[Neurons] Announcing the Latest Book ---- PREDICTIVE THINKING

Sat Jun 18 16:31:37 EDT 2022

From: L. Michael Hall

meta at acsol.ne

I'm proud to announce the 9th book in the Thinking Series.  This one
addresses another inescapable capacity of the brain--- something you and I
inevitably do, but do not do very well.  We predict.  We forecast the
future.  We anticipate it, expect it, and plan for it.  And unless you train
your brain well, this is a power that you can really misuse.  Many people
do.  They worry, fret, and borrow future miseries that undermine their life
today.  They develop paranoid fears about the future, they can even get
themselves angry and upset about what has not yet happened and they can
become so dogmatically convinced about what will happen--- they leave no
room (in their mind) for change or transformation.

Now the thing about the future is that it is unknown and unpredictable.  And
because it is uncertain, we cannot predict the future.  We can guess.  We
can examine trends and become aware of cycles.  We can look at statistical
probabilities.  For many this is not sufficient.  They want guarantees and
certainty.  But alas, that is not to be.

What can be is learning how to live in a joyful anticipation.  We call that
attitude hope.  And hope, like inspiration, is an inside-out phenomenon that
you have to develop.

Below I have put the Table of Contents and the Preface.

              If interested, it is now a PDF on www.neurosemantics.com
Products/ Shop

              It is not printed in book form.

https://www.neurosemantics.com/product/predictive-thinking-unleashing-a-brig
hter-future/

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director

ISNS: International Society of Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado  81520 USA

136330.NS.PredictiveThinkingCvr FRONT

                                           Predictive Thinking:

Unleashing a Brighter Future

Preface
5

I: The Challenge
10

1. Predicting:
11

    To Predict or Not to Predict

2. The Predictive Brain
17

3. The Principles for Predicting
30

4. Prediction Problems
45

    The Art of Mis-Predicting

II: Key Factors
55

5. Critical Thinking
56

    For Effective Predicting

6. Predicting and States
64

7. Predictive Facts
72

8. Thinking Systemically
82

    To Predict with Precision

9. Psychological Predictions
91

10. Planning to Predict
100

     The Art of Future Predicting 

11. Predictive Conversations
109

12. Predictive Skills
114

III.  Hopeful Predicting
122

13. Hope- The Mindset of
123

      Predicting 

14. Peeking Inside of Hope
133

15. The Skills of Hope
143

IV: Here Comes the Future
151

15. Becoming the Future
152

16. Forward to the Future
158

Appendices
163

A: Well-Formed Outcome Questions

B: Developing Your Future Self
164

C: Updating a Limiting Belief
166

D: Meta-Predictions
167

E: Scenario Planning
168

Bibliography
169

Author
171

Neuro-Semantics
172

PREFACE

"I am not interested in the past,

I am interested in the future

for there is where I expect to spend the rest of my life."

Charles Kettering1

W

e all live with an eye on the future.  That's because that's where we are
headed and where we will live the rest of our lives.  So we  live for the
future and, strangely enough, the future lives in us.  It's the way our
brain works, for good or ill.  We have an anticipatory brain-a brain that is
constantly looking forward to the future, trying to predict it, and trying
to figure out what is coming.  So inevitably, and inescapably, we engage in
predictive thinking.  Yet we humans are not very good at predictive
thinking.

In fact, we humans pretty much suck at predicting the future.  Not only can
we hardly predict tomorrow's weather, let alone next week or next year, we
can't predict the stock market.  Day traders try.  But half of them
regularly go bankrupt.  We think we are really good predictors when we get
married, then in just a few years, 50% of us with such bright hopes and
dreams, end up in divorce court and suffer months if not years of
disappointment, loneliness, and misery.  What is wrong with us?  What's
defective in our predictive thinking?  Maybe business people are better at
predictions.  But no.  Two-thirds of all new businesses fail in five years
and the percentage of failure is even higher for acquisitions and mergers. 

Over the past couple centuries, the minds of the brightest and best, the
minds of the foremost authorities in science, medicine, aviation, I.T.
(Information Technology), etc. offer predictions of the future in the next
decade ... just one decade forward. But, lo and behold, their predictions
are often not only 180 degrees off, sometimes, from the hindsight of the 

additional decade, the predictions seem utterly ridiculous.  We then ask,
"How could they have conceived such nonsense?"  Definitely, something is off
with our predictive thinking and predictive powers.  But what?

That the future is uncertain is obvious.  Yet something else is at play.
Uncertainty itself has an incredibly unsettling effect on us.  Uncertainty
activates certain cognitive distortions and biases in us sending us into a
tailspin so that we go off-course.  Partly the problem is that we are such
suckers for certainty.  We want to be sure.  So we are very quick to
eliminate the factors and variables that trigger doubt, risk, questions, and
things with ends that are not tied up (the things that keep us up at night).
If we succeed, we live in an illusion of certainty and understanding-
thinking that we can pretty well predict the future.  But the truth is, we
cannot and so we do not.

Your predictive thinking is pervasive.  When you wish for something and when
you want something, you are thinking in terms of what is not currently
present, but could be in the future.  When you make a guess or an estimate
about something, you are anticipating a possible future.  When you daydream
or imagine possibilities, when you forecast or plan, you are beginning to
create a desired future.  So also when you hope, expect, hypothesize,
extrapolate, and infer.  In all of these ways, to think is to think about
what will be or could be and how to prepare yourself for that possible
future.

