How Our Thoughts Shape Outcomes
What you think shapes your life. That’s because your mindset shapes your behavior, which indirectly controls the way things in your life unfold.
For example, if you believe that you are unlucky, then you will not take chances because you fear failure. You might also miss opportunities that appear. This is because you are focused on the things that could go wrong and this will make you feel worse about yourself. If you think you’re bad at your job, you won’t speak up in meetings, you’ll keep your head down, and you might be less likely to show up as a leader which could impact your ability to get a good raise or get promoted.
Affirmations
If you have a negative thought like 'I'm always unlucky,' remember that you’re only unlucky because you think you're unlucky. Likewise, the thought that 'good things never happen to me' is self-perpetuating. To get over this, reflect on your talents and skills – what you are really good at. Be objective when assessing yourself and ask others for their opinions. Chances are that you will find that you're just as capable as everyone else so the only thing that could be bringing you down is your own negativity. Accept this and replace your negative thoughts with positive thoughts.
You can also use positive affirmations to change your mindset. These are statements you repeat to yourself like 'I'm a successful and positive person'. If you repeat these enough, they can become ingrained, and you will start believing it. If you struggle to remember to use affirmations, consider putting post-it notes up around your house as reminders.
This might seem like it wouldn’t accomplish much, but by constantly exposing yourself to positive messages, you will be repeating the same thoughts over and over and strengthening the neural pathways in the brain that are responsible for creating them. As these become strengthened, they will become more likely to be activated in the future.
In short, those positive thoughts can become a habit.
Placebo Effect
The placebo effect is a powerful effect noted in scientific research that shows how simply believing something can often make it true…biologically. For example, you could give someone a sugar pill and tell them it will make them have more energy and they will report that they feel more motivated after taking the pill.
The placebo effect is the ability of our beliefs regarding our own bodies and our own health to trigger changes in our biology – specifically in our neurochemistry and hormone balance. If you tell someone they're sick, then they become stressed and they produce more stress hormones like cortisol. In turn, this strains the immune system and they actually become more ill.
You can also make yourself better by believing you will get better. Of course, you can't overcome a terminal illness, but simply by being positive you can increase your chances of a rapid recovery from a milder illness such as the flu.
The placebo effect can go a huge way to making things work out better for you. You don’t need a sugar pill to “placebo yourself” into changing something such as acting more confident and becoming more confident as a result.
Here’s another example: when someone puts a 'curse' on someone, this can often have terrible negative consequences on their life. Of course, curses aren't real, but that person's belief that something bad will happen means their immune system suffers from stress, their unconscious mind starts sabotaging them and they give off negative vibes in social situations. The result is that they are more likely to get sick, tired, or become more accident prone and people don't want to be around them.
Studies have also shown that being anxious causes you to look for negative things and to miss opportunities. A tense, anxious, 'unlucky' person won't see that $20 bill on the sidewalk because their brain is distracted by negative thoughts. Happy, positive people will notice these things.
Thought Restructuring
One method you can use to transform your thoughts is called “thought challenging.” This means looking at the content of your thoughts and assessing their accuracy. For example:
Can you just be an unlucky person?
And if you are so bad at your job, how are you in the position you’re in now?
Look for the fallacies within your negative thoughts and then test their accuracy using hypothesis testing. This is where you put those negative beliefs to the test to prove to yourself that they’re inaccurate. You can take note of all the situations where your negative thought is not true. You could also take action to prove that it is wrong such as taking on a big project at work to show yourself that you are capable.
By using these techniques, you can change your beliefs and that's when you will start seeing more positive outcomes.