Wholeness Healing Center

Bad Luck, Destiny, or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

Carl G. Jung believed that until people make the unconscious conscious, it will direct their lives, and they will call it fate. Both in social situations and in counseling, people often wonder why bad things keep happening to them, or why they keep making the same wrong choices, especially when it comes to choosing romantic partners. These statements can start a long philosophical discussion, but today I want to present only one simple, yet intricate element that can be used by all people to try to figure out some answers about themselves and their role in the things that happen to them. Before starting, I must clarify that in life, things in general will always happen to us; for example, the way we are cared for when we are babies, laws and policies of the country where we are raised, random debris that falls in our backyard, among many others. However, it is necessary to recognize that most things simply happen; yet, at times, we choose to make them about us, as we assign these events meaning.

Human beings are symbolic beings, especially since we created language to communicate and to have a proper means to describe, construct, and understand life. In that same manner, we have learned to build our own reality using language to describe the way we see ourselves, other people and everything around us, as well as the way we foresee the future. In that sense, here is where the self-fulfilling prophecy takes place, whether in a positive, neutral, or negative sense. It starts with a thought, a statement poised as a general truth; an emotional reaction follows, which can be as simple or as complex as the truth that is causing it. Next, a whole set of behaviors occur, whether they are about doing something or stopping from doing something. In turn, these behaviors cause environmental reactions, sometimes from other living beings or things, although mostly from people. Those reactions often represent evidence for the person that the truth that started this cycle is factual. This problem occurs because of a tendency human beings intrinsically have; we LOVE being RIGHT. That is the reason, this cycle becomes so powerful. If we listen to our own mind 24/7, telling myself things like, “I’m the worst,” “no one is to be trusted,” “nobody loves me,” etc., we are pushing ourselves to find evidence that those statements are indeed factual, thus causing a lot of consistent unpleasant emotions, hence affecting our lives in a detrimental way, as physical and mental health issues, relationship problems, etc.

The same thing happens with positive statements. Of course they can be a lot more helpful, yet at times, just as problematic. Let’s consider the following thoughts: “I am the best,” “everyone loves me,” “I will live forever,” etc. These statements can create a fictional, and at times, even delusional state of the mind, which can make it unbearable for the person to withstand, as they will undoubtedly find evidence to the contrary. In these cases, it is easy to find people with problems of dependency, people pleasing, and dissociative symptoms, as it is unbearable to them to NOT be right, so they find ways to mask it, or ways to cope with such painful realizations. For that reason, it is more than positive or negative thoughts. It is about learning to accept reality around me as it is, while I build for myself the truths that can help me lead a more balanced and enjoyable life. So, a simple exercise to make this easier is to self-correct when any troublesome thought happens; just change it with a neutral description. For example, a negative thought could be, “nobody loves me;” a positive one, “everyone loves me;” and the proposed self-corrected and more realistic one, “some people love me.” It is important to note that there can be cases in which the last statement does not meet the reality of the person for multiple reasons, thus it needs adjusting to such a reality. For example, in the case of someone who is completely alone somewhere in the world, the self-corrected thought could be, “I can be loved by people,” where the evidence might not come from the present, but from the past of the person.

One last aspect to add is the fact that we are all interconnected in this life. For that reason, my self-fulfilling prophecies often will intersect with those of others and vice versa, which only makes it even more important for all to learn to choose their environment for the benefit of their wellbeing. Additionally, I want to emphasize that this article is intended to inform, and not to provide a fix-all solution. For that reason, it is recommended to explore such complex dynamics with experts in the field of psychology and mental health.