What Your “Future Self” Would Tell You
One way to navigate a challenging moment is to envision what your “future self” would tell you about how to approach that challenge.
Oftentimes when we’re struggling to figure out how to move through uncertainty or something difficult, we get so caught up in the details that we lose sight of the bigger picture.
We forget that we actually do know ways we can help ourselves through difficult times.
In this episode we discuss how you can think about challenges through the lens of what your “future self” would tell you about how to approach them, and how it can lead to processing circumstances with a clearer, deeper level of understanding.
Episode Transcription
Intro:
One way to navigate a challenging moment is to envision what your “future self” would tell you about how to approach that challenge.
Oftentimes when we’re struggling to figure out how to move through uncertainty or something difficult, we get so caught up in the details that we lose sight of the bigger picture.
We forget that we actually do know ways we can help ourselves through difficult times.
So in this episode, we’ll discuss how you can think about challenges through the lens of what your “future self” would tell you about how to approach them, and how it can lead to processing circumstances with a clearer, deeper level of understanding. Here we go.
Main:
I want to explore a mindset technique that can be a very powerful and insightful way for you to approach a current challenge that you’re facing, and it’s the idea of looking for solutions to a challenge through the lens of what your “future self” would tell you.
So when we’re confronted with some sort of challenge or a decision or a moment where we’re having trouble understanding how we’re going to make it through, one of the reasons that it’s hard for us to navigate those moments is because we view that situation through the lens of our own emotions and limiting beliefs.
In other words, when we’re looking for a way to move through uncertainty or something difficult, our ability to find a solution to that challenge can be clouded by anxiety, fear, old beliefs, or other thoughts we have that are connected with that particular challenge.
We get so bogged down by the limiting beliefs we have or assumptions that we’ve made that we can’t clearly see the challenge for what it is, and therefore it’s harder for us to come up with a solution.
And because we’re living inside of this decision or this challenge and because we’re thinking about it from every single possible angle, we can also get so trapped in the details around the decision that we end up losing sight of the bigger picture.
So when we feel stuck inside of a challenge or when we feel unable to see a path through a challenging moment, one way to navigate through that moment is to envision what your “future self” would tell you about how to approach it.
So the idea is that you imagine for a moment that you “future self” is giving you advice on how to approach this situation. You picture yourself months or even years down the road, where this future version of you is well past this decision point. And you envision what you’d tell yourself about how to make it through this moment.
Let me give you a real example from my own life to help illustrate this point. So early on when I was building my startup, I found myself getting very frustrated because I felt like it was taking way too long for me to make the progress that I wanted to make.
I was coming in everyday and working hard, I was following the advice of my advisors, I was putting in all the effort but I just wasn’t seeing the kind of growth I wanted to.
And so there was a few month stretch where I felt disappointed because things weren’t moving as fast as I wanted them to, and that disappointment was present with me each day, and I started to get discouraged by what I thought was a lack of progress.
I did everything I could to think my way through the current situation but I just couldn’t see a path through.
So after feeling stuck like this for a while, on the advice of one of my mentors I decided to try something different.
And what I did was I envisioned a future version of myself giving me advice. I literally pictured an older, wiser, more experienced version of myself several years down the road from that present moment, in a place where I had successfully made it through the current challenge of feeling stuck and feeling like things weren’t moving fast enough.
So I had a vision of me smiling and feeling wise and feeling relaxed and confident now that I had overcome this challenge. And so I envisioned this future successful version of myself giving me some advice about how I made it through.
And in listening to what my future self would tell me, I realized that:
First, I had to take a breath, relax, and review my previous experience for guidance. If I looked back at my professional trajectory, it was filled with moments like this where things seem like such a big deal in the moment - but when you look back they end up turning out ok, and living in a state of stress about it doesn’t help.
Second, I told myself to remember that building a startup takes time. Just because I wasn’t experiencing the kind of explosive growth I wanted to that didn’t mean I wasn’t making significant progress.
