Many people have changed their present behavior in response to the advice of a "future" probable self, without ever knowing they have done so.
"Now you can alter your present through altering your past. Or, you can change your present from the future. Even these manipulations must take place in your practical-experienced present, however. Many people have, at one time or another, changed their present behavior in response to the advice of a "future" probable self without ever knowing they have done so.
Suppose you have a particular goal in mind as a youngster, toward which you work. Your intent, images, desires, and determination form a psychic force that is projected out ahead of you, so to speak. You send the reality of yourself from your present into what you think of as the future.
Now, say that at a certain stage you have some decisions to make and do not know which way to turn. You may sense that you are in danger of swerving from your purpose yet, for other reasons, feel strongly inclined to do so. In a dream or in daydreaming, you may suddenly hear a voice, mentally, that tells you in no uncertain terms to go ahead with your initial intent. Or, in some other way, you may receive the same information through an urge or a vision or simply by suddenly knowing what to do. This happens in your present.
In other terms, the self that you have projected into the future is sending you back encouragement from a probable reality that you still can create. That focused self operates from its present, however. And, some day in your own future, you may find yourself thinking nostalgically of a moment back in your own past when you were indecisive and irresolute but took the proper course.
You may think: "I am glad I did that." Or: "Knowing what I know now, how lucky I am that I made that decision." And, in that moment you are the future self that "once" spoke encouragingly to the person of the past. The probable future has caught up with the practical present.
The early affirmation of yourself projected into the future made such an incident possible. In the same way, your acceptance of yourself and your own integrity can, at any moment in your present, alter your past and future."
NOPR 1973.07.04 Sess.675