How We Are Lying to Ourselves About Our Future

And the endless possibilities that you don’t even know about yet

I read this quote,

“You can’t picture yourself changing, so you assume you won’t”.

In Neil Pasricha’s book You Are Awesome.

It hit me that I try to picture changes but so much of the reality after the change is a lie because I didn’t really know what was coming.

I pictured myself doing something away from my hospitality job for the entire six. years that I worked in it. But when that change came via a global pandemic it wasn’t at all what I had ever pictured.

I now draw cute graphics, put them on greeting cards, and mail them all over the world. I didn’t know how to draw anything before I started this. How could I have ever pictured this then?

The reality is, as mentioned, that I couldn’t.

But goodness I am grateful for it now. The experiences, the learning. The things I know and the things I know that I don’t like. It’s all a gift in its own way.

Now I picture what I might do when I move away from this, I still try to imagine it. If I restart it somewhere else and in reality again, I don’t know what the picture will look like on the other side.

This picture we attempt to paint inside our minds, our dreams, our hopes. It looks so clear right now. But largely it’s a lie we tell ourselves.

It’s not exactly a bad lie, at least not all the time. But it is mostly a lie.

And that’s okay really, sometimes we need the lie. When we’re in the thick of the dumpster fire trying to claw our way out or just sitting there hoping one day to try and claw our way out.

The lie can be good. It may not be what reality shows us when we look back, but it can still be good in the moment.

This isn’t to say, don’t dream. This is to say dream but realize that not all our dreams are even visible to us yet. What actually happens won’t always be something you ever saw and that’s cool.

It means that there is so much more that can happen, what you might picture, and the endless possibilities that you don’t even know about yet.

And I hope that that feels as hopeful to you as it does to me. Even when we are on top of the world there are possibilities that are yet unknown. When we are in that dumpster fire again, broken up with, a family member dies, being evacuated due to wildfires (this one I speak from personal current experience) there are still a million possibilities for what is to come.

We’ve got more chances. Our lives and ourselves will continue to change and grow and mould to what is happening.

Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean the chances and the hope isn’t there.