Would You Really Want to Know Your Future?

November 29, 2006

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or by Email.
Thanks for visiting!

Had an interesting discussion last night over at Successful-Blog’s Tuesday night Open Comment Night ritual. As always there was good conversation to be had over there. The topic last night was the future and fortune telling.

Now personally I don’t think I really want know exactly what my future holds until I get there. If I did, I’m not sure I’d have enough heart to make it through the tough times.

And when I look back over my life so far as I approach 40, there have been some challenges that I’ve had to overcome. If I knew the extent of those difficulties before I got to them, I suspect I might have been more inclined to give up before I made it through rather than sticking with the stuff and actually overcoming the obstacles that have been in my path.

Another struggle I have with the whole see into the future scene is that it seems to me the professionals in that field are predisposed to tell only the good news to their clients. I mean we call them fortune tellers.

Do you think a psychic would be able to make a living if they hung a shingle advertising themselves as misfortune tellers?

Instead they tell us what we want to hear. We’re going to be rich, famous, or find the perfect person to marry. Blah, blah, blah.

I’m not convinced that message really helps us, even if it were true.

From what I’ve seen the road to success in pretty much any area is paved with adversity and challenge. And if we have false expectations that we will be traveling down easy street instead of the real road to success we’ll have that much harder a time hanging in when life begins to happen and things get a little messy.

But I realize I may be off base on this one. So here’s my question for you:

If you knew before hand how difficult running your own business would be at times, would you have started anyway? Would you have slugged through all that uncertainty, or do you think you would have gravitated toward a relatively easier company job instead?

Written by Chris · Filed Under Business, Motivation

Comments

10 Responses to “Would You Really Want to Know Your Future?”

Mike on November 29th, 2006 at 10:33 am

Any future is fraught with challenges. If you take that supposedly cushier corporate job, you never know when the ax may fall because the CEO needs to make his quarterly margin target to be able to buy that tropical island for his wife’s birthday!

You’re right that there’s no easy street, just ones we’d rather navigate than others.

Sorry I missed you last night. I’d planned to be there, but spent the night with Murphy and some video editing hardware and software instead (the things we do for our children)!
Chris on November 29th, 2006 at 10:42 am

I agree Mike. The relative safety of the corporate world is probably just an illusion. No matter what we do life had its way of throwing curve balls at us.

I had to leave early last night myself. Sometimes life gets in the way of the things we’d rather be doing!
Mike on November 29th, 2006 at 11:10 am

Chris,

I may have to use that last sentence as the new tagline on my blog!

Mike
Chris on November 29th, 2006 at 11:41 am

Have at it! Just remember to think well of me.
Carolyn Manning on November 30th, 2006 at 8:57 am

Hi Chris,

Knowing the future would probably take a lot of the genuinely human out of us. It would take away our drive to stretch and learn and reduce us considerably.

For that matter, we have enough trouble trying to figure out how the past fits into the present. What would we do if we had to add a pre-determined future to the equation?
Chris on November 30th, 2006 at 9:03 am

Good point Carolyn! The challenges of reconciling our past is something I hadn’t even thought of. I laughed when I read it because it seemed so obvious (after I read it)!
ranee on April 15th, 2007 at 11:32 pm

hi, according to me if i am able to know about future, i want to know about my future career. because i am strugling for it from my childhood for earning money and better life with good and personality full job

thanks
please rate my toefl speaking i am waiting for your reply
ranee on April 15th, 2007 at 11:34 pm

hi, according to me if i am able to know about future, i want to know about my future career. because i am strugling for it from my childhood for earning money and better life with good and personality full job

thanks
please rate my toefl speaking i am waiting for your reply

my mail add. raneejassal@yahoo.co.in
Vaibhav on December 3rd, 2007 at 4:31 am

please tell my future.
alan adi sorgula on October 16th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

are you kiddin..who wont know his future. i want it.

Got something to say?