Predicting The Future

Imagination is useful for telling stories, but useless for determining outcomes. All of the imaginary scenarios and conversations that we play out in our mind, whether positive or negative, are delusions. We can't possibly imagine the way things are going to turn out, including how another person is going to react.

We can imagine likely outcomes based on reason and past experience, but more often than not we get it wrong, and when we do get it right, it's only partially right.

It's true that what we think can have an impact on how we act and our actions can impact how others react and how nature reacts, but we simply cannot invent seamless, ideal or even dreadful outcomes by imagining the details in our mind.

Think of all the times you've had an entire conversation with someone in your mind before the actual conversation took place, doesn't it usually turns out completely different from what you thought it would?

Think of the times you've laid awake at night imaging all the things that could go wrong the next day, but none of it actually happened. When you see it in the light of day you question how you could have been so silly the night before.

Think of the times when you imagined an ideal, utopian situation, whether it was a marriage, a dream job or a vacation that turned out not to be nearly as perfect as you imagined it would. Sometimes it turns out to be a disaster compared to what you imagined or sometimes it turns out pretty great even though it wasn't what you had imagined.

When we step back and look at possible future outcomes from a distance and only consider a couple of things that might happen, we are no longer inventing outcomes in our imagination and we allow ourselves to be more pliable to whatever might happen.

The best way to predict the future is by how we live right now. Our daily habits have a greater impact on future outcomes than our imagination.