The Greatest Discovery in Life Is to Discover Your Destiny
We are all prophets of our own destiny
The cat in the mirror
The cat on the left thinks she is weak. What appeared in the mirror was a sick cat.
The cat on the right believes she is strong. What it sees in the mirror is a mighty lion.
There is a powerful law in the universe — the “law of attraction”: What you pay attention to is what you attract into your life.
Because the life you live is actually an outward manifestation that matches your inner characterization.
In simple words, if you see yourself as a lion, you will behave like a lion.
Belief is a kind of power
When you believe that you are young, the resulting effect is far greater than whether you are really young.
In a radical study in 1979 that was featured in a New York Times Magazine cover story, Ellen Langer and her grad students decided to take this question as far as they possibly could with an experiment.
Since Langer couldn’t actually send elderly people into the past, she decided to bring the past into the present. “We would recreate the world of 1959 and ask subjects to live as though it were twenty years earlier,” she wrote in her 2009 book “Counterclockwise.”
The researchers found a place, carefully arranged it to be exactly the same as it was 20 years ago, and named it the “space-time capsule”.
They invited 16 elderly people and randomly divided them into two groups. The only difference is that Group A seniors were asked to treat themselves as if they were 20 years younger.
A week later, something magical happened:
Before the experiment, they were almost always accompanied by their family members, old and faltering. One week after the experiment, not only the vision, hearing, and memory have been significantly improved, but also the pace and physical strength have been significantly enhanced.
The old people who “lived” 20 years ago have made amazing progress. They have more agile hands and feet. Some even played football and scored higher on intelligence tests.
The family could hardly believe their eyes when they saw them, as they looked even more radiant.
From this experiment, Langer concluded: “There is a certain connection between the mind and the body. If you believe it will affect you, it will; if you don’t believe it, it will not.”
Like those old people, they mentally believe that they are 20 years younger, so their bodies believe and cooperate accordingly. Like 20 years ago, they will take care of everything independently, from getting up, getting dressed, clearing dishes and walking.
When you create negative things such as ageing, pain, decadence, etc., your whole person will fall in the direction of depression. But when you give yourself a positive signal and commit to being younger and more energetic, you’ll gradually become more refreshed and vibrant.
“People are always easily hypnotized by what they say, what you say frequently will turn out to be what you are eventually.” — Painter Yumeji Takehisa
You are what you create
Jess is the hardest working among her friends. She wakes up at five o’clock every day and is either reading a book or listening to an online lesson on her way to work.
She is highly efficient. What others need to do in a day, she often only takes a few hours. After getting off work, she would be busy studying. One must make an appointment a week in advance to ask her out.
A person who works hard and has a certain level of competitiveness should be a good performer in the workplace, but she was struggling with earning just enough. After a long time, it became clear it was not her ability.
For example, four years ago, she had a good opportunity to change jobs. At that time, a company offered a high salary to poach her. But when she knew about it, her first reaction was not happiness, but anxiety: “I feel that I can’t do it. With my ability, I definitely can’t do it.” No matter how others tried to persuade her, she would not give it a try.
“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost…” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
As “the greatest basketball coach of all time”, John Wooden led the UCLA Bruins to 10 championship titles and an 88-game winning streak in 12 years.
When a reporter asked him the secret to his success, Wooden had an incredibly short answer: “Every day before I go to bed, I tell myself: I’m doing really well today, and I’ll be doing even better tomorrow.”
The reporter couldn’t believe what he heard: “Is it so simple?”
Wooden replied firmly: “Simple? I have insisted on this for 20 years!”
No one knows that in Wooden’s first 16 years at UCLA, he struggled to lift the team out of mediocrity. But because of that simple sentence, he never gave up, even if he encountered all kinds of ups and downs.
“A man of faith can turn small into great and mediocre into miracle.”
The journey of life is full of thorns. If you think you are destined to be mediocre, it is difficult for you to be strong.
Takeaways
As early as 1968, American sociologist Robert Merton coined the concept of “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Merton believed that people unconsciously act according to known prophecies and eventually make prophecies happen.
The famous entrepreneur Hilton once said: “As long as you are passionate about life, it will return you with the same enthusiasm.”
The quality of life depends on us. People who see thorns on flowers end up missing out on their beauty. People who see flowers on thorns will eventually reap the good times in life.
We are all prophets of our own destiny and the greatest discovery in our life is when we discover how to chart our own destiny.
Thank you for reading to the end. I hope you have enjoyed it.
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