Speaker 1: The obstacle is what transforms you. Going through the obstacle
Speaker 1: is what takes you from who you are now to
Speaker 1: becoming a future self that's radically wiser, more capable. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Dr Benjamin Hardy, an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and the world's leading expert on the psychology
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurial leadership and exponential growth. His PhD research focused
Speaker 1: on entrepreneurial courage and transformational leadership. Before completing his PhD.
Speaker 1: Ben's blogs were read by over a hundred million people,
Speaker 1: and he's the author of six books, including the one
Speaker 1: discussed here, Be Yourself Now, The Science of Intentional Transformation.
Speaker 1: Hey Ben, welcome to the show. Brother gonna be with you.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have you on. We have attempted
Speaker 1: this conversation a couple of times now, and technical difficulties
Speaker 1: have been our nemesis, but we have got it figured out.
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic this time. No hurricane in your neighborhood. This
Speaker 1: time around, we've recovered from the hurricane. All good. Well,
Speaker 1: we're going to be discussing your latest book, Be your
Speaker 1: Future Self Now, the Science of Intentional Transformation. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's start like we always do with
Speaker 1: the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 1: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there's two
Speaker 1: wolves that inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second.
Speaker 1: When they look up at their grandparents, they say, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandparents says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So I think the easiest
Speaker 1: way I look at that is a lot of it
Speaker 1: has to do with attention, So like, your attention is
Speaker 1: the monster you're feeding, and whatever you pay attention to
Speaker 1: you create more of. And I also look at it
Speaker 1: from a system's perspective. According to systems theory and also
Speaker 1: chaos theory, this is where the butterfly effect comes in.
Speaker 1: Little things can create huge ripples over time, so essentially
Speaker 1: you become whatever you pay attention to. Even subtle things
Speaker 1: that you pay attention to over time can have a
Speaker 1: compounding effect where it's like in a year or two
Speaker 1: or three years, that thing that was small and significant
Speaker 1: actually took over your whole life and it became your
Speaker 1: entire character. So yeah, I mostly look at it in
Speaker 1: terms of attention that whatever you pay attention to is
Speaker 1: what you're feeding, and whatever you're feeding you're creating more
Speaker 1: of and becoming more of. I love that As you
Speaker 1: were talking about that, it made me think about addiction
Speaker 1: and the way that something that starts really small, like
Speaker 1: in my case, started as you know, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have a couple of drinks. I'm gonna try drinking
Speaker 1: with some friends, right, ends up as you know, a
Speaker 1: homeless heroin addict. Like it's a small thing, but just
Speaker 1: little by little it really grew to be kind of
Speaker 1: an out of control monster. Absolutely. Do you want to
Speaker 1: go into your father's story? Would you rather just stay
Speaker 1: away from that? I'm happy to go anywhere you want
Speaker 1: to go. Brother. All right, Well, when we talked last time,
Speaker 1: you know, you did bring up that addiction was what
Speaker 1: came to your mind and your relationship to it. When
Speaker 1: I asked you what your relationship to addiction was, was
Speaker 1: that your father was an addict. Can you tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about what that journey was like for you? Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So for me, what happened was is I grew up
Speaker 1: the oldest of three boys, and we grew up in
Speaker 1: a fairly honestly like, very conservative religious family even and
Speaker 1: what happened was my parents got a divorce and it
Speaker 1: shook kind of the core of what I thought was reality.
Speaker 1: I thought things were stable, and I think that this
Speaker 1: is actually an interesting aspect of trauma that I've learned
Speaker 1: this is that with these kind of seismic events, for
Speaker 1: kids especially, it feels like you go back to zero,
Speaker 1: and like, honestly, everything that happened before that in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways can be lost in like the chambers
Speaker 1: of your mind, and it can be hard to even
Speaker 1: remember things from before that in certain cases unless you
Speaker 1: do some of the deep work. But it feels like
Speaker 1: you start over from zero at that point. But yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad was surprised by the divorce, although it had
Speaker 1: been growing for a long time and ultimately he just
Speaker 1: wasn't able to hold it together. In his deep depression.
