Make Your Goal Into a Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

YOU CAN HELP yourself achieve your goals by creating positive self-feeding loops. You can lift yourself up by your bootstraps. In the success literature like Think and Grow Rich, there is an important principle called Faith. It is the willful assumption that you can and will persist with your goal until you succeed. Once you have that, you've literally got it made. It makes your goal a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In those books, there are stories galore of people doing it. Many people have read these stories and become convinced they can accomplish the impossible, and then actually accomplished it!

The problem, of course, is doubt, worry, and discouragement. Those also become self-fulfilling prophecies also, and are easier to think (because of the mind's natural negative bias). If you get discouraged, you lose your drive and don't take the steps that would lead to success. And who is going to loan money to someone for a business venture when the person doubts it will work!

Faith is electrifying! It moves people. Napoleon Hill says the starting point of all achievement is Desire. And he exhorts the reader to work herself into a state of white hot desire. And you can easily see that if you were in a state of white hot desire, you could achieve things that would be impossible normally.

But how does Napoleon Hill suggest you get to that state? There are some old-fashioned things about this book. After all, it was written during the Great Depression. But there are some things about it which are startlingly modern. The method he suggests is what he calls auto-suggestion, which means "talking to yourself."

What do you think would happen if you constantly pictured your goal in your mind and saw yourself accomplishing it, and winning, succeeding, and you were at the same time saying to yourself, "I will achieve this goal; I will never stop until it is mine; I have the ability; I will follow my plan and if it doesn't work, I will make a new one and follow that; and if that one doesn't work, I will keep trying, I will keep aiming for it, and I will get it!"

If your mind was filled with that kind of stuff, do you see you would have a drive — a level of energy — that was far above average? Can you see how it would make you more powerful? More likely to achieve your goals?

This is how you can make your goal into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is how you can lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.

I know that sounds like drummed-up phoniness. And it is, in a sense. You really can't accomplish something that is truly impossible. But many of the things that we think are impossible are only impossible because we think they are.

So in a sense, you may be able to accomplish what you now think is impossible. And you can do it by assuming it can be done and committing yourself to doing it.

Now of course, there are not many people with the ambition to accomplish the impossible. Most of us would be content with a new house, or something like that. What is your goal? I know you have lots of little goals like a new TV or getting in better shape or making more money. But is there something that really stirs you? Something that makes your eyes water a little when you think of it? That's the goal I'm talking about. It might be something you've written off because it was impossible or impractical. But let me tell you something: You're going to die. Even if you live to be a hundred and twenty, you're going to die. And the goal that stirs you should be accomplished before you die. You can start small, but it should be done, if only because it will give a meaning to your life and make this experience extraordinary.

Determine you will do it, and then get started. Make that dream into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here's how to make your goal a self-fulfilling prophecy: Keep your thoughts on what you want, and keep your thoughts confident. When you notice you feel doubtful, attack the thoughts. Question them on the basis of their validity. (Read more about that here.) And then consciously, deliberately imagine your goal and say things to yourself that motivate you and give you courage and confidence. All you have to do is control your mind, which is the subject of this article.