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Why I'll probably never be a successful fortune teller

by Yann Girard — Get free updates of new posts here

I totally suck at predicting the future, especially when it comes to predicting my own future. Every time I thought I had it right it turned out that I was completely wrong.

Looking back, I guess I was almost never right about what might happen next. Ever.

Be it the stocks that I bought when I was a teenager that I always sold having had the worst imaginable timing ever.

Be it the first love of my life that I secretly felt like marrying, who then haphazardly married another guy in another country and who I have never ever seen again ever since.

Or pretty much everything that happened over the past five years.

I'm just really, really bad at it.

I don't know what it is with us humans that makes us believe that we're good at predicting the future. That we think we know what's going to happen next. That we believe that we're capable of knowing where exactly this life might lead us to.

We plan so many things.

And I totally understand that planning things gives us some sense of security. A sense of safety. A sort of predictable life and the feeling that we are able to master what's going on out there.

That we're able to control the universe.

The truth is that life is like an equation that consists of an unlimited amount of unknown variables with unknown results, impossible to predict or to solve.

But we keep on trying to solve this equation, make plans and then get depressed and break down once we realize that we are really not able to solve the life equation and lose our jobs, get dumped by our gf/bf, go through a divorce or lose a lot of money.

We just love to plan pretty much everything from our college graduation over having a family, building a house to the place we want to be buried.

We love to play the fortune teller game.

Up until recently I also felt like I was somehow gifted in predicting the future and making glorious plans. I made lots of plans, thought about what might happen next in my life, what my next steps should be and so on.

But the truth is that I'm probably the worst person ever to predict the future. So at one point (I guess about four years ago) I stopped making plans for good and stopped trying to predict the future.

And you know what.

Ever since I stopped making plans I became a lot more flexible, had countless opportunities unfolding infront of me and was able to seize every opportunity that I felt was something I would enjoy doing and would help me to learn new things, see the world and discover amazing things.

Not trying to predict the future and not making plans made me free.

Not having to obey any plans made me a free person.

But then again what pushes a free person forward? What pushes her to achieve great things? What pushes her to overcome fear and anxiety?

Why would such a person even want to leave a dent in the universe?

I guess the most important power that is constantly pushing us forward, that motivates us and inspires us to achieve great things in life is the knowledge that we're going to die one day, no matter what.

To me, that's what really pushes a person forward (that's what actually pushes me forward, might be different for you). Knowing that no matter what you do, you'll die is really powerful and motivates a lot of people to leave a dent in the universe.

And that's the story about why I didn't become a successful fortune teller, decided to stop trying to predict the future and started to live my life instead of just planning it...

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