Speaker 1: He got invited by a friend once just to go
Speaker 1: get some drinks and he said, yes, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think he had struggled with addiction in the past, but
Speaker 1: it was something he had kind of let calm and
Speaker 1: that ultimately just opened up the floodgates, and over time
Speaker 1: he was doing pretty much everything, and it was all
Speaker 1: over my house. By the time I'm like thirteen or fourteen,
Speaker 1: My friends and I are playing World of Warcraft in
Speaker 1: one room. My dad's doing all sorts of drugs in
Speaker 1: the next room with a lot of psycho people. Like
Speaker 1: my house becomes this looney bin place where like the
Speaker 1: weird old people are coming over and my friends are
Speaker 1: like this is not normal, Ben like this is this
Speaker 1: is weird, and I just kind of have to push
Speaker 1: it all out. I'm snowboarding, playing with friends and barely
Speaker 1: getting through school. I did barely get through school luckily,
Speaker 1: and did finish high school and then ended up preparing
Speaker 1: to go on a church mission. I felt like for
Speaker 1: me that was kind of a way to start over.
Speaker 1: My younger brother ended up joining the Marines, and so
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted a a way to start fresh,
Speaker 1: and that was the most plausible way for me. And
Speaker 1: in the pros says of me preparing and leaving on
Speaker 1: that age twenty, I did start to redevelop my relationship
Speaker 1: with my dad. We started to go to lunches together.
Speaker 1: For the previous few years before that, I had completely
Speaker 1: shut him out, Like he would come to my mom's
Speaker 1: apartment try to talk to us, and we would just
Speaker 1: stonewall and just tell him to leave because we could
Speaker 1: tell he was high. And so yeah, he started to
Speaker 1: clean himself up, and then I was gone for a
Speaker 1: few years on that journey, and he cleaned himself up
Speaker 1: during that time and ended up even becoming part of
Speaker 1: like addiction recovery circles. So it's been an interesting at
Speaker 1: my younger brother's dealt with addiction. I've dealt with various
Speaker 1: forms of addiction, and so it's something I think about heavily. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you come back from that and your dad is
Speaker 1: in better shape, He's doing well, much better, much better.
Speaker 1: Ship you guys work on repairing your relationship. Have you
Speaker 1: found that you've needed to go back and do any
Speaker 1: repair on yourself from what happened to you in those
Speaker 1: years or do you feel like you were able to
Speaker 1: kind of just be able to let it go and
Speaker 1: and kind of move on, or do you feel like
Speaker 1: you had some last and effects from those years. Both
Speaker 1: would be my answer. I would say. While I was
Speaker 1: doing that two year adventure, I guess missionary venture, I
Speaker 1: did a lot of internal healing, doing a lot of
Speaker 1: missionary service, community service, having a lot of big experiences,
Speaker 1: a lot of spiritual learning, also just a lot of
Speaker 1: self developmental learning, a lot of philosophical learning, and just
Speaker 1: connecting with other people with various backgrounds, and so I
Speaker 1: healed a lot on that experience. Let go of a lot,
Speaker 1: and then I would say I got home in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten. I've been home from about twelve years, and
Speaker 1: basically I've just been studying psychology ever since. I had
Speaker 1: zero college credits when I came home. You know, I
Speaker 1: ended up going obviously through a PhD in psychology, although
Speaker 1: it was organizational psychology. My undergrad was in what's called
Speaker 1: philosophical or theoretical psychology. And so I'm still learning. I
Speaker 1: would say, I don't think anyone's ever fully recovered, but
Speaker 1: I'm always learning, you know, better models of reframing my past, present,
Speaker 1: and future. And I think it's a continuous cycle. I'm
Speaker 1: now in the process now as a parent, and we
Speaker 1: adopted three kids in the foster system, where now they've
Speaker 1: got all this baggage and I can see that stuff
Speaker 1: I thought I had overcome is now coming out in
Speaker 1: different forms right as a parent, and so it's now
Speaker 1: a new way of going through healing process so that
Speaker 1: hopefully I don't pass stuff onto the next cycle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: parenting will do that for sure. I mean, my son
Speaker 1: is twenty three, so I'm at the other end of
Speaker 1: kind of where you are. But yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: brings all that stuff up, not only in sort of
Speaker 1: seeing them and thinking about what's good for them, and
