Changing the past
Caution: This will be yet another crackpot theory. You have been warned. Maybe I should run a crackpot series or something here. Oh wait, is everything I write only that? Hey, you are so mean.
“Your past is determined in the future” — This is a statement I heard in a podcast several years ago, and it resonated with me, and has been living rent-free in my head as a mental model.
Allow me to elaborate: Let’s say you participated in a competition that occurs every month. You have so far participated for 3 months and lost it all the time. At the end of those 3 months, your win rate is 0% (and the failure rate is 100%). Let’s say you win the next 2 months. At the end of 5 months, you have a win rate of 40% and a failure rate of 60%. Do see you see how your past (those first 3 months) have now changed? Not changed in the true sense, but how its impact is subdued now? If you are the pessimistic kind, you can do this same exercise with win for the first 3 months, and loss for the next two. 100% win dives to 60%, so your euphoria will vanish.
As you keep at it, your win/lose rates will keep fluctuating and the interpretation of the past/current will be determined in the future.
Okay, with that unnecessary intro done, that’s not my crackpot theory. We will start that segment now.
Let’s take two scenarios: (1) You wrote an exam, didn’t write it all that well, but not too bad as well. (2) It’s performance review time at work for the past year, you know it hasn’t been one of the best years for you, but not too bad either. Assume the results of these are ready — The evaluation is done, and you need to log in to a website to see the results, or open an email where the results have been sent. (Okay, I know performance reviews are usually in-person meetings, but please play along).
In these scenarios, have you felt something in your gut just before logging-in? And how many times has that been proven right? If there were negative feelings from your gut, were the results negative? And if there were positive feeling, were the results positive? From my thoroughly unscientific research, I have noticed that the gut is more times correct than wrong.
Like I said earlier, you consciously don’t have a clear idea of how good or bad you did. It wasn’t the best, but not bad too, so it appeared to be a case of 50–50. In this case, what informs your gut about the results, and why is it right more times?
A usual answer for this is that there is something more in the realm of the subconscious, and that’s where intuition forms and gut-feel is arrived at. So, your subconscious knew better than your conscious mind on how good/bad you did, and therefore told you through the gut-feel right before opening the results.
Or: [crackpot alert] Does it work in the reverse? Because your gut-feel is such and such, that the results simply reflect that to be consistent? Instead of opening that email when your gut-feel sends negative signals, what if you wait it out, and open it when the gut-feels says more positive things? Will the results change — even though the evaluation was all done much earlier?
In other words, can you change your past by manipulating your gut? Think about it. We might be on to something grand here. (Ha!). Why should this “positive thinking” movement only be about the future? Let’s extend it to the past as well. No?
PS: I had earlier (in 2017) questioned “How do you change how you feel now, if that is the cumulative compounded effect of everything you did so far in life”:
