Do you want to know what someone's future will be? Just look at their attitudes about the present.Most people have some dreams and aspirations about their future. It is easy enough to predict their success rate in reaching their goals.
1. Talk about what they are going to do someday rather than talk about what they are doing now. If the person isn't in action on some aspect of their future, the likelihood of success is slim. Making plans isn't enough; working the plan is required.
2. Talk about the roadblocks. If the person would be in action on their dream except they need to deal with all the problems of today first, the likelihood of success is slim. Someone dealing with one crisis after another all day long will have a future filled with one crisis after another. (Yes, I hear you saying, "But what if there are really are a series of problems that must be dealt with immediately?" Sometimes life gives you those kinds of problems. A problem in which you, alone, must work out and implement the solution. Mostly though, our day to day problems aren't really of that type.)
3. Talk about prerequisites forever unfilled. One a person spends a lot of time telling you what they can't do, you might notice that the person isn't really doing anything at all.
4. Wishful speaking. I'm sure you have heard someone say, "I wish I was my own boss." They don't really. They have some vague unhappiness about their current conditions and some even less clear picture of what their life might be if they weren't a wage slave. A life spent wishing for a future will provide a life of yesterday over and over. It would be like the movie Groundhog Day without the happy ending.
5. If the person in question does everything "good enough," their chances of fulfilling on dreams are small indeed. Well, I suppose if one dreams of being mediocre, "good enough" works. I just haven't talked to anyone who wants their future to be marginally adequate.
6. If the language they use when speaking of their current circumstances sounds like it could be coming someone much younger than the speaker, their chances of getting the future they say they want are about the same as the 'age' of the conversation. How likely is it that a five-year-old will be working on anything long term?
7. How many people are holding them back? Are they upset about the lack of cooperation and support from their friends or family? Are they stuck in the conversation that their dreams are forever out of reach because people keep getting the way? No chance of fulfilling the dream.
8. What would people think? The number one conversation of someone dedicated to "not quite." Not quite out in front of the pack taking charge of their lives and not quite falling to the rear. Nope. Just somewhere in the middle jockeying for status among the crowd. This person might not have voiced a dream about the way things could be.
9. Suppose to conversations. The future the individual wants is an impossible dream while they spend their life doing what they are supposed to. This is definitely a conversation worth examining. Instead of fulfilled dreams, this person will grow more bitter and resentful with each passing year.
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