ManoSathi

Do wishes and fears both have the power to become our reality?

Whether it is our wishes or fears, we pray with our purest intentions for both of them, either to make the wishes come true or to not let those fears ever happen in our lives. These thoughts keep running in the back of our minds and are responsible for shaping our behaviors. But how does this happen?

This occurs due to a phenomenon called SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY. A person predicts or expects something will happen in reality because he believes it so strongly that it will happen and later person’s behaviors get aligned to fulfill his/her beliefs regarding self or others. It can be either a positive self-fulfilling prophecy or a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. As main concern of mine is to bring focus on the hidden causes of depression and anxiety. I am addressing the negative self-fulfilling prophecy formed by our constant repetition of destructive patterns of thoughts accumulated due to some hard moments in which people feel difficult to regulate their emotions.

So is this true that our beliefs and behavior are interconnected?

Adults often use this sentence and say “He is so young now, he will not even remember when he will be an adult”. Little do they know that till 7 years of age children have an absorbent mind without any filters like sponges. If a parent acts abusively or negatively, they are not able to differentiate that they are doing this out of their own problems and they perceive all that incident as there is something wrong with them? Once they internalize those narratives as they grow up as adults they repeat those narratives over and over again in their head and becomes their own inner voices and then they act to prove them right so that they can believe them even more profoundly and the outcome which occurs out of those behavior guided by that destructive internalized beliefs acts as reinforcers.

Imagine Jimmy, son of an anxious and hyper-vigilant mother. She always told her son that the earth is a bad place always be careful. Later in his life, he developed agoraphobia used to be fearful of coming out of his house.

On the other hand image Shawn, his mother always used to whisper in his ear before going to sleep, that he is smart enough to handle all the situations courageously. Later in his life, as you guessed it right he achieved great things and had great social relationships.

Whenever people try to break those disempowering belief patterns they experienced cognitive dissonance and which kept them stuck with that identity formed by those beliefs which were no longer serving them and only taking them to the path of depression and anxiety.

But will those traumatic events keep them in the bondage of the grips of these demeaning beliefs forever? Those broken pieces which are carried by them to just be on survival and hypervigilant mode with all unreal ugliness and irrational patterns of beliefs in a dormant state and like a grenade as they get triggered can come onto the surface in the same way as they were felt once will they will ever get accepted or addressed?

Identify your beliefs by noticing your narrative whenever you feel stuck on something. As an adult when we don’t accept all that is told to us blindly then why are we making those destructive beliefs as our identity.

Choose to heal and fearlessly bring those demons which have made their home in our subconscious mind and probe are they even true? Were they ever true? If for some days they were true but why are we allowing them to control us even now. We are the master of this arena ..we can choose to heal over becoming victims of life’s circumstances.

WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN, OR THINK YOU CAN’T. YOU’RE RIGHT.

HENRY FORD