[00:00] Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Sudddhart here aka the focus b. And on this show I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness, and leadership. So if you want to take your performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.
[00:36] Welcome to a brand new episode of The Focus B show. I'm thrilled today to be discussing the link between our present self and our future self. I first came across this in Giovanni's book. Mindful self discipline. Highly, highly recommend this book. I'm also going to be interviewing him shortly, so I will link his episode on the podcast in the links below. Love his book. Mindful, self discipline. And when I read about the link between our present self and our future self, I realized that so many problems and issues and challenges that people deal with are really related to this one golden nugget. The concept is that we are not fully aware that what we do right now affects our future self. We are very linked to how it affects ourselves right now. And somehow forget, ignore, don't really connect with how our current behavior is affecting our future selves. There are so many examples. Let's go through a few examples. For instance, going to bed late and not realizing that this will make it so much harder for us to get up early tomorrow morning. Or that we'll be tired all the next day. Or indulging in foods and ignoring the fact that it might upset our stomach, reduce our energy, make us put on weight, and the list goes on. Procrastinating important tasks of work, even though that means we'll have to do them at some point in the future. But hey, at least it's not affecting us right now. There are probably many biological reasons that explain why we're so linked to indulging in the moment. But it isn't very useful because when we choose pleasure, short term pleasure, over long term fulfillment, this can lead to guilt, resentment, self hatred, and also not fulfilling what we aspire to. So if we want to be someone that gets eight or 9 hours sleep, but every single evening we go to bed too late, that won't give us what we want. And so this disconnection, I feel is stronger in certain people. And there are many different ways to actually change this and to feel more connected with our future selves. And this is really where the magic happens. Because if we feel more connected with our future self, then we'll want to go to bed early. Because we won't just know, intellectually speaking, that this will affect us. We will feel it, physically speaking, in our body, in our minds. It will feel like the same person because, hey, it is the same person. But somehow we forget this one way that we can reconnect with our future selves is through journaling and reflection. Because as we journal, as we reflect, we will realize that time and time again, when we wanted to get up earlier, we snoozed the button and we felt more sleepy. And the more we realize this, the more we realize that what we do in one given moment affects the following moment. The next day, the next week, the next month, the more we'll be inclined to want to change this. Any form of reflection, any form of awareness, whether it's through meditating, talking with a friend or coach, reflection in a diary will help us to raise this awareness and see this link between our present and our future self. Another interesting method that Giovanni mentions in his book is writing a letter to ourselves. I know that I did this with Futureme.org and I was inspired to do it again after reading his book. And this can be a reminder. You can even do it on a monthly basis or weekly basis, but on the moment you're writing to your future self, you're saying, in a week, in three days, I want to have achieved this part of my book. I would like to have finished this content. I want to have reached out to these people. And this means that you're making a commitment and you're holding yourself accountable to your future self. But also, one of the most powerful ways that I have found to connect what we're doing right now with where we'll be in the future is through thinking about it and realizing it. And not just thinking about it briefly, but really going through the entire scenario. If I don't go to bed right now, tomorrow morning, my alarm goes off at this time, how will I feel throughout the day and visualizing the whole scenario? I have to admit that in my case, I'm a lot better at having this connection when it's still fairly short term. So from one day to the next day or during the week, I do find this connection is a lot stronger. Maybe you're also similar, or maybe you're different than if, I think, in a month from now, two months from now, a year from now. And I realized in my case of, for instance, this was holding me back with learning Swedish, because when I focused on it during one day or two day, it didn't really help my future self in a week. It helped maybe my future self in a year from now that would be fluent. But that felt like too much of a disconnect. So you see, it affects our goals and our progress in so many different ways, in so many different areas. This is not a small topic, this is huge. And a great exercise for you would be to look at your different goals and think, where is this connection missing? Where do you feel that you're procrastinating or you're putting off or postponing, which is similar to procrastination but slightly different. So you're under prioritizing something or you're not motivated and look at these goals and think how often do you consider the future self once you have accomplished this? So how often do you think what it'll be like for you at the end of the week or the end of the following months once you have done this, focusing on that reward, visualizing how you'll feel and maybe even contrasting it with your future self if you don't do it. So if you don't take that action, if you don't work on that goal, if you don't go to bed earlier and seeing how will that affect you? And once you contrast this positive visualization of yes, you've made progress on your goal, or you went to bed early and you got up early and you have a great routine in place and you contrast it with you haven't done all of these actions and how you feel and bridging that gap, remembering that even if the future self might seem far away or might seem hypothetical or might seem like that'll be a problem to deal with, then it always does happen. And then you are your future self. This is so incredibly powerful that I feel that I don't know if I am able to transfer the magic of this concept of how powerful this is. Once we're able to connect both the future self, the present self, and really see that what we're doing now, each and every decision adds up and creates who we are. Tomorrow, literally tomorrow or the following week. And I feel the part of the reason why so many of us, so many of you, so many of us struggle with progressing on our goals is because we feel like these decisions and actions are minor and they don't help us to move forward as much as we want to. And so we feel surely that doesn't actually impact how we'd like to move forward when in fact it does. Those are the minor steps, the baby steps that really do impact our progress, the daily changes in our routine and habits, it is all part of the power of the daily 1% and this is highly related to the relationship we hold with our future self. So I realize this can sound a bit hypothetical and not very concrete. That's why invite you to journal on this, to reflect on this, to write a letter to yourself future, to use different methods such as planning and goal setting and tracking, to really anchor how what you do today impacts this evening and tomorrow. And it all adds up and there is no decision or no action that doesn't count. Every single decision and action adds up to who you'll be tomorrow. So if you want to be this person who's achieved this amazing goal and written a book and done all these amazing things tomorrow, then you need to start doing it today. I think this is all pretty obvious in terms of the science behind it. It's pretty obvious that what we do now affects tomorrow. It's more about us feeling it inside us so we can anchor and link these together. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. Please let me know in the comments what was most insightful for you, how you can go about creating this connection between your present self and your future self. Please subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this one. And thank you so much for watching or listening. If you're listening to it, audio on the podcast. Thank you.
[11:21] Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Be show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback. So let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you, and feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead.