If you haven’t already, check out parts 1, 2, and 3 on getting rid of your bad luck. Moving on to the final factor… 

You are what you_____? 

Does your self-talk tend to be negative or positive? 

Imagine you’re going in to interview for a job. Are you more likely to say, “I don’t know why i’m doing this. I’m probably not even going to get it.” Or “I’m going to go into that interview and give it my best shot!”

Or imagine you overdraft your account…again. Are you more likely to say, “I’m always going to be broke.” or “I have got to rework my budget so I don’t keep over drafting my account.”

If you tend to be a negative Nancy, then this is your reminder that your behavior is toxic. And oftentimes, your negative self-talk started developing in childhood. 

Maybe you were constantly criticized, embarrassed, bullied, humiliated, or made to feel bad about yourself. Maybe your family slapped a label on you. The “problem child.” “The screwup. “The dumb one.” “The klutz.” “The black sheep of the family.” What’s worse is maybe your parents played into this by tying your identity to your behavior.

If that last sentence has you all kinds of confused, imagine this. When you were younger and your parents asked you to clean your room and you didn’t do it, what were they more likely to say to you?

“You’re such a slob!” or

“I feel frustrated when I ask you to clean your room and you don’t do it.”

Now maybe you’re thinking, “What’s wrong with either statement?” 

The problem with the first statement is that your parent has labeled you (a slob) which makes your negative behavior (slob) a part of your identity; and since your identity does not change, you’ll be more likely to carry that labelthroughout your lifetime. 

In contrast, in the second statement your parent describes your behavior without negatively labeling you a slob. So you learn that while you may occasionally do the wrong thing (not cleaning your room), that does not make you a bad person. 

When you’re raised by an overly critical parent (caregiver), you tend to internalize their voice and it becomes your inner voice in adulthood. This then leads to the third factor that keeps you stuck: the prison you create for yourself.

“Congratulations,,.you’re a prophet.”

A prophet is a person who predicts the future. Well guess what? You and I are constantly predicting the future about ourselves! 

Don’t believe me? You don’t have to. Believe the research. You can literally create the future you are expecting based solely on your belief that it will come to pass. This is what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words, without even meaning to, you can expect something to happen and then subconsciously engage in the behaviors that make it happen.

Yes, you made that negative thing happen…

Imagine this…

Let’s say you want to ask for a raise at work. You egg yourself on to go for it! But the closer you get to the day, the more you start to doubt yourself and your ability to get that raise. You start thinking, “There’s no way I’ll get a raise. John asked and he’s been here longer than me and he didn’t get it. Why would I?”

On the day of your performance review, you meekly ask for a raise. You half-heartedly try to explain why you deserve a raise. You even add you’d be willing to take a small raise, even if it’s just a quarter or two.

When you don’t get the raise, you think to yourself,

“I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. Good things never happen to me.” 

But what you missed is how YOU created the outcome you feared. The moment you predicted that you were unlikely to get the raise you set the ball in motion to create that very reality.

Oftentimes, the things we speak over our life actually come true. This is what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy. So don’t just be careful what you think — be careful what you speak 🤫 Tweet this!

In the episode of Half & Half that I referenced in my first post, Mona went around believing that she was doomed to come in second in every area in her life. And in walking around with this belief, she made it happen. 

You’ve heard it said, “You are what you eat.“ And I also pointed out in another post that “You are what you think.” I’ll add one more: “You are what you speak.”

Think about it. Like really take a moment and think about it. What self-fulfilling prophecies have you spoken over your life?

• “I’m unattractive.” 
• “I have bad luck”
• “I’ll always be broke.” 
• “I’ll never get pregnant.”
• “Nobody will ever love me.”
• “I’ll never get into a relationship.”
• “My spouse & I will never get along.”
• “There’s no way I can get this weight off.”
• “Bad things are always happening to me.”
• “I will always get passed over for promotions.”
• “I’m going to be stuck in this dead end job forever.”
• “I can’t be a business owner. I don’t know anything about business.”
• “I’ll always be depressed, anxious, (or fill-in-the-blank with any other negative diagnosis/condition).”

If you want to change your bad luck for good then you should, must, need to change the predictions (YES, predictions!) you’re making about yourself and your future. Remind yourself of these three things: 

1. “You are what you speak.”
2. “Whether [I] think [I] can or [I] think [I] can’t – [I’m] right.” -Henry Ford, mostly 🙃
3. I can either predict negative things for myself or positive things for myself. I will choose positive things every time. 

The sooner you start doing that, the sooner you will start to create the life and future you want for yourself. 

What self-fulfilling prophecies about yourself, your life, or your future do you need to change?