Foreseeing and Prophesying; Analyzing an Error of the Mind...

Hello again, dear Steemians!

In our series of articles about mental distortions and erroneous thought trains, we analyze the strangest thought patterns that compel human beings to make mistakes.

These mistakes may not be life-threatening, but they are fundamentally hazardous to your state of well-being, whether it is your social stature or your mental health. Knowing how your brain functions is the first step towards a more mature understanding of how you perceive the world.

One of the known mental distortions that might interfere with our common sense and logic is prophesying, or ‘jumping to conclusions’ as some would like to call it.

The human sense is often riddled with mistakes and shortcomings. How we perceive the world is the product of our own thoughts about it.

Some people have the tendency to foretell things that could not be predicted under any circumstances.

These people usually jump into conclusions pretty quickly, dismissing logical assessment and trusting their gut feeling to make their decisions for them.

They tend to think that they can know what the other person is thinking and try to read them without thinking about the consequences.

While we do not deny the fact that you could probably read a person’s thought based on their behavior or unique body gestures, you should note that there is a big difference between being wary and being paranoid.

The problem with jumping to conclusions is that more often than we care to admit, we take on negative thoughts from the person who is talking to us.

This is also true about our capacity for telling fortune or foreseeing future events.

Some people fallaciously believe that they can predict the future or guess the outcome of events based on little evidence.

Soon, that feeling transcends to an erroneous truth deep inside the person’s mind, forcing him to ignore all the facts that would oppose his ideas.

A good example of such fortune telling would be a person that falls in love, but somehow believes that he can never find true happiness with his feelings, thus distancing himself from his loved one and assuming that any possible relationship with them is already doomed to fail.

Some have the courage to start a relationship, and when they fail once, they believe that they can never find true love and tranquility under the shadow of somebody else.

Someone might fail in their studies or business endeavors, so they decide that they may not be as intellectually gifted as everybody else, and sit in despair at things that they have failed in, while also ignoring their chances for the future and dubbing their case as futile and pointless.

Always try to see the future as a bowl of opportunities and an infinite string of possibilities. We are in no position to predict what the future will bring. Falling into the trap of prophesying has destroyed many a man’s ambitions and dreams.

If you feel like that you are illogically prejudiced to believe in a negative chain of events for your possible future, you can be sure that you are exposed to this erroneous thought pattern known as foreseeing or ‘jumping to conclusions.’

By identifying your erroneous pessimism regarding your chances for the future, resist against this fallacious thought pattern.