Clothing of the Future!

One of the basic cognitive errors all humans make is fortune telling. In fortune telling we attempt to predict the future usually with a negative slant. Most of the times the purpose is to avoid risk or harm. You try to imagine life without John and you can't so you don't make demands on him, keeping you unhappy and him unaware of your needs. Suffering in silence is the result, based on fear of confrontation or possible desertion.

There is something very comforting about this illusory thinking and the main reason is risk is scary to us fear averse humans.

I just saw this video, shared by an artist friend, and smiled more than once at the folly of attempting to predict the future even five minutes from now. We all feel a desire to predict what's coming next but are rarely, if ever, right. Being in the present and experiencing now is a much better, and healthier, choice.

Anticipating Behavior vs. Predicting the Future

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

When Do Instincts Work?

I was having lunch with a brilliant friend of mine yesterday and we were talking about how some people don’t trust their instincts.

Humans lived in small clans for hundreds of thousands of years. Over that time those who survived did so, to some extent, because of instinct. Instinct guided us through hard times and difficult situations. Anyone who is alive today has inherited a set of instincts that has the capacity to serve us well in certain circumstances.

Instinct is not always right however. A great deal of my work with clients and groups focuses on learning how to differentiate between instinct and accurate thinking. Our instincts have been honed over hundreds of thousands of years and the world has the potential to change in a day, or even a moment. Unlike squirrels or cows or cats, our greater intellectual capacity allows us to look beyond instinct and recognize cases where our desire has to be countered with clear thinking.

What are cases where instinct serves us well? Any ideas?

If you’d like some help deciding which instincts to trust, drop me a line. so we can set up a complimentary session. I love working with individuals who are ready to create change. in their lives. Often this can be done in just a few short sessions.--just email me at david@betterthanever.info

Paper Work

There is a single phrase that, once I hear it, I know a relationship is doomed.

It has a variety of introductory phrases such as "I don't know what went wrong since we..." or "If you had asked my friends, they all would have said..." But the give away is the phrase itself.

"We looked good on paper."

That is it. Done. The relationship is dead.

I think the reason may be that, once we meet someone and make that initial "aha" connection, we then start thinking about the future. How will my family like him? What will my friends say? What will our kids be like? And slowly we build an imaginary blueprint of who we will be and how it will look. We create a future based on presumptions and assumptions and then build more on top of those. And all this fortune telling makes us slowly begin to think that not only can this work but that it has to work. It looks good on paper.

He has a great job. His teeth are so pretty. His parents love me so much. It looks so good on paper. And the more we say it, the more we try to force that really square peg into a perfectly rounded hole, the more we think anything other than complete happiness equals utter failure.

Don't do this with your relationships. Quit thinking twenty years down the road and imagining baby names. Be in the moment and keep your eyes open for those bright red flags that inevitably will be planted. And each time you see one ask yourself, is this a deal breaker? Is being with him worth putting up with this?

Be realistic. Enjoy yourself. And quit thinking about paper work.

David Ezell will have two speaking engagements this upcoming week! On Monday March 2nd will be No More Disappearing Dates! for Moxie in the City. And Tuesday the 3rd he will be How Can I Control Someone Else? for the Building Better Relationships Meet Up Group.

© David Ezell 2009
All Rights Reserved

Statistics and Real Life

The first time I bowled--I mean the very first time--I got a strike. I was desperate for a PE credit to graduate and every Tuesday morning at 8 (!) am I went to the local arcade de bowling to earn that final credit. And the first time I picked up a ball--WHAM--a strike.

What may one infer from that about my performance as a bowler based on that fact? Absolutely nothing. The reason is that the number of times I had bowled, what statisticians call the "N," the number of times I tried it, is far too low. And that makes sense. Beginner's luck could be the cause, or a high degree of natural skill or some other unforeseen factor.

Why am I talking about stats? Because statistics is the most scientific, systematic way to understand our lives. We need to try something more than once to see if whatever it is--dating someone new, public speaking, culottes--works for us. And most of the time that is not what I see when I speak to clients about change.

"I met her and within 15 minutes I had decided she was not into me"

"Once I started speaking they looked bored and I knew I was not doing a good job. I am never gonna go to Toastmasters again."

"I knew right away that I looked awful in culottes. People were staring at me!"

These are the sort of things I hear over and over. Making a life changing move--dating, trying something you are scared of, even wearing something you don't normally wear--is a change. And we humans don't do change well. So we jump to conclusions or we mind read or we predict the future based on a single moment. Not the greatest way to think about your life folks.

Try something, or someone, more than once. Be open to new ideas and concepts. And pay careful attention to the results. You might find that as your N increases you will gain more information that helps you get a more accurate picture of how your date, your speech, your new clothes, truly worked for you.

BTW, I never got another strike. And believe me, I had a large N by the time the semester had ended.

Have a great day!