What Kind of Person do you think you are?
How do you perceive yourself to be?
What if I told you that how you answer this
question determines the outcome of your life?
How you see yourself is of
absolute importance because it affects everything that you do.
How we see ourselves determines what kind of goals we set, what kind of
thoughts we think, how we act and behave, and what decisions we make.
To start off, I'm going to give a little lesson in Roman legend 101. According to Roman legend, a sculptor by
the name of Pygmalion had envisioned a woman so remarkably beautiful he could
not help but bring his vision to life through his gift of sculpting. His
sculpture was more than beautiful; in fact, it embodied every ideal, hope,
dream, possibility, and meaning that Pygmalion held. It wasn’t before long that
Pygmalion fell in love with his idealistic sculpture, so much so that he
bargained with the goddess of love, Venus, to bring her to life. And according
to the legend, she did.
Now what does this have to do with you and
I you might ask? Well, like Pygmalion, who brought his sculpture to life simply
through the power of his belief, you and I have the power to bring to life
certain traits within others and within ourselves simply based on how we perceive
others and ourselves. In positive psychology, this power of belief is referred
to as “The Pygmalion Effect,” and its implications reveal that our belief in
another person’s potential, or our own, actually brings that potential to life.
To further explain, I’ll share a little
story with you: Back when I was in high-school, there was a classroom clown
cracking jokes and causing apparent disruption to the classroom. Instead of
simply asking the kid to be quiet, giving him a pink slip, or kicking him out
of the class, the teacher told him to hold out his right hand and turn it over.
The student did said procedure as the teacher responded, “Good, now at least I
know you can flip burgers at McDonald’s, because that’s what you’re going to be
doing the rest of your life.” What this teacher may or may not have realized at
the time, was that he was speaking prophetic words of negativity into this child’s
life. Rather than kindly encouraging the class-clown to pay attention, he
publicly belittled and humiliated him, and sure enough, a couple years later,
that kid had dropped out of high-school and began flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
Here’s another example: A new teacher was
given the names of her students as well as their locker numbers. She mistakenly
took these numbers as each of her pupil’s IQ scores. Consequently, she spent
the rest of the school year under the impression that each one of her students was
an utter genius, and her verbal and non-verbal actions communicated that quite
clearly to each of her students. By the end of the year, the school’s principle
called the teacher into his office asking, “What on earth did you do to get
these kids’ test scores so incredibly high?” Her response was, “Well sir, they
are genius.’” “And how would you know that?” he replied. “Well because of their
IQ scores you gave me in the beginning of the year!” she returned. With a grin
and a shake of the head he said, “Those weren’t their IQ scores, those were
their locker numbers!”
Story upon story, study upon study
continues to prove the dramatic effect our beliefs have when it comes to
influencing others. Our beliefs in others can either discourage them to sink
into failure, or encourage them to rise up and realize their full-potential.
The same is true of ourselves. The way we see ourselves determines how we act,
behave, what we say and think, what kind of goals we set (if we believe we are
destined for failure, the bar will be set very low, and vice versa) and what
kind of decisions that we make. If we don’t believe we can do something, what’s
the point in us even trying in the first place?
Why did my high-school friend, the class
clown, drop out of high school? Because he listened to what he was told and
didn’t believe he could do anything else with his life. A student who doesn’t
believe they will ever amount to anything is more likely to drop out or get
poor grades. Why even try in the first place? A young girl who doesn’t have
much self-worth or self-value is more likely to seek love in the wrong places,
because she doesn’t think she can do any better or is worth any better. A
husband who is constantly nagged by his wife is going to feel as if there’s no
point to doing anything nice for her at all.
When we encourage others, when we help
others to see their unlimited potential, we are aiding in bringing that
potential to life. When we listen to self-degrading thoughts of negativity and
failure, we are only hindering our future. When we chose to seek our strong
areas, improve on our weak ones, and know that the potential within each of us
is unlimited, we are creating a future that is bright, meaningful, and
completely fulfilled and purposeful.
As Sean Achor puts it, “When we believe we
can do more and achieve more (or when others believe It for us), that is often
the precise reason we do achieve more.” Science has barely
begun to glimpse into all of the remarkable ways our mindset actually shapes
and determines the objective world around us.
It is truly proof of the timeless wisdom
that, “As a man thinks in his heart, so he becomes” (Proverbs 23:7).
Now let me ask again, “Who do you
believe you are?”
I hope you answer differently, or at least
a little more positively knowing that how you answer will be reflected in how you behave, live, the goals you set, the
thoughts you think, the words you speak, and ultimately, the kind of life you
will have.
"I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the MOST powerful drug known to humanity" -Rudyard Kipling
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