Lousy Nostradamus

Description

Pretending that we know the future can get us into all sorts of problems, causing us to fall into judgement and defensiveness. Recognizing that we are "lousy Nostradamuses" can help us to step back and see situations with more clarity.

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Video Transcription

you've heard of Nostradamus although I'm probably butchering his name Nostradamus French dear we look into the future and foretell things well I have a little saying that i use and i apply it to myself and what I say is Clinton you are a lousy Nostradamus and I get to use this quite often and I think it's a tool that might be helpful in your life to trying to pretend that I'm Nostradamus happens anytime that I look at something and I think inside myself and I know how things are going to turn out and when I look at something and then I can project into the future and imagine that I know how things are going to turn out I can then get angry or frustrated or give you two examples one that most of us are very familiar with is politics so right now we have Trump in Hillary and there's a lot of us out there that are pretty sure that we're nastradamus and we know that if Trump becomes president the whole nations going to just fall into ruin or if clinton becomes president the nation is going to fall into ruin and with that conviction strong inside of us we can start to become very angry very frustrated about the political situation and it's interesting because our media plays on this essentially our media back sauce

with this polarization miss drama because they know that many of us like to pretend that we're Nostradamus and if they can trigger that and making get us predicting and give us their own predictions will latch onto that it creates a cycle of frustration essentially infection that we willingly take into us although usually unknowingly and once we do we start to become polarized and this literally has friends angry with each other about Clinton or Trump I'm not sure about you but I've found that if i try to predict what will happen if a certain person becomes president i'm usually not very correct because the president is not actually the ruler of the universe they're just one branch of a very complex government and is subject to social and economic and political and media forces and as that unfold it's hard to say what that person's presence as president is actually going to do so I have to remember I am NOT Nostradamus so here's the key in this case I realize that I'm a lousy Nostradamus then I can't get so charged up about what I think is going to happen if so and so it becomes president and then when my friend who's on the opposite side of the political spectrum let's say wants to talk to me about their political feelings I'm not going to be so reactive I'm not going to be so dramatic in this way I become less ruled by my frustration and my irritation and I'm no longer willingly taking on that media bed infection this is all too happy to come into my mind because you know if I'm all frustrated I'm all pumped up about things I'm going to tend to go back and watch the same networks that have pumped me up and got me frustrated frustration likes to feed itself so they will just keep me on their hook as long as they can we all of course can break free of that hook and besides turning off the television more one of the best ways to do that it's not pretend that we're Nostradamus another big example for me is with children and I find myself doing this and I watch other parents doing this we see a behavior in our child they're not eating their meal at dinner suddenly we generalize that and it expounds out into oh my gosh my child is just gonna be a junk food addict and they're going to have the worst diet in the world and they're going to get cancer when they're 30 because they're not eating their broccoli again I've become Nostradamus I've looked out and imagine the future and really the only place that future exists is in my imagination head and then I start to get frustrated about it and then what of course I can come down on the child and start trying to impose rules would get angry with them so there we go it's happening with kids I remember with um my older daughter Nura Bell that she went through a period of probably six or eight months of being exceedingly exceedingly shy and there are many times when i played Nostradamus I thought what we've got to help her through this otherwise she's just just gonna be a Wallflower in the corner and not be able to speak to anybody now she's extremely gregarious and outgoing that may not stick either she's an evolving creature and when I try to look at a behavior this is very important I try to look at a behavior and I generalize out and then I try to correct that behavior by forcing something on her and I say you are not leaving this table until you eat your broccoli we all know what happens when someone tries to force a behavior on right in general we rebelled against it and we see that with kids and we see that with teens and even with adults and so soon as I come down on that behavior and try to force her to eat her broccoli I may be creating the very negative event that I think I'm predicting and if I do that that I convince myself even more but I'm Nostradamus when really actually I've just been messing with the pool in a way in a new quite predictable way interestingly that's going to get somebody to repel and create the negative behavior that I was afraid of them having please no this does not mean not listening to our intuitions a lot of us have very strong intuitions that give us signals about a situation and help guide us in an appropriate way in our lives playing Nostradamus whenever we're doing that it's going to tend to be attached to a feeling of resistance frustration or anger it happens when I look at something and I say I know that that's going to create such and such a behavior 10 that 10 years down the road just wait I told you so and when I feel that I feel like aa tension like why don't they listen to me why don't they change I know I'm right it's very different than having intuition about something

enacting from there that does not tend to be frustration or anger based so very important distinction there to intuition and playing Nostradamus notice it in yourself do you ever play Nostradamus share in the comments some of the times or places that you might do it sometimes we're right in our predictions and that tends to fuel that part of us that told you so apart and as we let our ego cling on to that it gets stronger and stronger the Nostradamus thing we can forget that ninety percent of the time we're lousy Nostradamus and that's the basic tool is just to keep that little phrase I'm a lousy Nostradamus in your toolbox if you feel yourself being frustrated or angered by something and you find yourself predicting and generalizing then you can say oh yeah kenton remember you're a lousy Nostradamus and just saying that usually puts a little smile on my face breaks me out of any frustration I was feeling it allows me to see the situation more clearly if I don't really know how something right now is going to affect the future I'm able to step back and observe it with more clarity instead of just getting lost and tangled frustration that's the power of this tool please share in the comments if you give it a try talk with you soon