Last Updated on January 6, 2025

Designing positive self-fulfilling prophecies

A popular quote is often attributed to 20th Century car manufacturer Henry Ford:

“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

I’m not sure I believe Henry Ford said that.

In fact there is good evidence suggesting that maybe he didn’t.

That said, there is definitely something to this idea.

The Ancient Roman poet Virgil wrote something similar in The Aeneid:

“Possunt, quia posse videntur,” which translates as…

“They can because they think they can.”

Is success merely a matter of believing you can do something?

Well, not exactly.

But belief does kick off a positive feedback loop.

And that can make a massive difference!

We already have negative self-fulfilling prophecies

Imagine someone believes they can’t achieve something they want.

Perhaps it’s to get in shape, or to start a business, or to find a loving partner.

They really, really want this outcome.

But because they believe it’s “impossible,” they feel zero motivation to go for it.

They might not even admit to themselves they want it!

If they do take any action, it’s likely to be half-hearted.

And if the first thing they try doesn’t get 100% of the result, they are likely to interpret this as a “failure.”

The belief in failure thus proves itself!

It’s a case of circular logic though.

Really the belief in failure biases the experiment — and even the interpretation of the results — in the direction of failure.

And the thing is, there’s no way to run an unbiased experiment.

Not when you are the only experimenter at least!

There is no way to blind the study.

Your belief affects the outcome.

But that’s good news if we know how to utilize that information!

WOOP, there it is!

Imagine instead that a person believes their highly desired outcome is 95-100% possible.

When they imagine having their outcome, and then contrast that with present reality, they become highly motivated to go try some stuff!

They can even think of potential obstacles and see ways past them.

Easy peasy.

That’s called WOOP: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan.

See the excellent book Rethinking Positive Thinking by Gabrielle Oettingen of New York University who came up with it, based on rigorous research.

Interestingly, WOOP only works if belief in the outcome is very high.

So the key is to somehow already have a high belief in the possibility of success.

Turning that loop around

If a person does have this belief though, they get highly motivated.

Because they are so extremely motivated, they take lots of action.

They try lots of little experiments to see what might work.

And they aren’t discouraged by “failure.”

Instead, they see tiny improvements that other people might dismiss.

And they see any bit of learning as success, because it gets them closer to their goal.

So even “failure” is seen as success!

Feeling like you’re succeeding then “proves” that your outcome is possible.

In other words, this too forms a feedback loop:

Each pass through a positive feedback loop amplifies the signal.

So positive feedback loops can lead to exponential results.

And since humans tend to predict things in terms of linear results, setting up a positive self-fulfilling prophecy like this can lead to achieving results far beyond our wildest dreams!

But how do we change our beliefs?

Oettingen’s research is crystal clear on this.

Just fantasizing about having your desired future does not affect our beliefs about how likely we think it is to happen.

Not even a little bit.

Positive fantasies and positive beliefs about future outcomes are two totally different things.

I can fantasize about winning the lottery all day long.

That doesn’t change my belief that I still only have a one in 6 kajillion chance of winning it.

This means affirmations, visualizing your desired outcome, and so on, while useful for reminding us what we want, are not helpful for changing our beliefs about whether it will happen.

Luckily, there are dozens and dozens of effective belief change tools in NLP and hypnosis.

My wife Jess and I came up with our own way called Paradigm-Shifting Questions, and it’s extremely effective even with the most stuck, painful beliefs.

The key is to change the belief at the unconscious level.

That way you’re not trying to dupe or fool yourself into believing your outcome is possible.

You just believe it…based on evidence even!

Because when we don’t believe something is possible, often we are deleting evidence.

Including evidence that we’ve already done it in the past!

Chunk it waaaay down

You can also change your belief by creating a much, much smaller goal, and then actually achieving it.

This will create evidence that you can make progress at this new thing.

And if you can make tiny, incremental progress, you can probably make a little more progress.

And so on.

Can’t lose 50lbs right this second?

No problem.

Can you lose 0.2lbs in the next 3 days?

Easy peasy.

By making tiny little achievements and really celebrating them when you do, you can inch your way closer and closer to your goal.

And as you do so, you’ll increase your belief in yourself more and more too.

Take care,

 

 

 

~Duff
(they/them)