Life is constructed on expectation and emotion, after all it’s what motivates us to act on our goals. So is the reliance/notion of premonition so ludicrous? After all, we do often turn to the prospects of our future to pull ourselves out of despair.

Recently I was caught off-guard by a wave of insecurity and uncertainty, it washed over me suddenly and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of desolation. I couldn’t avoid it, but I pulled myself out of it. To save myself from drowning I triggered some sort of ‘premonition’ to counteract my present uncertainty. What I saw allowed me to navigate my way back to shore, back to my identity. I knew that if I continued to float around surrounded by these emotions, I would drift further away from myself and my aspirations– I needed a reminder of who I was (the past) to rediscover what I wanted (the future).

Now I’m not talking about a supernatural power gifted by Gods. I’m referring to an ability that’s contained within all of us, a way we can construct an image of our future to save ourselves from the negative emotions that we suffer from today. We all have the opportunity to foresee our future, but we must first delve into the past.

Now imagine that I’m literally floating in a cold ocean of despair, the longer I bask in uncertainty the further I drift away from who I am and what I want from life. The longer I stay still the less I feel. I become more and more numb to the identity I worked so hard to build. I needed a reminder of who I am, quickly.

Our minds have the power to relive any emotion just by delving into our past. I can literally think of anything from my past and relive the emotions associated with a memory. For others there’s a trigger, a song perhaps, a picture or a smell even, we all have it.

These emotions dictate our future; we construct our future by wanting to feel more of, or in some cases less of  what we have felt and experienced in our past. This is how we trigger a “premonition” – we get in touch with our emotions. If we have the ability to feel and relive the past, then we should be able to feel and get a glimpse of our future.

The more you feel from your past the more you understand about your future. I remembered achievements, I remembered positive comments and words of encouragement, I remembered great times in my life that I wanted more of.

The more I remembered the more I re-constructed my future. I used these emotions to re-build the vision of a future I wanted – so clear that it felt like a premonition. Action was almost instantaneous as I awoke to my present, I knew there and then what I needed to do to make that future a certainty.

Turning to certain emotions in our past can highlight our aspirations, and it was by generating this premonition that alerted me to my current actions. One thing we must understand is that we cannot control the past nor the future, we can only manage them by taking control over our present.

Having re-envisioned what I wanted for my future, I was then faced with a choice in my present: to either sink or swim. I could either continue to remain still and sink into the sea of desolation, or swim my way back to my identity and manage the future I envisioned – no waiting around for rescue, no waiting for the current to change, just me and my own spirit with my future in sight.