Self Fulfilling Prophecy.
You (better) know what it means. In case you've forgotten, then let me give you a taste.
Some dude from Washington state drops out of college, convinced he's smarter than the people he's in school with. Hell, he's convinced he's smarter than the faculty. Cocky? No. Determined? Oh yeah. He co-founds a major company and works really hard every day to make his pre-determined self-evaluation a reality. He listens to his confidantes, trusts only those he deems worthy of his vision, and ignores critics that tell him the world is not interested in his version of it. Bill Gates.
Actually, no. That person was Skyler Clark, a skateboarder from Yakima who still lives in his car. But he is one happy son of a bitch. He gets up in the morning with a smile on his face and does what he believes he was born to do. He hurts no one, loves and respects himself, and makes the world better. So, one might argue, does Bill Gates, but I just dropped his name to make you say, "I knew he was talking about Gates." Honestly, they are interchangeable because they both cling to the basic tenet of life that if one finds inner belief in one's self...one is capable of peace, joy, and anything they choose to do. (I made that tenet up, but it sounds both surfer-budhhist, and cool, so roll with it.)
A self fulfilling prophecy is generally construed or used contextually as a negative. It's the easy cop out to a parent saying, "I told you so," to a child that falls off his bike while not wearing a helmet and suffers a fat bruise. The kid had been told something, thought about it, worried about it, made a decision to test it out and VOILA! It came to life, just like Mom told him it would. That prophecy has no spine with a conscious choice to forgo the helmet and see...and in this instance, it's the negative outcome of the desired effect that only has a chance of surfacing.
I would much rather focus on the positive side of a SFP. Consider the wonderful movie, Rudy, starring 5 foot nothing inch Samwise Gamgee himself, Sean Astin. The perfect stature for this role, hard-chinned and diminutive, Astin does justice to the story of Rudy Rutiger, a kid who gets to play football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish simply because he thinks he can. Is he talented enough? Not by a mile. Does he have the heart? The film wants you to say yes to that question, but the answer is no. Does he convince others to believe in him deeply enough to make his dream real? Nope. That's not it.
Take a big pot of luck (good and bad), timing, desire, belief, heart, stick-to-it-ive-ness, hard work and steam for years over an open fire...and you may get jack squat. It might work out for you. It might not. Add self-actualization and you have a recipe for success.
Rudy got to play for the Irish because he thought, in his brain, that he was going to. He made every decision in his life centered on that belief. He did not work nearly as hard at convincing others to believe him as he did funnel his energy toward maintaining his own central and inner belief. Corny? Yes. But other people saw it as a steam train they could not stop. It was going to happen because he believed it, and never gave anyone a reason to think it wasn't a FACT.
Think about the picture above here with the herds of blue angry faces and one yellow smiler. I choose to see this as our world, yours and mine. You pick which person you are in the picture. And I'm not saying, put on a happy face, take your meds and be off to face the day. I see that yellow dude as the most centered and self-preserved of the group. That guy chooses to enjoy being wherever he is, sees it as opportunity or part of the deal you must deal with. He's in the same economic and world-shaking shitstorm we all wake up to each morning, but it doesn't faze him. He can only control what he can control. He loves being where and who he is because it it where and who he is. He is a walking (or rolling as he lacks feet) SFP. His T-shirt does not say "Choose your attitude", a trite saying that reeks a little of "Just deal with it". Nor does it say "This too shall pass", which sounds too much like an exit strategy for someone without a plan. No, this guy is happy to be. Existential smiley face.
I struggle with control issues. I can't always control my own brain. The brain is extremely powerful, and largely unleashed in most humans. If you need some serious and terrific proof, then click here. When the brain starts down a path, it's difficult to take it off that path, for better or worse. It's the basis for hypochondriacism...I have a lump on my neck. It looks and feels like an ingrown hair. It's obvioulsy from shaving without shaving gel. I should get rid of it. It will go away. It's not gone yet...Is is an ingrown hair? Google neck cancer. One of the 12,083,098,942 articles found in .005 seconds postulates that it might be cancer.
I knew it. It's cancer. Cancer? But it looks like an ingrown hair!
And so it goes until you go to the skin doctor and he removes the ingrown hair and you and your stupid brain take you lighter-by-a-fifty-dollar-co-pay wallet to the store to buy some Barbasol.
What if, instead of Nega-Googling every scary thing in our lives, we simply believed they were positives with challenges that would turn out, not just fine, but really awesome? This neck thingy? Oh that? It's my chance to be a millionaire. Because I have this thing, I'm going to win the lottery or discover gold in my backyard, or forcibly find a cure for cancer. Any or all of these things can be true...but only if you select them as your destiny and then joyfully convince the future to fall in line for you. At the very least, you'll have fun while you're at it.
And no, peeps, it's just a stupid ingrown hair that I need to leave alone. And it's also just a deep recession, and it's just a (not really) brave new world out there we all need to cope with by choosing our outcome RIGHT NOW.
As Captain Jean Luc Picard would say..."Make it so."
