A self-fulfilling prophecy is an assumption or prediction that,
purely as a result of having been made, cause the expected or predicted
event to occur and thus confirms its own "accuracy" • Paul Watzlawick
Years ago a very troubled colleague of mine told me that she found a
cure to her unbelievable unhappiness. She bought a then freshly published
book written by the Austrian-American psychologist Paul Watzlawick. "The Situation is Hopeless But Not Serious"
or "Sorge Dich Nicht, Lebe" in German, helped her cope with her own
misery and made her laugh at herself, something she has not ever done
before.
And we both laughed when she told me the story of a hammer.
A
man wants to hang a picture on the wall. He has a nail, but does not
have a hammer. He considers borrowing it from his neighbor, but before
he even leaves his home a thought crosses his mind. He remembers seeing
his neighbor just the other day. "The guy did not even greet me
yesterday. Who knows what he thinks of me. Maybe he has something
against me... He probably will not even lend me his hammer. Who knows
what is going on in his mind. I am not like that. If anyone have asked
me for a tool I would gladly lend it to him. How can a human being be so
heartless! Such people make our lives miserable. On purpose! He
probably even thinks that my life depends on him only because I need to
borrow his hammer. Nasty man! But that's enough! I will tell him what I
think of him!" Agitated, the man knocks on his neighbor's door. The door
opens and before the neighbor can even say a word our protagonist
shouts out "You know what, you can keep your bloody hammer, you...!" and
walks away leaving his neighbor completely perplexed.
The
poor man in this story has written a whole book before he even knocked
on his neighbor's door. How many stories do we write before we act? How
often we do not act at all because the story we have written did not
have a happy ending?
Over
the years I met many people with complete stories of their entire
lives. One bad experience in the past destroyed all hopes for better
future. Life was what it was and there was no reason to expect anything
else. It even seemed to me that such lives ended long time ago and the
unfortunate people were only there to turn the pages of their own
creation.
Of
course, things are not always as dramatic and not all of us get stuck
in some kind of morbid scenario. Most of us write short stories,
especially when we have to make difficult decisions or face particular
situations or people.
Our
creative activity begins early. Maybe as kids we did something wrong
and were terrified to talk to our parents. Maybe we were terrified not
because our parents were very strict, but because we imagined that they
would punish us severely for what we did. The story we wrote not only
prevented us from acting, but also protected us from pain that we might
have experienced if we did talk to our parents.
Over the years we
may have become masters of the genre. We always know better, and we know
for sure that there are forces much stronger than we can even imagine
that always act against us.
A scary scenario unfolds when we
interact we people who represent some kind of authority: parents,
teachers, credit facilitators, spouses. We don't even need to try. We
already know the outcome. So we leave things undone and words unspoken
and indulge in our misery.
But would anything change if we stopped writing the book?
Change
does not happen overnight. It takes time and determination to change
behavior patterns that were perfected over the years, but they can be
changed. With a little practice we could learn to shift our attention
and concentrate on the action that has to be taken and not on the
outcome we expect. Once we have mastered this new behavior we
could learn to shift our attention and start creating positive outcomes,
but this is a different story...
By Dominique Teng
Dominique Teng©2013
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