Helping Your Future Self Out
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
“The choices we make today create the future that we are dreaming of.”
~ Clare Josa
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve got some exciting projects coming up. This week I jumped back into the one that’s most near and dear to my heart: updating my book about therapy that I first self-published in 2001.
I’ve worked on the update periodically over the last few years but I’m finally making it a priority. The first step was to locate the most recent version of the manuscript. While doing so, I was delighted to discover a really helpful document I’d created the last time I worked on it: a To Do list of all the items I still need to take care of.
The thing is, I have no memory of making it! Rare lapses of memory like this only happen for me when I’m completely focused on my work. (As my husband says when he comes back in the house when I’m in the zone, “Did you even notice I was gone?”) It’s like another part of my brain takes over and is doing the work for me, so it doesn’t make it into my long-term memory.
I have read that one reason we procrastinate on completing projects is because we reach a point where we’re stuck, and we don’t know what the next step is. The recommendation is this: rather than stopping work when you’re tired, first take a moment to get clear about what your next step will be. Leave yourself a note, so when you start in again, you’ll know just what to do.
Perhaps I followed that advice without realizing it. No matter why I created it, that To Do list was like a gift from my former self, for which I’m grateful.
As I was printing it out, I was thinking about how we love when our former self takes some action that helps us out, and I wondered what steps we could take to have that happen more often.
Being proactive, says this article about managing time, “is taking care of yourself and things around you, as well as developing good habits because you realize your life is a product of things you do every day.”
Proactive people anticipate what’s likely to happen in the future and take steps both to create positive outcomes and to avoid problems.
Think of how happy you are in the morning when you see a clean sink and remember that you did the dishes the evening before. And how great it feels to come home after a trip to a clean house. Or how relieved you feel when you have a full tank of gas on the way to work because you stopped the night before to get a fill-up.
Each of these scenarios requires using your imagination to anticipate how your future self will feel about the actions you take today.
One way to establish new habits and keep yourself on track is to begin a unique type of journaling practice called Future Self journaling, which involves envisioning yourself at some point in the future, and writing to that person about your hopes and dreams for them. Since so many of us spend a great deal of time thinking about our future, we might as well make good use of our “wonderings,” says the author of this article.
In addition to the often-stated advantages of journaling—reducing stress, keeping us on track, and improving one’s outlook—future self journaling has the added benefit of helping us focus on what we want and need going forward.
Getting clear about our desires can help us move the needle toward accomplishing them, especially if we take the additional steps to set goals and make plans to achieve them.
The practice can be especially useful during times of transition.
A few years ago I found a list of writing goals I’d put together in 2005, and was happy to note that I’ve accomplished quite a few of them. Taking the time to reflect on our future in a hopeful manner can encourage our personal growth. Think about it as planting seeds that with some tending will spring to life at a later date.
Rather than spending time worrying about what might happen in the future, you can take a more active stance, and make plans to manifest what you want to happen.
A few months ago, I wrote this post about pausing on a regular basis to take care of things that bother you—items a friend of mine calls tolerations—in order to free up your energy. It might be worth a revisit since some of the suggestions I mentioned apply to this concept of gifts we can give our future selves.
What can you do today to make yourself both happy and grateful down the road?
Affectionately,
Elaine