, he treats his partner with love and respect; then, he could devote more time and energy to making her happy and fulfilling.

If a woman starts dating someone under the assumption that they are not really “relationship” or “marriage material,” she will likely not take the relationship seriously and refrain from investing much time or effort into it. When her partner leaves, she might think that she was ultimately proven right — the partner wasn’t relationship material.

Tips: If the universe isn’t giving you what you want, this may indicate that something is still not available inside you. Once you identify this block, you can break these internal barriers and build a more open approach to relationships. Tune in who you really are and what you want, and trust the universe to bring you to the couple you need, not necessarily what you want.

Boost confidence at work

Self-fulfilling prophecies often come from our fears, and by virtue of that fear, you can create or can act in such a way that it comes true.

Imagine two people with the same qualifications; the same education, the same experience, the same skills. One is completely confident in his ability to win the job interview, while the other feels insecure about his interview skills and predicts that he will not get the job.

The self-confident person may enter the interview with a smile and answer any question with grace, while the more insecure person may stumble upon her answers and doubt her qualification for the job.

Clearly, the interviewee who believes in himself and acts on that belief is more likely to be offered a job than the interviewee who hopes to fail.

Tips: Focus on what you want and then make a list. When you are clear about the job you want, make a list of all the things at work that make you happy: the office, the people, the salary, etc. This list will help you clarify your intentions and access a vivid mental image of what you want.

Improves mental health

Whether it’s depression, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) — has to do with the things we fear, and the more you are obsessed with things in general, whether good or bad, the more it creates self-fulfilling prophecies.

This cyclical nature of self-sufficient prophecies can play a role in the development and deepening of depression. People suffering from depression can maintain a certain negative thought about themselves. Thoughts like “I’m worthless,” “I can’t function normally,” “I’m unlovable” may convince them to give up on self-development, improve their skills or improve their emotional resilience.

If they continue to harbor these thoughts for much longer, you may notice that they can not really work normally. They may be too depressed to make even the most basic features, such as talking to others, food or showers.

Although the addictive behavior can continue to exist, and our mental health can damage. The brain can also change with a little effort.

Tips: Remember that there will be times you will be unhappy, but if you look for them, instead of dwelling on things that are going wrong, finding ways to make things better is fundamental to shifting your reality into one that attracts what you desire.

Activates happiness mode

There was a time I used to be grumpy. I was working in an IT firm, and the job was too demanding. Sometimes, I would think of escaping to an unknown destination or wonder in the desert rather than working and meeting my aggressive boss.

I admit it was my first time doing data entry jobs on a computer. Though I was taking a course on computer training to foster my efficiency, I constantly doubted my ability to complete a task. Maybe I wasn’t putting much time and effort into such a task, or I avoided doing it altogether.

This made me hate my job. Still, I dn’t quit. I was determined to learn even though I wasn’t happy with the boss I had. My incompetence at the job led to self-doubt and lower self-esteem.

Our actions toward others impact their beliefs about us, which dictates their actions towards us, which then reinforces our beliefs about ourselves. This, in turn, influences our actions towards others, which brings us back to the beginning of the cycle. This pattern can be negative or positive.

My boss’s aggression and my incompetence explain how our actions affect how others treat us and vice versa.

Tips: Keep your mind focused on uplifting thoughts until you form the same types of neural pathways that are created when you establish a new habit. Try to be optimistic about every problem or difficulty. When things go wrong, as they often do, say, “That’s good!” And then set about finding something positive about the situation.

How to bring positivity into your life

Being aware of the thoughts and beliefs that underline some things that are manifested in our lives is a good place to start — replacing negative self-talk with objectively more accurate expectations perspective. Then, by practicing more positive self-talk and being optimistic about ourselves and our performance.

As a result, our self-esteem improves, we began to concentrate on who we want to be and what we want to do, instead of only our current situations.

We are always attracting positivity or negativity based on the energy that we put ourselves. We are all like magnets. We both reflect and attract what we keep in our minds.

Identifying when our prophecies are sabotaging us, unlearning limiting beliefs, and reframing to a positive mindset can go a long way toward mitigating negative self-fulfilling prophecies from happening.

Of course, with positive thinking and conviction only your dreams will not come true. You also need to put in the hard work too. This means living in alignment with your goals and taking the necessary steps to make them a reality.

For example, if your goal is to perform a marathon in less than four hours, you still have to take the training and treat your body to the race during the months. From there, the layers on some positive mantras and visualizations can further strengthen your goal with the universe.

When people start practicing the law of self-fulfilling prophecy, sometimes they get anxious that if they have bad thoughts or slow their vibes, it can ruin their lives. That is wrong! No one is perfect, and we can use this law as a “mirror of our own mindset and self-esteem” when we are going through a challenging phase.

And always remember that, at some point of manifestation, it is important to surrender and let the universe take the wheel.

This post was first published on Medium