People feel badly when they’ve been ripped off by Fortune Tellers. But that just adds insult to injury. The reason people get taken is logical. That’s why it’s so important that we understand how to deal with stress.
Thanks to the pandemic, we can anticipate seeing more and more people who have no choice to but to strategically wonder about their futures. And that uncertainty has risen the rates of stress and anxiety.
The planning is smart. But in stressful times, that thinking exacts an evolutionary price. All of that adrenaline and cortisol-producing (etc.) thought is created as we plan for multiple possible futures with high stakes outcomes, from financial survival, to physical survival.
But of course, despite good planning, no one knows the future. So, in considering the importance of the outcomes, anxiety is a natural reaction to being forced to consider too many serious potential futures. Much like Decision Fatigue overuses a brain function, our probability calculations regarding the future do likewise.
As we get worn out, we start subliminally looking for mental shortcuts. This means our radar will spin in a wider radius in its search for certainty. What we really want is relief from all of the thinking. Yet, ironically, the odds that we’re finding anything truly helpful goes down the farther we reach.
This natural reaction is why we need solid, trustworthy mental tools to use during stressful times. If we have a systematic way to approach our understanding of what is going wrong, we never have actual problems. We either have things we must accept, or solutions we are working on.
Despite us knowing that intellectually, and even though we all know science has found no evidence of anyone who can reliably predict the future, we are often very eager to believe any source of certainty we’re offered. It’s not that the information is good. It’s that even a lie will relieve a stressed human being.
While ‘certainty’ is rare, ‘greed’ is nearly certain. These facts mean that many ‘Fortune Teller’s’ will exist. But…. If we’re going to see one for anything more than entertainment (which is fine), then we would be wise to only go to the ones that can prove they predicted the pandemic.
If a psychic didn’t see a year-long worldwide event coming, then how accurate will their predictions for us be? That’s worth wondering about. And fortunately, if they did predict something that huge, then they would have been likely to draw attention to their prediction, which means they should be able to prove that they predicted it using sources that they could not influence.
If they have no such proof, then the ‘Fortune Tellers’ are more likely entertainers and should be hired as such. None of this is to say that as entertainers, that a fortune teller can’t lead us to very real insights. But ultimately those insights will have come from inside of us.
The real point here is merely to note that there is no way to cheat our way down our spiritual or psychological paths. Life includes hardship. We don’t benefit from trying to find easy ways around it. We benefit by knowing how to be angry, disappointed, hurt and confused. Because those things visit every lifetime.
Once we can master our understanding of how reality comes to be, then the external situations we’re in become far less of an issue for us, all thanks to our active management of our personal zeitgeist.
Without the proper skills, we can absolutely debilitate and enervate ourselves with defeatist thinking. But if we truly understand how reality comes to be, and if the general tone of our thinking is encouraging and focused, then that is where we will find our most capable selves. That version of us is never missing. But it often goes unrealized. So make sure to realize you.
peace. s
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.