When I was a kid (a long long time ago, lol) my dad bought this video camera. This was back when hand held video cameras were just starting to be affordable for average folks.
Anyhow, I’d plugged it into the TV, and quickly found out that if I watched the live feed on the screen, and I pointed the camera at the screen, I could look into infinity.
Meaning I was taking a video of a display of me taking a video of a display of…etc…
I thought it was pretty cool, and if I held the camera just right, the whole thing would seize, and the picture would vanish and be replaced by a blue screen.
These feedback loops are all around, and most of the time we don’t even know. Crucially whenever we’re interacting with others.
Self fulfilling beliefs can make or break us, depending on what direction the belief is leaning when we start.
Consider somebody who has a set of enhancing beliefs about herself. She goes out into the world, and behaves according to those beliefs. The people around her respond to her based on her behavior, giving her feedback that her beliefs are correct. This makes her beliefs stronger, which of course alters her behavior even more positively, giving her more positive feedback.
This goes on and on throughout her life, and before she even knows what happened, her life is filled with positive relationships, high income, good health, and all kinds of awesome experiences.
If you were to ask her the secret of her success, she may give you some standard, “law of attraction” kind of answer, but she wouldn’t really know what happened.
On the other hand, somebody who started off just a hair on the negative side will have the opposite effect. He will have some slightly negative beliefs about himself. This affects his behavior, which gets him different feedback, which changes his behavior even more.
A few years later, he’s broke, maybe homeless, and wondering why nothing ever “works” for him.
What’s the difference between the two, when they are just starting out? Sadly, not a lot.
When you go through life, not knowing what you’re beliefs are, and how to change them for the better, it’s tough to tell when you are reacting to your environment, or your environment is reacting to you.
The good news is that matter how long you’ve gone with unhelpful beliefs, changing your life for the better is just a thought away. Once you shift your beliefs to the positive side, things can change like magic.
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