Speaker 1: you can't help but reflect, well, what happened to me,
Speaker 1: but also I just think parenting sort of constantly brings
Speaker 1: us to our emotional edge where we really learn where
Speaker 1: we're limited, and we come up against our limits all
Speaker 1: the time, and that can be overwhelming, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: is very overwhelming, but it can also with our minds
Speaker 1: oriented in the right way, it can also be an
Speaker 1: opportunity to to grow and heal. Oh, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Have you ever read the books to Darta? Yep? My
Speaker 1: wife heavily suggested I listened to that or reader. I
Speaker 1: listened to books usually, and so I was. I listened
Speaker 1: to that book while walking the last two days, and
Speaker 1: I actually really liked what he said at the end,
Speaker 1: you know, in in that book, obviously his son is
Speaker 1: totally rebelling against him, and he says he would rather
Speaker 1: have kind of the suffering and the sadness of that
Speaker 1: than quote unquote a peaceful life without it. Right. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that was kind of a cool model
Speaker 1: or a cool perspective is is that obviously there's there's challenge,
Speaker 1: but there's joy. I think there's difference between joy and pleasure,
Speaker 1: and joy is a lot deeper, uh, And it comes
Speaker 1: with suffering, it comes with pain, it comes with sometimes
Speaker 1: sorrow and disappointment. But you can still actually have deep joy,
Speaker 1: which is lasting and something you've you've value, something of
Speaker 1: more of an enduring value. So I'm very happy. You know,
Speaker 1: I have six kids. But even when we first got
Speaker 1: the three kids as foster kids when I was I
Speaker 1: was back in two thousand fifteen, so this was the
Speaker 1: first year of my pH d program. This is also
Speaker 1: the year I'm starting out as a blog her, and
Speaker 1: so I'm taking on all these new things. Now we've
Speaker 1: got these three kids. I have zero idea had a parent.
Speaker 1: I fully admit for years I probably inflicted more pain
Speaker 1: than positivity on these kids because I just didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was doing, you know. I mean, I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: that's me being pretty rough on myself. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, luckily we still have them, and we've still
Speaker 1: got years, and it's a long term thing, and things
Speaker 1: can transform. Relationships are the reality, and so you can
Speaker 1: heal and change those and so it's a beautiful process.
Speaker 1: And I'm continually appreciative of it. Yeah, it is. So
Speaker 1: over the twelve years you've been back, you've sort of
Speaker 1: had to continually reframe, you know, your relationship to your past, present,
Speaker 1: and future self. And so I think that's a great
Speaker 1: place for us to transition into future self. So talk
Speaker 1: to me about why writing a book about your future
Speaker 1: self was so important to you. So I was writing
Speaker 1: a book called Personality Isn't Permanent back in two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: and I wrote that book because number one, I just
Speaker 1: felt like personality was a good vehicle to talk about change.
Speaker 1: I actually think personality is very transitory. I think identity
Speaker 1: is also very flexible. But identity, from a psychology standpoint,
Speaker 1: identity as internal. Personality is external. It was interesting because
Speaker 1: when I was doing that book, I actually had a
Speaker 1: lot of professors who had good relationships with one of them, specifically,
Speaker 1: he lived in my neighborhood when I was at Clemson
Speaker 1: doing my PhD. And we would walk all the time
Speaker 1: and we just deep dived on various topics and we
Speaker 1: even still do every once in a while. But he
Speaker 1: was under the assumption and it was It's kind of
Speaker 1: the model for a lot of psychologists for a long
Speaker 1: period of time, that personality is a very stable trait.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have a full on continuum from
Speaker 1: zero to a hundred, you might be able to move
Speaker 1: that dial by like five percent. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: an introvert, you're not going to become a full on extra.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the belief system of a lot of
Speaker 1: psychologists or old theories. But there's just so much new
Speaker 1: research coming out that proves the opposite of that. But
Speaker 1: also for me myself, I've just seen myself change intentionally
Speaker 1: and through healing. And so I was writing that book
Speaker 1: and I unexpectedly came across the research on future self.