Third, I told myself to slow down and enjoy every part of the process, because if I can enjoy every part of the process then I bring the best version of myself to every decision I make which allows me to make the best choices for me and for the company.
And after looking at my current situation from this future perspective, I felt much more calm and relaxed about the speed of my progress and where I was, and it really helped me to realize that I was moving much faster than I thought.
So why is an exercise like this impactful and how does it work?
When we get caught up in the emotions we have in the present moment, we forget that we actually do know ways we can help ourselves through difficult times.
We all have an intuition about how to navigate through challenges, but that intuition is often buried beneath the emotions, anxiety, and limiting beliefs we hold about those challenges.
Think about it this way: have you ever had someone come to you with a problem that you’re experiencing yourself, and then after giving them some advice on how THEY should approach that challenge, you end up having the realization that the same advice might work for you?
The reason that happens is because when we look at “other people’s” challenges, oftentimes we can do it through a lens that’s not clouded by our own emotions or internal struggles. We see the challenge and the solution much more clearly, and it allows us to view and process circumstances with a clearer, deeper level of understanding.
So the idea of approaching challenges using the advice of your “future self” is that it helps you call in a level of wisdom that is inside of you already, but that may be hidden behind fear and self-doubt.
We know more about what we need than we think, we just have to get past all of the stuff that’s blocking that knowledge.
So I want to end today by showing you a way you can do this exercise yourself. And here’s how to do it, there’s three steps.
Step 1 is to Identify a major challenge you’re faced with right now that you’re having a hard time navigating through. It could be a decision that you’re stuck on, something that’s been bothering you that you can’t seem to figure out, something like that.
In my example, it was “My company is not growing fast enough.”
Step 2 is to imagine for a moment that your “future self” is giving you advice on how to approach this situation.
So picture yourself months or years down the road and on the other side of this challenge. And I want you to literally envision yourself relaxed, not stressed, feeling wise, feeling accomplished, feeling wealthy or well taken care of, maybe even having a little grin on your face like “I know this seems like a big deal now, but you figured this out.”
And I want you to think about what would your future self tell you about the best way to navigate through this challenge
And if you want to ask some specific questions, you can ask and write down the answer to these question:
What steps did I take, who did I connect with, what mindset helped me get through this, what routines did I adopt, what information did I learn that made it easier for me to navigate?
In other words, ask questions that are designed to help you think around the challenge. Try to step out of your current situation and envision yourself answering these questions without the burden of some of the present emotion or anxiety or fear you might have in the present moment.
So in my example, I realized that I needed to adopt the kind of mindset where I was constantly acknowledging that I was making progress every day, and to exhibit some patience and faith that I was moving as fast as I needed to.
And then step 3 is, after answering these questions, write down two actions you can take right now that will help you approach this challenge with intention using this advice.
So I want you to focus on an actionable way you can put your own advice to practice for yourself
Again in my example, I took a few different actions, but I decided that first, when I caught myself feeling like things are going slowly, I was going to remind myself to look at how far the company has come and to remember that’s it’s moving faster than I think.
Second, I set an intention to spend more time celebrating small wins that I was achieving each day so that I was constantly reminded about how much progress I was making.
Third, I reminded myself to keep taking care of my mindset. At the root of most of the challenges I was facing was a mindset barrier - my current way of thinking was preventing me from acting with clarity or a limiting belief was holding me back. So I reminded myself to make sure that I double down on taking care of that part of me.
So the actionable part of this process is setting an intention to put your wisdom into practice. And as soon as I took this wisdom and applied it to my day to day, I started to immediately feel like the path forward started to open up. I had more clarity and I was much more calm about the speed and growth of the company.
And I think if you search your experience, we often have many of the answers to the questions we struggle to answer - the challenge is that those answers are buried beneath a level of interference we’ve accumulated over the years - like fears, or regrets, or anxieties - but the answers are in there.
And so if you practice stepping outside of you present experience and try to look at the challenge through the lens of your future self, I think you’ll find that you can readily access that wisdom.
Give it a try. You might be surprised by what you find.
Go have a great workday.