Part 3: Stop Predicting. Start Meeting Yourself.
Maybe the goal isn’t to become better at predicting how we’ll feel. Maybe the goal is to become better at meeting ourselves where we actually are.
I’ve been thinking about that since my experience with the outfit. The night before, I had created a picture of the person I expected to be the next morning.
She would sleep well. She would put on the outfit. She would look in the mirror and feel good. She would be energized by the possibilities of the day.
Instead, I woke up tired, discouraged, and completely uninterested in the plan I had made for myself. And for a while, I treated that as a failure of the plan.
But perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps the plan wasn’t the problem.
The problem was the assumption that the person who made the plan and the person who would eventually have to live it were going to feel exactly the same way.
They weren’t.
And they never will be.
This is one of the reasons I think affective forecasting is more than an interesting concept. It offers a useful way to think about how we navigate our lives. We are constantly making decisions based on predictions about our future selves.
But instead of asking only: “How will I feel if I do this?”, we might also ask: “What might I need if I don’t feel the way I expect to?”
That’s a very different question.
It moves us from prediction to preparation. From certainty to flexibility. From trying to control the future to becoming more capable of responding to it.
For example, rather than assuming I’ll feel motivated tomorrow, I might think about what could help me get started if I don’t. Rather than assuming I’ll feel confident walking into a difficult conversation, I might decide what I want to remember if I become anxious. Rather than assuming I’ll be thrilled when I finally achieve a goal, I might remain curious about what I actually experience when I get there.
And rather than treating an unexpected change in mood as evidence that something has gone wrong, I can pause and ask:
What’s happening for me right now? What changed? What do I need? And given how I feel today, what’s the next right step?
Those questions don’t require us to abandon our plans or our aspirations. They simply leave room for reality.
This, to me, is where self-awareness becomes powerful. Not because it allows us to predict ourselves perfectly. But because it helps us notice ourselves more accurately.
We can still imagine a wonderful future. We can still choose the outfit the night before. We can still make plans, set goals, dream big, and look forward to what’s ahead.
We just don’t have to demand that tomorrow’s version of ourselves feel exactly the way today’s version imagined she would.
Maybe that’s a more compassionate way to think about change, too.
We don’t have to become the person we predicted we would become. Instead, we can meet the person who actually shows up… and work with her from there.
Sometimes she will be energized and ready to go. Sometimes she’ll need a slower start. Sometimes she’ll surprise us completely.
And sometimes, like me on that particular morning, she’ll look at the carefully chosen outfit and think: Nope. Not today.
And maybe that’s okay, too.