Many people have heard the term self fulfilling prophecy at one time or another during their life. Although having heard it, many have never thought about what it is.

Simply put, our beliefs affect our behaviors. Most of the time it is the negative beliefs that will manifest themselves. As I was working out this morning I started thinking about some of my own thought patterns in the past and how almost all of the negative things I said to myself did or began to become true.

Let me give you an example. When I first won The Biggest Loser, I would read the internet and see that people were saying that I was going to gain all of my weight back. I had never met these people, these people didn’t know me, but somehow what they were writing about me stuck with me. At first I would say that they had no idea what they were talking about. After being away from the show for nearly a year, I did begin to gain weight. When I first realized how much weight I had gained, my thoughts weren’t: “I’ll just get back to work.” They were: “Oh my gosh they were right.”

I was letting what other people had said affect me so deeply that I began to talk to myself in negative ways. I remember thinking, “You always do this, do something great for yourself and then try and wreck it.” Do you see the pattern? Rather than appreciate the weight I had kept off and work to re-lose the weight I had gained, I began to behave worse. It is almost like, rather than try and prove the nay-sayers wrong, I has trying to prove them right.

There will always be detractors to your success. People who don’t want to see you succeed. DO NOT be your own biggest detractor. Think about what you are saying to yourself. The more negative things that you dwell on, the more negative things YOU are going to produce. There will always be plenty of people who will tell you that you can’t do something. The only person who can make you not do something is you.

I have had my struggles with weight, but I am going to win because I believe I will. As I have mentioned in some of my past blogs, I have hit a plateau and the numbers haven’t been dropping. I am not going to sit back and say, “Well I guess this is just what I am going to weigh. I’m not going to be able to be as fit as I would like.” I am going to focus on the solutions. I have seen progress and know that I can reach the level of fitness that I desire.

One thing I do know is that having a negative attitude can only hinder my progress. How are you speaking to yourself? Are the words you are using going to help or hinder your success?

I hope you will work with me to change from negative self talk, which will lead to self defeat; to positive self talk which will open doors in life that you may have thought were permanently closed.

Biggest Loser, Biggest Loser Fitness Ridge, life lessons, Matt Hoover, Persistance

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010, 7:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.