Your Thoughts Create Reality | Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any more podcast episodes. And if you're out there and you love this podcast and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to get inspirational text messages from me directly to your phone sporadically throughout the week, just text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about how your thoughts about yourself, about the world, about everyone that's in the world, literally create the reality that you see and that you live in and how you, by what you think and what you believe and what you expect, create a self-fulfilling prophecy at every single moment of your life.

0:50And so you have to understand your mind, I think, is the most incredible thing. It's the most incredibly intriguing thing that we have in this universe. Your mind is this complex web of all of these thoughts, of all of these beliefs, of all of these things that you see and the way that you think about the world. On top of that, you've got everything that's ever happened to you in your entire life influencing the way that you categorize things and the way that you see something and then place some sort of label or importance on top of it. And all of your thoughts and your beliefs and everything influence how you see the world, but also how you interact with the world.

1:29And your internal narratives shape your reality. It doesn't shape actual true reality like objective reality. It shapes your own subjective reality. So if you don't realize how you think and how you feel and how you believe, you're going to get these self-fulfilling prophecies where your expectations and your beliefs about yourself, about other people will directly impact your outcomes in your life for positive or for a lot of people negative. and it actually changes what you see in your reality and the importance that you give of things. And so when you look at a self-fulfilling prophecy, the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy basically is this.

2:10When your expectations or your beliefs about a situation cause that situation or outcome that you were expecting to occur. And so it's like, okay, I'm expecting this thing to happen based off of my thoughts, based off of my beliefs, based off of my past. And because that's what I expect, I go into it and it changes my behavior in that situation, which basically makes the outcome I was expecting to happen. And so this is actually a sociologist, Robert Merton coined this term in 1948. And he described himself as a false definition of the situation, evoking a new behavior which causes the original false conception to come true.

2:57And so basically a person's perception and expectations make them create a new behavior based off of what they're filtering in the world which makes their expectations eventually come true. And so if you were listening to an episode I put out a few weeks ago about your reticulator activating system there's a part of your brain that filters an immense amount of information that we receive from our environment and then what we pay attention to. And so the reason why it exists is because according to estimates on all of our sensory organs, our sight, our hearing, our touch, our taste, our smell, our brain takes in approximately 11 million bits of information per second.

3:38That's what they take in, but that's not what gets through to our brain. Out of 11 million bits of information, only about 50 to 120 bits of information actually come into our mind. The reticular activating system is the bouncer at the door. You know, so the example I gave in the episode a couple weeks ago is like, if a bouncer at the door is going to get fired, if he doesn't let 200 women in, then he's going to be looking for women who are in line or he's going to be walking by and every woman that walks by is like, you want to come into the door? You want to come into the party? You want to come into the party, right?

4:11He's not going to notice any of the guys that walk by. He's only going to see the girls so that he doesn't get fired from his role, And that's exactly how your reticular activating system works. It plays a big role in self-fulfilling prophecies because it filters information according to your thoughts and your beliefs, which draws your attention to things to confirm your expectations and basically ignore or downplay information that contradicts them. So essentially, the reticular activating system works behind the scenes to help you selectively notice the things that we already expect to see. And so this selective focus helps explain why self-fulfilling prophecies happen.

4:51So let me give you a couple of examples of exactly what I mean based off of what your thoughts about the world, your beliefs about the world, change the way that you interact the world, which then makes you get what you were expecting. So let's say a man falls in love. He falls in love with this woman. He's just so in love with her, right? And then she ends up cheating on him. And because of that, he just has this broken heart and he's so hurt. And for a while, he can't open himself up. He doesn't feel like he can open himself up. And then eventually, he starts to open himself up a little bit more and he wants to start going out and dating again.

5:25And he still has this thought because he was so heartbroken before that he can't trust women, right? Because the person who he loved broke his heart, cheated on him. So he kind of has this belief like he can't trust women. And because of that belief, when he gets into his next relationship and he starts to like the girl. He starts to feel the same feelings, starts to feel a little bit of love towards her. He might get too overbearing because he thinks like, I can't, what if she cheats on me? I don't know if I can trust her. So he might get too overbearing. Every time that he doesn't hear from her after a couple hours, he texts her, where are you?

5:58How's things going? When she goes out with her friends, he texts her, where are you? What's going on? You know, maybe her phone dies and he freaks out because he's in here for like four or five hours. And because of the fact that he gets so overbearing, that's his behavior, based off of his, oh my gosh, I don't know if I could trust women. I've been heartbroken before. I want to protect myself. He gets too overbearing. She ends up leaving him, breaks his heart as well, which then reinforces his thoughts of, I can't trust women. I'm not worthy of love, whatever his thoughts might be. He created the heartbreak again because of his beliefs based off of past results.

