Much of the time we don't know why we do the things we do. Also, we don't know as much as we think we do about our futures.
Again another great »post on the Creature of Habit blog.
From the Alexander-Technique perspective I like the idea that our assessment of current events as well as of those in the future might be kinda "off" - or prone to "faulty sensory appreciation". So, knowing this, we might exercise some inhibition here
Or simply put: Don't take yourself so seriously...
Check out the excerpt below or »jump directly to the full article
1. People aren't great at predicting how they'll feel in the future. This is particularly the case for negative events. People tend to overestimate how badly they will be affected by disagreeable occurrences in their lives. If you ask a professor how she'll feel if she's denied tenure, or how someone will feel if he were to suddenly lose a loved one, the predictions would be extreme. Those asked would talk of months and years of devastation and misery. They'd be wrong. To be sure, there would be times that they wouldn't feel great, extremely sad even. But, they'd get over it. We are remarkably resilient creatures and we tend to underestimate that resiliency.
2. Not an example from Wilson's book, but certainly one close to my heart: People are not great at predicting when they're going to get things done. My, and many others', research shows this time and time again. We tend to focus our sights on a rosy future in which nothing at all goes wrong. We do this, to the nines, again and again.
