“Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

Why do all financial investors list that disclaimer? Because no matter how much they’ve studied the past, plotted the trends, or observed nearly-identical market conditions in previous years, there is absolutely no way of knowing for sure what’s coming next.

Thinking about the future is somewhat paradoxical. 

On one hand, we can reasonably expect certain outcomes based on previous observations. Never once in your life have you gone to sit down in a chair and crashed to the floor instead, because unbeknownst to you, the chair was actually a hologram. And because that has never happened to you in the thousands of times you’ve sat in a chair, you don’t feel the need to check each chair before you sit.

On the other hand, there is no guarantee that next time won’t be the first time you encounter a hologram chair. None whatsoever.

And in that sense, the future is always poised to catch us off guard. If you could predict an unpredictable event, it wouldn’t be unpredictable. 

The Imagined Future

I’ve written this past year about my wife and I going through her first pregnancy when COVID hit, and having the year we’d always envisioned – a mix of friends’ experiences and Hollywood expectations – ripped away.

We never got to walk through a baby store. She never had a stranger excitedly say, “Ohmygosh congratulations!!!” She never hugged her mom while pregnant. 

Just six days before our baby boy was born I was giving a virtual keynote address. My host’s wife was also due in just two weeks, but it was their second, while it was our first.

After the program I asked him, “The baby could be here any day now. Do you have any last-minute advice before we start this crazy journey?”

Josh said, “Parent the baby in your arms, not the one in your head.”

It was the world’s best answer.

A lifetime’s worth of expectations, combined with 9 months of reading baby books and an imagination run wild had established a fairly concrete image of what becoming a father was going to be like. But in reality, I had absolutely no idea what the future would hold.

Your Next Interaction

I’m a big advocate of preparation. 

My TEDx coaching clients memorize their speeches word-for-word, to much grumbling. Some of them worry they’ll end up sounding robotic by memorizing the speech. Ah, I tell them, memorizing is only the beginning. Amateurs practice until they get it right, but professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong.

I have them rehearse dozens, sometimes hundreds of times (literally) until they aren’t merely reciting a memorized script, but simply conversing with the audience. We practice all the way through memorization until the presentation is internalized, until it is a part of them.

Is it because I’m trying to control the future? Certainly not. It’s so that when the unpredictable happens they possess the confidence and poise to roll with it.

Give the TEDx talk you get, not the one in your head, as it were.

People are Predictably Unpredictable

And so it is with human connection. The next interaction you have, be it virtually or in-person, will not go the way you imagined. Human beings have too many variables to predict with any measure of accuracy how someone will react to our conversation, prompts, questions, or even merely our presence.

That doesn’t mean you can’t plan for the next interaction. Whether it’s a stranger or a loved one we can certainly imagine different ways it might play out and how we’d adapt or react to different scenarios. It’s why folks love my 7 Ways to Open a Conversation with Anyone resource. At the very least we can remove the variability from our end of the interaction by showing up with kindness and generosity, to offer the gift of connection to another.

But how they choose to receive or reject that gift? It’s not for us to say, and certainly not for us to predict.

Next time you’re having an interaction with a friend, colleague, prospect, client, loved one, or stranger that isn’t going how you imagined or hoped it might, remember:

Engage in the conversation you’re having, not the one in your head.