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Do what you do today so your future self can appreciate the effort you made
I got this email about two, maybe three years ago… and today. Both warmed my heart. Today I even wept.
The first email from this student/client:
At this moment in time. i feel like i do not know what to make a mark in except to continue to groom the children and of course, take care of the me now so that the future me will appreciate the effort made… …in short a healthier me.
And I might add: a healthier you with more skills… more ingredients in the pantry. 1
Compare your attitude with this person’s. You’ll come up short, I bet.
This is my experience with almost everyone I deal with.
Except in recent months I have been getting a student, here and there, who come close to this woman I am quoting.
One could say, this is because this student is married to a rich man… and that is partially true.
But she still works, raises four kids, so her circumstances are not that different from yours.
She is extraordinary in that she gets it.
She gets that there is seeing the big picture sideways and seeing the big picture in time, and seeing the big picture in depth… and in this post you can see the big picture in time, working, making decisions easy for her.
I have students that have a steady financial situation, and yet they are unwilling to put any energy into that future where their future self would appreciate the effort made by their self today.
So what is the difference? What makes you so different? Why can’t you heed the call of a future…. and get stuck in the now? In the no action?
This is really important to address, because, when watching people’s behavior AND knowing what I know.
What is in your future, what you see in your future, is what is either beckoning or not, gives your attitude in the present moment… and not only your attitude, but your mood, when you think, consciously or unconsciously of that future.
When women are engaged, or when they are pregnant, they seam to be beaming. An internal light got turned on.
It’s not biological, it is the future they are living into that gives them that glow. Consciously, but maybe more unconsciously, they expect happiness coming.
The future you see when you look into the future gives you your attitude…
And maybe for short stretches of time, this is even true about the futures you “invent” in vision boards, and mind movies. I say short stretches of time, because the nature of reality is that what you denied, what you ignore, what you didn’t handle will get the upper hand when you least expect it… and start to run the show.
What you denied, what you ignore, what you didn’t handle is the default. The default future, in this case.
In the workshop I regularly offer, the what’s missing workshop, participants look at their lives, and pick to work on an area of life that doesn’t work, isn’t working as well as it could.
First we look what it is they are doing, what is their attitude in that area of life. Who they are being.
The next step is to see how life would shape up if they continued doing what they are doing, being who they are being… what life would look like in 5-10-15 years.
For most people that picture is mortifying… tragic, and yet, that is where life is heading. That future is what they have in the future they look into.
But where did that future come from?
Surprisingly, that future is a projection of the past, often a decision from a need that wasn’t fulfilled when you were a young child.
You were ignored, devalued, hurt, not respected, squashed, etc.
And being deprived from that thing, your thing, created a future where it will be missing, and you are going to turn around and make everyone miss that too… eye for an eye…
My future, for most of my life, was filled with the picture of me being dead.
I was an unwanted child. I felt it. I decided that I was living on borrowed time. So I lived as if time were short, too short to be cowardly, or lazy, or mundane. But when life is short, planning for long term is also silly… so I never did.
It is hard to have an investor mentality if you don’t plan to live long. It is also hard to save any money. So I didn’t. I never had any savings. Any.
So when last summer I accidentally poisoned myself, I KNEW it was time… that the time arrived.
I got less and less work invested in the future, because there was no sense… who would it even benefit?!
But about a month ago, I managed to put something different into my future and that has been giving me a new lease on life.
I invented that it is possible for me to live in a way that returns me to full health: eating, doing things that heal, instead of just keeping me alive.
And for some reason that glimmer of a future has been giving me energy to think beyond the present moment, beyond surviving, beyond what I must do, and make me look into what I can do…
For the first time I feel I am building a life. It may not be amazing to you, but it is amazing to me.
There are two men in my Tuesday exercise class who are twenty years older than me, and they are not planning to die any time soon. So maybe i can be like that, too?
So what can YOU do?
Why is this important to ask? Because the default future doesn’t call you to be your best. It doesn’t call you to invest in your future self. It keeps you blah, it keeps you doing the same old same old… and not feel good about yourself and your life.
The first step is to get some help to find what was missing for you from others, mostly parents, when you were a little kid.
You have been waiting for the world to give it to you… but the world doesn’t care. So you can make it your own job to give that, generously, to yourself.
That is the first step.
The second step is to experiment with inventing yourself for the future. Not the circumstances, no. Yourself. Your being. Not your occupation… that is also a circumstance. But your beingness.
In today’s Playground session the favorite future beingness was valuing people. Seeing them as valuable, even when they are doing something wrong, or don’t look that valuable.
It’s not instantaneous: it is a process.
From your low vocabulary number, I am clear that you don’t have a lot of words for ways of being… let alone be able to be that, or recognize it on another.
I measure that number in your Starting Point Measurements
That, expanding your accurate vocabulary of being, is also a process.
But if you are as old, or younger than me, you have time to do it: the rest of your life still deserves it. And you can earn that for yourself.
And while you are expanding yourself, life will definitely not be the same as it has been: it will be a whole lot better, because you are looking at a more glorious future.
A future where you can love yourself.
- This woman is married to her high school sweetheart who is now rich. She is smart, she is pretty, and she came to me mainly because she likes to learn new things.
I worked with her on her health, and I worked with her on developing skills.
Why would she need skills? For whatever reason, I always want to prepare women to be able to stand alone, without a husband, and be able to earn a living. So we worked on that.
It wasn’t going well. But then she saw the movie: The dressmaker with Kate Winslet, good movie, I watched it too to be able to be on the level with her, and she felt a tug.
We decided on her learning dressmaking. Today she can saw her own clothes, and clothes for the children, she has real talent there…
She wrote today:
Anyways, I am doing pretty awesome. The little sewing sting you lead me to … after 2 years… It is what is is as attached pictures. It’s amazing how a seed of thoughts can transform into a full fledged hobby and I am still learning every day.
This soul is forever grateful for your teachings. :)
