We’ve all heard about the five senses: taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight, and many of us have used our sixth sense--commonly called psychic or intuitive--to make “Sense” of our lives. But I propose we use the seventh sense--common sense--when making predictions for the New Year!

Common sense makes me not want to put too much credence in predictions made from the first through sixth senses. Why? Because we just don’t know. We can’t know. It’s our egos that want to know, and the ego can never be appeased. So when a client asks me, “Am I going to heal this back pain this year?” I reply, “I don’t know, but we can look at the things you are doing and the ways you are being to get you back to your inherent state of health and vivacity.” Likewise, when any psychic, doctor, or even the carnival’s resident height and weight guesser tells my client that they’re doomed to a life of pain and illness based solely on the tangible symptoms visible in that moment, I offer another, more empowering point of view.

Sure, we all know lifestyle choices affect health. So when I can intuit that a certain behavior is the underlying cause of a certain symptom, it only makes sense--common sense--that if we could reverse that behavior then the symptoms, too, would begin to fade. But even with all my sixth-sensory abilities, I’d never assume to know the future; it’s just not possible. I may be able to take a good guess, or I could feasibly tap into the future as I have done, but I tell the person that what I’m sensing is one of any number of possible futures. And all those possible futures exist; we get to choose which one to experience with our thoughts, words, and actions.

Most predictions are based on the concept of “all things being equal”, meaning that given a person or society’s current condition, if nothing changes, X will likely happen. But all things are rarely equal. A, B, and C can change in a heartbeat, dramatically altering what X will look like. My client could make a left instead of a right as she normally does when exiting the supermarket and therefore not have that traffic collision her psychic predicted. I could coach my client on reversing the cause of her muscle tightness, for example, by releasing the repressed anger and practicing forgiveness to a perceived perpetrator, whereas her doctor may have said that she’d have that tightness for the rest of her life and only offer medications to relax the muscles. Not that relaxed muscles are a bad thing, but if the underlying cause isn’t addressed, in this case the repressed anger, then more physical problems may develop, often more serious than muscle tightness. And if that sounds like a prediction, it is, but it’s not in stone. And if it were in stone, I’d offer my client a hammer and chisel to shape it well.

So we do have free will and I propose we use it to create our lives the way we want them to look. Granted, there is divine guidance and when we can tap into that we’re usually much better off, but we still have free will to act upon that guidance or not. We have free will to even ask the questions or not. So it’s free will and destiny, nature and nurture, the all always exists. We get to choose. So, yes, by all means use those wonderful first six senses to understand, plan, or even predict. But please add a little bit of the seventh sense—common sense--in, too. Now if you don’t, mind I’m going to call the Psychic Friends Network and see if my publisher will print this.

BTW, there is one more sense--the eighth--dollars and sense, and I’ll bet you can’t wait to read what I have to say about that one.

Dave Markowitz is a Medical Intuitive, Author/Humorist, and channel of Source energy and information. Sign up for his highly-acclaimed, free newsletter at www.DaveMarkowitz.com