Is What You Know for Sure… True?

How often are you certain that you KNOW what’s going to happen?

I am not talking about the ‘crystal ball’ type of seeing the future. What I am talking about are the times when you are certain you know what the outcome of a situation is going to be:

If my FSH turns out over 10, I KNOW I’ll never be able to get pregnant.
If I don’t get this project done and done well, I’m going to get fired.
If I don’t go to this event, my friends are never going to forgive me.

So, I’ve dramatized the situations a little bit to make a point. Yours may be a little more subtle:

If I don’t get to sleep, tomorrow is going to be a disaster.
If I don’t get the cat to the vet soon, the vet is going to think I’m a terrible caretaker.
If I don’t get these phone calls made before bed, everyone is going to be angry at me.

Are all of these really true?

95% of the time—NO.

So why do we do this to ourselves?

• Habit.
• We think it will motivate us.
• Feels true in the moment.
• Caught up in the moment.
• It keeps us moving.

While all of these are legitimate reasons, they themselves aren’t always true. Predicting the future, no matter how small an issue, simply leads to increasing the stress response in your body. A little stress response is helpful—too much takes you over the edge. Too much decreases your productivity and gets you caught in the loop of things seeming worse and worse.

What if you could let go of making predictions about the results of your actions? What if you could simply do the activities or tasks without making a dire consequence?

How much more effective do you think you could be without the extra weight and pressure of predicting the future?