Your First Step Towards a Successful Career

You can never understimate how powerful your thoughts are

Mark Wager is an international leadership expert who regularly runs programmes in Fiji. Mark can be

Let me share with you a story I have heard way too often from many different people. There is someone in the workplace who is obviously very good at his job, and has been given an opportunity or perhaps a promotion, a new job or an opportunity to lead a new project.

The person in question does not believe he can do a good job.

There is no one else around so he takes on the new opportunity. People around him tell him he is good enough, yet despite this he continues to doubt himself.

These doubts start impacting his performance.

He starts to lack confidence.

He is openly hesitant, which leads to those around them lose faith in his abilities.

Eventually sometime later, the inner doubts are proven to be right.

He fails in his new role and then says, “I knew I wasn’t good enough!”

This is what is called a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy.’

Self-fulfilling prophecy

When someone expects something bad to happen and guess what, things actually do go bad.

In this week’s article, I want to share with you the science behind the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ and what it means to your career, your life, and your future.

I’m sure you have met people who you would describe as ‘glass half full’ or ‘glass half empty’ people.

Those who see the same event, and are either always positive or always negative.

This is not a surprise but would be if you were to hear that these people are the architects of their own life.

Their belief in whether they expect good or bad things to happen actually influences what will happen to them.

In order to explain how this works, let me share with you a study done at one of the world’s top universities, Harvard Business School.

Professor Robert Rozenthal was head of psychology at Harvard University

and he visited a school, telling them of an experiment that he wanted them to be a part of.

He told them he designed a test which not only showed the intelligence level of a student, but also their potential.

After the students had taken the test, he had the names of the six students who would show the biggest improvement over the next school year.

Professor Rozenthal asked the teachers not to tell the students they had been selected, and only the teachers knew the names of the future star pupils.

A year later he returned to the school to discover what happened. When Professor Rozenthal returned to the school, the teachers were delighted because the six students who were selected were in fact the same six students who had the biggest improvement in performance during the last school year. The teachers were eager to find out more about how the test worked.

In response, Professor Rozenthal told them the truth which was, there was no such test and he just selected six students at random. So, what happened?

The expectations of the teachers had changed.

They expected certain students to do well, and with these expectations, their behaviours changed - believing six students would be stars.

They then spent more time with those students, gave them more challenging tasks because they believed they were capable of more.

They provided more positive reinforcement, wanting those students to do well.

As a result, the students who received more attention, more challenging tasks and more positive reinforcement started to perform better, which in turn reinforced the teachers’ expectations.

Without them being aware of it, the teachers themselves made six students their star performers just because they believed that they would be.

In short, a person’s expectations influences their behaviours in order to increase the probability of their initial expectations being true.

■Step one: Our belief about ourselves or others influences our actions.

■Step two: Our actions impacts other people’s belief either about us or themselves.

■Step three: Their belief influences their actions.

■Step four: Finally those actions reinforce our initial belief.

You can never underestimate just how powerful your thoughts are. If you tell yourself that you are not good at something, you can’t do that job or you are not worthy of an opportunity then guess what? Without being aware of it you will begin to sabotage yourself, allowing your negative thoughts to influence your actions.

Your self-doubt starts to make other people share those doubts and before you know it those negative expectations have come true.

Yet, it’s you who was the architect of your own failure and not anyone else.

Now I don’t want you to start thinking that success is all about expectations and believing in yourself because skill will always play the most important role.

No matter how much I believe in myself, I am never going to be young enough to play for the All Blacks.

The story you tell yourself is that your first step towards success. It may not guarantee where your journey ends, but your level of faith in yourself will influence the length of your journey.

There are many people who are more than willing to doubt you, so why join them?

They don’t need any help, instead demand more from yourself, your life and your career.

Set your expectations high and become the person you know you are capable of being.