A self-fulfilling prophecy is easy to spot in someone else and almost impossible to catch in yourself. On our podcast, Biran described her time in retail banking, where performance was measured almost entirely by sales numbers. She didn’t like selling. She believed she wasn’t good at it. And when she had to sell insurance over the phone, that belief started running the show.
How the belief shapes the behaviour
Biran noticed she was apologetic on calls rather than persuasive. She wasn’t really trying to influence anyone, and she wasn’t listening properly, because she was, in her words, “fighting the battle in my head rather than really listening to the customer.” The stress of believing she’d fail took up the mental space that should have gone towards understanding what the customer actually needed and how the product could help them.
That’s the mechanism of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The belief produces the stress. The stress narrows attention inward. And the resulting performance, apologetic and distracted rather than present, goes on to confirm the very belief that started the whole thing. Biran only recognised this pattern later, once she’d learned about limiting beliefs. At the time it just felt like she genuinely wasn’t cut out for sales.
Where else this shows up
The specific belief doesn’t have to be about sales. It shows up whenever someone walks into a conversation, a pitch, or a difficult meeting already convinced of how it will go. The people we work with often carry a version of this into self-promotion or giving feedback. They expect it to go badly, so they hedge rather than say what they mean, and the outcome lands closer to their fear than their intention.
We’ve written before about how to work through self-limiting beliefs, and the same starting point applies here: noticing the belief before it turns into behaviour. Biran’s account is useful because it shows the mechanism rather than just naming it. The stress is what produces the underperformance.
If you can catch the belief operating in real time, in a phone call, an email, or a meeting, you get a chance to choose a different response before it confirms itself. That’s a smaller, more manageable moment than trying to overhaul your confidence in one go.
Try noticing, this week, one conversation where you expect a bad outcome before it’s even started, and pay attention to how much of your attention actually goes towards the other person once you’re in it.
Be sure to check out more from Biran at Biran’s website and Biran’s LinkedIn.
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