Speaker 1: I'd never seen it, never heard of it talked about.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a small what they call a
Speaker 1: vein of research, a vein or a line of research.
Speaker 1: It was just small. But I came across it and
Speaker 1: I realized, this is a really big deal, and so
Speaker 1: it really informed a lot of that book. Personality isn't permanent,
Speaker 1: And I knew that my next solo book, I I
Speaker 1: also write collaborative books on entrepreneurship, but I knew that
Speaker 1: my next solo book would be a pure dive just
Speaker 1: onto future self and to me I think it's a
Speaker 1: lynch pin concept. I also, I'm starting to see that
Speaker 1: it's beginning to spread dramatically throughout psychology. So I believe
Speaker 1: that that's a big chunk of where the future of
Speaker 1: psychology and even therapy is going to be. I really
Speaker 1: want to get into that. But the way you came
Speaker 1: to my attention was the book personality Isn't Permanent. And
Speaker 1: you know, I've interviewed a lot of people at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, five hundred plus people, and so you know,
Speaker 1: we've had a couple of people who have the personality
Speaker 1: is fairly fixed mindset. And where I landed on this,
Speaker 1: and I'm just curious your thought about it. It's tends
Speaker 1: to be where I end up landing on anything if
Speaker 1: I think about it long enough. Is it's kind of
Speaker 1: in the middle, right, which is that not nearly as
Speaker 1: fixed as we used to think it was personality and
Speaker 1: there are some ways in which our personality also does
Speaker 1: remain consistent over time. So it seems to me that
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of both. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that I think I've really noticed is that personality
Speaker 1: changes more with deeply transformational things that happen, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's an obvious statement. But you know, I know, like
Speaker 1: recovery addiction, you know, the early years of that, there's
Speaker 1: a big change in who I was. I've had some
Speaker 1: spiritual sort of lack of a better word of sort
Speaker 1: of experiences or or awakenings that were relatively dramatic, and
Speaker 1: I can mark a line where I'm like, I was
Speaker 1: kind of a different person in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: after that. You know, where did you land at the
Speaker 1: end of that book? About just how much are we
Speaker 1: able to change personality? Well, so probably where I landed
Speaker 1: when I finished that book versus where I land now
Speaker 1: is probably two different territories, Okay. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the beautiful evidences of even past, present and future self models,
Speaker 1: is that even who I am and how I see
Speaker 1: things now versus where I was, call it probably the
Speaker 1: beginning of twenty when I finished that book, I know
Speaker 1: I'm in a different place and how I see things
Speaker 1: than even two years ago, two and a half years
Speaker 1: ago where I sit with it now, And I like
Speaker 1: your initial answer in terms of both, There's a few
Speaker 1: things I guess I'll point out. One is is that
Speaker 1: a lot of psychological perspectives, even William James, who was
Speaker 1: the father of American psychology. He believed that personality was
Speaker 1: very flexible up until the mid thirties, and then in
Speaker 1: the mid thirties he said it blastered or it became hardened.
Speaker 1: There is a lot of research. There's even a great
Speaker 1: book by a psychologist I think her name is ja
Speaker 1: I forget her name. I apologize. The book is called
Speaker 1: The Defining Decade. It's all about the twenties and about
Speaker 1: how your personality is going to change more in your
Speaker 1: twenties than in any other period of your life. I
Speaker 1: like that, but it also fits pretty closely with William
Speaker 1: James's initial perspective research. Now, there's a great book, and
Speaker 1: there's a great long study. It's the Harvard Men's Study,
Speaker 1: where they've followed a group of men for literally eight
Speaker 1: plus years, and there's a great book that follows that study.
