Leveling up in life is something I think everyone wants to do. People want to be more attractive, more social, more desirable, more rich and generally more successful in their lives. This however can prove to be difficult when considering the journey of trying to make that happen.
It if was easy everyone would be successful.
The concept of wanting to achieve a higher level of success in one’s life is termed “leveling up”. Leveling up can be used for either more specific goals or general goals.
Some people want to level up socially, while others want to level up physically either way leveling up is sort of like upgrading one or all aspects of one’s life.
Looking at leveling up from a psychological perspective, I can imagine how daunting it can be to start such a journey. So, here I have decided to shed some light on psychological theories that people can use to start the journey.
Behavioural confirmation:
The basis of my article today is the behavioural confirmation theory. This theory is a type of self-fulfilling prophecy where people’s social expectations lead them to behave in ways that cause others to confirm their expectation.
To understand what this means, we need to understand the process of the theory and as it turns out there are 4 steps that need to happen for the prophecy to come true. The first step is the perceiver adopts a belief about the target. Next, the perceiver behaves toward the target in ways that make the beliefs true. Thirdly, the targets fit their behaviour to fit the perceiver’s beliefs. Lastly, the perceiver interprets the targets’ behaviour as confirming their previous beliefs (Darley & Fazio, 1980; Deaux & Major, 1987; Kelley, 1992; Snyder & Stukas, 1999).
Now, why should we care what people think about us? This is linked to the self-presentation theory. This theory states that the act of expressing oneself and behaving in ways designed to create a favourable impression or an impression that corresponds to one’s ideals.
So lets say you want to refine your physical appearance and become more classy. To do this, you can use self-presentation theory to present yourself in the classy way. Start dressing and acting in this classy way. When you present yourself in your ideal way, people take that impression of you and adopt it as a belief about you. Then we switch to behavioural confirmation where because people view you this way, you start behaving in that way and actually adopt the belief to become your truth.
It’s kind of like a cycle, really.
Social learning theory:
The second theory that I think should be utilized in leveling up is the social learning theory.
The social learning theory is the theory that we learn our social behaviours by observing and imitating and being rewarded and punished.
Social learning theory can be utilized by knowing that people are attracted to ‘like-minded others’. If you want to level up and you’ve gone through behavioural confirmation, you’re more likely to want to spend your time with people who are going through the same journey or those who are at the level you want to be at.
If you want to be classy, you’re going to want to go to places where classy people go and talk to them.
The more time you spend with people who are, for example, classy, the more you’re likely to learn their social behaviours and implement them in your own life.
This step can be used to refine the knowledge and behaviour you already have and tweak it to be more fluent in behaving the way you want to behave.
This article focuses a lot on having an internal locus of control which was discussed in my previous article. Having an internal locus of control means that you’re in control of the outcomes in your life and this way you can change them and modify them to fit your needs.
Leveling up is definitely something that I think many people should aspire to do. It doesn’t have to be just physical, it can be emotional through gaining emotional intelligence, or mental through reading and gaining education.
Staying curious is I think a characteristic that we need to retain from childhood and use it as a growth tool to gain life satisfaction and happiness.
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