6:39which then creates the same circumstance again in his life. That is what a self-fulfilling prophecy is and it happens in your life way more than you expect. It happens all of the time. The problem is most of us, because we have negativity bias, have a negative internal dialogue going on about ourself, about the world, and so we're constantly creating these things that we don't want. Let me give you another example, right? So let's say that there's a student who believes that they're bad at math. Well, if you think you're bad at math, you will unconsciously focus more on when you failed, of the challenges around math, the difficulties around math.

7:23And so let's say that that student, the reticular activating system, thinks, well, I'm bad at math. That's what their belief is because they failed a couple tests when they were younger, right? That means that every mistake that they have or struggle is then going to be highlighted and it's going to reinforce that belief within them that math is difficult. And this constant focus on failures and struggles can cause them to go into math and maybe approach it with hesitation. or with anxiety. And maybe they don't study math as much because it makes them feel anxious because it makes them feel insecure based off of the fact that they failed math so often.

8:02Or maybe they don't study because they think, well, what's the point? I'm bad at math anyways. Which ultimately, the next math test that comes up, they're going to perform poorly because they either didn't study because of their thoughts about what's the point or they didn't study because math makes them feel a little anxious, and because they perform poorly, they fail the test, it reinforces the initial belief of, see, I'm bad at math. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. On the other side of that, you could say there's a student who believes that they are good at math. And if they do, then their reticular activating system is basically tuned to the signs of improvement.

8:43Oh, I did well on this math question. I'm getting better at this. I'm progressing. I'm starting to succeed, which then reinforces their belief that they can get better and that they are pretty good at. And over time, this positive feedback loop then helps them perform better, which then proves their initial belief of I'm good at math being correct. You see how this happens? It happens over and over and over again. It happens in your relationships. It happens at work. It happens in the way that you think about yourself. This happens in your social interactions. So like, for instance, let me give you an example of social interactions.

9:16This happens a lot, right? a person could be thinking to themselves that they're socially awkward. And so if you think to yourself, oh my gosh, I'm socially awkward, but I need to get out there. I need to start meeting people. I need to start networking for business, right? So you think you're socially awkward, but you are going to put yourself out there. And then you enter a room and you start noticing that when you talk to people, their body language and their reactions look like they're a little bit disinterested in you. So your reticular activating system will zero in on every awkward pause that somebody has or every failed joke that you had, which in turn reinforces your beliefs about yourself that you're not good in social situations.

9:58You know, let's say someone else thinks that they are good in social situations. They say, you know what? I'm an outgoing person. I'm really outgoing and I'm not an introvert at all. I'm an extrovert. Well, someone who views himself as confident and good in social situations, the reticular activating system will focus on the signs of when there were positive reactions and when people laughed and when they were having a good time, which this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where they perceive themselves as likable. They get, you know, social validation and that reinforces the belief. And so the reticular activating system basically ensures that their attention is consistently drawn towards evidence that supports the self-image.

10:39So whether that's good self-image or bad self-image, the reticular activating system is focusing in on that. What you need to understand about the reticular activating system and about self-fulfilling prophecies is this, is you create what you think you are and what you think the world is. That's the way that it works out. You create what you think you are and what you think that the world is. And this is why I talk about it over and over again. Analyzing your beliefs about yourself, about other people, about the world, why analyzing your beliefs is so important for you to do. Because your perception of yourself, of everything, of the world is your reality.

11:21It's not reality that everybody else sees, it's reality in your own head. It's because what you think and what you see creates the reality that you see and that you let into your brain. The good thing about self-fulfilling prophecies is that self-fulfilling prophecies can be bad, but they can also be good. So it affects the way that you see the world and it can affect you in a good way. It can affect you in a bad way, but it can also affect other people around you in their lives as well. A few months ago, I did an episode on this thing called a Pygmalion effect. And it happens when a person's expectations for another person and their behavior actually bring that behavior into reality.

12:01So there was a study that was done in 1968 around this. And it was really interesting because what they did was they took a group of teachers and they said, Hey, here's all 30 of your students based off of what we're, we're seeing with these 30 students. We had them all do IQ tests. These five students were thinking that they're going to have something called a growth spurt and their IQ tests showed that they're about to get way smarter over this year. The only problem with this was that they lied to the teachers. Those students, those five students out of the 30 were just randomly chosen. But after a year, those students, those five for each of the teachers that they did this with, those students showed more of an increase in their academic performance over the year than all the rest of the 25 other ones.

