Your Future Self

Most of us find it impossibly hard to do two things, especially simultaneously:

1. Live in and appreciate the present
2. Work towards a compelling vision of ourselves in the future

Mastering these two seemingly competing mindsets would appear to be the key to both contentment and achievement.

So how do you do it?

As Dr. Benjamin Hardy puts it, by being your future self now.

You may have seen people do the exercise of writing a letter to their younger selves.  It is a great way to both reflect on and grow or heal from past events in our lives that we continue to reply as memories today.  

Another exercise asks what our younger selves would say to us today, were they to be here and see what our life was like.  This can serve as a way to reconnect with past values, beliefs or ambitions.

But looking towards our future selves can be equally as powerful.

Here is a quick excerpt from Dr. Hardy’s Be Your Future Self Now where he demonstrates the power of this perspective:

"Twenty years from now, I'll be 53 years old.  All six of my children will be adults and no longer living at home.

Sitting in my parked car, a few roads from my house, I asked myself, 'How would my Future Self feel, and what would they do, if the 53-year-old me could come back and live my life for the rest of today?

A quote from Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, came to mind:

'Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!  It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended.'

I decided to give Frankl's idea a try.

I decided to live the rest of the day as if I were my Future Self, 20 years into the future, and my Future Self had the opportunity to time travel back and relive the rest of today.

When I pulled into my driveway, 3-year-old Phoebe was outside waiting.

'Daddy!' She jumped around, excited to see me.

Watching my beautiful and witty daughter, I knew my Future Self, 20 years from now, would give anything to experience this single moment.

As my Future Self, I saw this moment very differently than I normally do.  I was brought to tears by how much I loved her.  I recognized her as a perfect gift sent from God."

If your Future Self from 20 years into the future, had the opportunity to time travel back and relive the rest of this day or your upcoming week, what would they think and feel?

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