Given how comprehensive your predictive thinking is-you live a lot of your
life in the future.  Some people do this far too much-they live so much in
the future that they miss the present.  Others do so in dysfunctional
ways-they jump forward in time by worrying, dreading, apprehending,
anxiety-ing, fearing, etc.  They borrow anticipated problems from a
non-existent future and then turn up their misery dial for today.  What a
total misuse of predictive thinking!

What's the solution?  It is obvious: Learn to effectively manage your
predictive thinking capacities.  Understand its powers and its limitations.
Develop your predictive skills as best as you can and to learn to live in
hope -in joyful anticipation of tomorrow-rather than despair.  Become-now
-the future you want to create.  Learn how to live forward in a healthy and
optimistic way.

Imagining the Ability to Predict

For the moment, imagine that you had the power to predict the future.  Now
wouldn't that be an incredible capacity!  If you had that power, what would
you like to predict about your future?  What future-oriented questions do
you have?

           Your health and well-being?

           Your prosperity and financial well-being?

           Your legacy so that you end with "a life well-lived?"

           The loving relationships you develop with family and friends?

           The significant contributions you make in your lifetime?

           The enjoyment of the activities that you find significant?

           The smart decisions about how to handle things?

           The ability to complete the things that you initiate?

Imagine now the reverse side of predicting.  What are you currently
frustrated with in terms of being unable to predict what is going to happen?
Which of the following resonates with you?

           When will the pandemic be over?

           When will schools or business be open again?

           How will the aging process affect me?

           What can I expect to happen economically?

           What can I anticipate regarding how my children will turn out?

           Will my current diet set me up for cancer or heart attacks?

Predictive thinking plays a significant role for organizations, governments,
science, politics, weather reports, etc.   That's pretty obvious.  It also
plays a significant role personally as the above questions indicate.  "What
does the future hold for me, for my family, for my loved ones?"  "Will they
develop as strong and healthy individuals and be able to take care of
themselves?"  "What can I legitimately expect in the next year, in the next
five years, or ten years?"

Predictive thinking generates lots and lots of personal questions.  And
these predictive questions are questions that arouse even more uncertainty.
We not only seek to understand ourselves and our future, and get a sense of
what's coming, we are forever making predictions about others.  Every day we
make informed and uninformed predictions about our loved ones, our boss, and
our friends.  And we often do that by falling into the dysfunctional
behavior of "mind-reading."  While we actually cannot read their minds, we
use our base knowledge, the trends we detect in a person's actions, and our
own feelings and projections to make guesses, and it mostly does not work.
Sometimes it creates relational disasters.

Yet we continue.  Even when our predictions about others do not come true,
we remain pretty much unshaken in our beliefs.  In this, we are like members
of a cult predicting the coming of Christ, the apocalypse, the end of the
world, or whatever.  When the great predicted event doesn't occur, it
doesn't shake the faith of the believers. Strange enough, it seems to
strengthen their belief!2

Design of Predictive Thinking

After I realized that our thinking inherently involves anticipating the
future, predicting the future, and constantly leaping forward to live in the
future, I decided to study this phenomenon.  The realization arose as I was
studying, researching, and writing Inspiring the Heart (2022).  When I wrote
the chapter on hope in that book, my focus was on inspiration-how hope
inspires the heart.  Here I am turning to a different focus, namely to the
kind of thinking that drives us as we anticipate the future.

This book explores this common, and yet very strange, phenomena of
predictive thinking.  We all do it and hardly anyone does it well.  I wanted
to know why.  I also wanted to find out what, if anything, we can do to
enhance the quality of this thinking.  So I began with these questions:

           Can we improve our ability to predict the future?

           If so, what can we do to improve the quality of our predictive
thinking?

           How can we use our brain's capacity for anticipating things more
intelligently and reliably?

That led me to focus, at first, on the capacity for predicting.  But once I
got into the research, I soon realized that was too limiting of a focus so I
expanded my questions and my orientation.  I discovered new questions:

           How can we be the kind of persons who are ready to handle
whatever future arises?

           How can what we are doing today create the future we desire?

           What factors enable us to live forward in a healthy way?

In researching the subject of predicting, forecasting, future scenarios,
etc., all of them dealt primarily (and sometimes exclusively) to the
external factors: trends, statistics, measurements, actual predictions and
then tracking success and failure rates, etc.  While these external factors
are certainly important, there's more to the story.  There is also the kind
of thinking and the mind-body-emotional states from which we make
predictions.  My focus here is on predictive thinking and from that to the
state of being that enables us to live forward with joyful anticipation,
that is, in hope.

There's no question that this very day you will be using your predictive
thinking capacities to anticipate tomorrow.  It is inevitable.  But how you
do it is not. You can do it mindlessly or mindfully.  You can do it in vague
and sloppy and dysfunctional ways or you can learn to do it with more
precision and accuracy.  The choice is yours and I offer this book to you as
a guide. 

Ultimately, the future is about your potentials and your possibilities.  The
future is about how you could develop what's now only a potential so it
becomes what's actual.  Here's to a bright and hopeful future!

End of the Chapter Notes: 

1. From Tough Minded Optimist, 1961, (p. 138).

2. The phenomena of the non-fulfillment of a prediction (as a prophecy or
forecast) has been studied extensively.  It seems that "faith" itself, when
it is absolute, operates as an incredibly powerful bias.  It then filters
out every conflicting fact, invents a new explanation that explains the
previous prophecy and sets up a new one thereby "saving" the group from the
ravages of doubt or disbelief.

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