12:46And they did this with teacher after teacher after teacher after teacher. and it did not come from the innate abilities of the child. It came from the teacher's expectations and the teacher's belief in the child. And so the teachers were told that the kids were smarter and the teachers treated them as such. They put more time into them. They challenged them a little bit more. And those kids had more significant jump in scores than all of the rest of the children. And so what you have to understand is with this, it shows that your thoughts about yourself and your thoughts about the world and other people also affect other people around you.

13:20What do you think of your children? What do you think of your spouse? What do you think of your mom, of your dad, of your family? Because you're helping them create their reality as well. Whether it's good or whether it's bad, you're playing a part in it. And so if we're looking at this, we need to really start to figure out, yeah, there's some positive sides. There's a positive self-fulfilling prophecy, but there's also negative self-fulfilling prophecies. Most of them tend to be negative based off of people's negativity bias. And so when you understand how the reticular activating system influences self-fulfilling prophecies, it kind of gives you a roadmap for overcoming negative thought patterns, which then allows you to kind of foster positive outcomes as well if you want to.

14:00And so the first thing, as almost always when I talk about episodes, the first step to all of this is you have to start becoming more self-aware. Self-awareness is the key to overcoming negative beliefs, negative thought patterns, negative self-fulfilling prophecies. You cannot change something that you're not aware of. And so you've got to start to ask yourself, like get a pen and paper and write down like, what are the thoughts and beliefs that dominate my mind? The more that you start to think about this, the more that you'll recognize the beliefs that you have and also the beliefs that your reticular activating system is filtering the world for, which can then make you consciously decide to change them.

14:39which goes to step number two. Step number two is to challenge your negative beliefs about yourself, about the world, about other people. Once you identify negative beliefs that are influencing your world in the way that you don't want them to, you need to challenge them with logic and with evidence because your reticular activating system will continue to filter for those things. And so if you can come in and say, hey this negative thought pattern is actually wrong and here's the reason why, your reticular activating system will stop Stop filtering to prove that thing correct. And so the way I like to think about it is this, is if you go, here's my negative thought pattern I've been thinking for a while.

15:16Imagine that you're at the debate table and you've got to step up from the debate table that you're in and you've got to go to the other side and you now have to debate yourself. Okay, there's this negative thought pattern. I'm going to debate the positive side of this. What is the positive side of it? And you're trying to prove yourself wrong so that your reticular activating system doesn't keep filtering in the negativity. So that's step number two. And the step number three is to do this thing that I've been doing for a while now and I'm really getting hardcore and I'm using it with all of my clients.

15:47I'm teaching them to do it and it's to set your internal GPS every day. And what I mean by that, by setting your internal GPS is to get clear on how you want to think and how you want to feel. And I mean crystal freaking clear on how you want to think and how you want to feel and wake up every single morning. And what I want you to do is I want you to do breath work and meditate and feel the feelings of how you want to feel. And then what I want you to do is I want you to come up with some form of affirmation on how you want to think. Some sort of affirmation on how you want to think, how you want to feel, how you want to be, how you want your brain to start filtering in and out everything.

16:26Because essentially, like I'm 38 years old, I have 38 years of brainwashing from childhood until this very moment. And when I look at it, some of it's good, some of it's bad. I don't want some of it. And it's not like there's some evil overlord that brainwashed me. It's society. It's my own doing. It's growing up in my family. It's the people I surrounded myself with. I somehow got this brainwashing. Well, now that I'm an adult, I'm going, you know what? I'm going to fucking brainwash myself for what I want my life to be. And so I'm going to meditate on how I want to feel every single day. I'm going to meditate on how I want to think every single day.

17:08I'm going to give myself affirmations for what I want to believe every single day. And I'm going to do it over and over and over and over again because I want to be the one that's in control of my brainwashing. Nobody else. Not Instagram, not TikTok, not the news. None of that. I am in control of this thing. and I'm going to be the one that creates this internal narrative that then makes me interact with the world differently so that my self-fulfilling prophecies are the ones that I want, not the ones that I get because I haven't brainwashed myself. And so that is how your thoughts create reality and how self-fulfilling prophecies end up happening.

17:42So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, the best way that you can say thank you is just go ahead and share it on your Instagram story and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys actually sharing it. So if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Also, if you want more from me, go ahead and you can check out Mindset Mentor Plus. Mindset Mentor Plus is a subscription service where we take every single one of these podcast episodes and go way, way deeper into every single topic with worksheets, with journaling questions, with an entire community, with Q &A sessions that I do every single month.

18:18So if you wanna learn more about it, go to mindsetmentor.com. You can check it out. and the best part is it's way less than a dollar a day. And so with that, I'm gonna leave you the exact same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission, make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.