I knew my godson was going to do what I had just told him not to do. The then 3-year-old boy held his body differently, he walked faster and his little hand, which usually hung at his side or held a truck or plastic hammer, was clenched tightly. He raced by and did not even acknowledge me, something I had never seen before.
What did I think he was up to? I had just told him he could not have any cookies. It was less than thirty minutes before dinner and he had no business eating anything with a chocolate chip baked inside.
Sure enough, within 20 second I heard the “clink” of the cookie jar lid as he attempted to place it quietly back in place. But, I let him slide. He was, all things considered, a great kid who usually followed rules and worked hard to behave as well as a little boy could.
Why am I talking about a cookie swiped when Bill Clinton was still in the White House? I wanted an example of how we can use our experience with a person to note something is out of order. He walked differently; he held his hand in an atypical fashion. And he did not look me in the eye. Tada, I knew he was going to swipe a Chips-Ahoy!
That is not fortune telling. It was based on observations of past behaviors and compared to present action. When comparing all my prior observations to what I saw I knew something was afoot. And since we had just had a cookie talk, my best guest was a pretty solid one.
Many times we know someone well and if we pay attention, we can sense change is in the air. They may dress differently, sit on the couch with a different posture or smell better (or worse). That is how impressions are formed and suspicions are raised.
But anticipation will only take us so far. We cannot predict the future, which is a very different concept. With fortune telling, a person attempts to predict the outcome of investments, dates or job interviews. I have a client who frequently attempts to tell me if he was hired or not based on the interviewers behavior. But see the problem? He has an N of 0. The observations he is making in the interview are the only ones he has. So he sees someone sitting upright and smiling as a cue that he will be filling out W-2s next week.
We cannot tell the future but we can note changes in the folks who inhabit our world. Recognizing the difference will make your life infinitely easier and maybe give you an advantage over someone trying to mislead you or cause you harm.
(experience) x (statistics) + (a hungry little boy) = we can anticipate behavior
(Aaron Beck) + (statistics) = we can’t predict the future
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