Fortune Telling

But how do you know for sure?

Are you a fortune-teller?

Have you a crystal ball to see into the future?

No?

But you told your friend last week that you know your performance evaluation will be bad.

You told your mom there was no hope of you not failing your exams.

Just like you know that deal next week is going to fall through.

How?

Because your brain actually thinks it *is* a really good fortune teller. And it's convinced us that since we have seen history of course we can predict the future!

Sorry, no.

Well, that's not true. If you've convinced yourself something is going to happen, and then do nothing to change or perhaps even encourage your negative outcome… Yeah, I guess you might know what's coming.

So what do we do with that?

Sometimes I just annoyingly ask myself "But how do you *know*?" I have a lot of practice answering repetitive questions because I have a three-year-old. And yet, inevitably, I will still get sick of myself eventually and admit that "Fine I don't really know for sure but it's still pretty likely so what's the point…"

That's the point. You don't really know for sure. So don't start defeated.