Speaker 1: It's called The Triumphs of Experience, and literally it's it's
Speaker 1: nice to see longitudinal research where the same group of people,
Speaker 1: even though they're called an outlier group of people. These
Speaker 1: are men who went to Harvard, probably a lot of
Speaker 1: them white men. And there's other longitudinal studies that look
Speaker 1: at people from different backgrounds, people of different ethnicities and
Speaker 1: things like that. And so anytime you can look at
Speaker 1: longitudinal research where it covers a group of people for
Speaker 1: decades is very interesting. It follows people in One of
Speaker 1: the interesting things about that book is is that it
Speaker 1: shows that very nonlinear, non expected changes can happen in
Speaker 1: people's lives in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, where some
Speaker 1: can be very outspoken and then become quiet, or they
Speaker 1: generally have a sad temperament and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they become really happy, you know, maybe in their seventies
Speaker 1: or sixties, or they go like So, I'm a big
Speaker 1: believer that changes can occur at any time, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of research now that showing that personality will
Speaker 1: change with aging no matter what. But to your point,
Speaker 1: there are certain features that seem to endure in people,
Speaker 1: some of their corks or general approaches to how they
Speaker 1: do things or temperaments. I think where I'm at with
Speaker 1: it now, I actually really don't know how I even
Speaker 1: feel about personality as a concept. But if I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a person more as a whole, just as a person,
Speaker 1: their context, their model for living, their priorities, how they
Speaker 1: make decisions, how they operate. I think that people change
Speaker 1: dramatically over time. Like if I was to compare myself
Speaker 1: to who I was, and if you were just to
Speaker 1: look at my environment, my decision making, how I handle things,
Speaker 1: how I let people treat me, what I value, how
Speaker 1: I operate in the world. Sure you'll see some similarities.
Speaker 1: I certainly still writing books and I like studying psychology,
Speaker 1: so there's certain things that are strong. But if you
Speaker 1: watched my day to day decision making or even my
Speaker 1: model for decision making or what I care about, you're
Speaker 1: comparing two very different people, and so that's more how
Speaker 1: I look at it. Yeah, this question shows up in
Speaker 1: lots of different places. You know. The heart of it
Speaker 1: is the nature and nurture question, right, how much are
Speaker 1: we born with? How much is our environment? There's all
Speaker 1: sorts of research about happiness set point how much of
Speaker 1: your happiness can you actually change? And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, I think they're interesting questions, but they're
Speaker 1: also kind of ultimately not that important if you get
Speaker 1: the basic idea, And to me, the basic idea is
Speaker 1: there's a fair amount of things about your life that
Speaker 1: you can change, and you might as well focus on
Speaker 1: those things, and the things that you can't change, you
Speaker 1: don't even necessarily know what they are when it comes
Speaker 1: to your internal state. But there's plenty of ways that
Speaker 1: we can grow and heal, and you know, to the
Speaker 1: extent that we can do that is sort of an
Speaker 1: intellectual question, but in a practical sense, it's just knowing
Speaker 1: that we can and then getting on about doing it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer that I can change. Not only
Speaker 1: can I change who I am in the future, but
Speaker 1: I can change who I am in the present, and
Speaker 1: even I can change my past. That's a big aspect
Speaker 1: I think of a psychological view of time is that
Speaker 1: time is nonlinear. From a psychological standpoint, time is also holistic,
Speaker 1: which I go into a little bit in the book.
Speaker 1: But you know, the past is is a framing, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a perspective, and I may hate who I
Speaker 1: was in the past, and then in a few years
Speaker 1: from now, I might really have empathy and really respect
Speaker 1: who I was in the past. And so I believe
Speaker 1: that change is holistic at systemic, and that we carry
Speaker 1: it all with us. And I also believe it's practical,
Speaker 1: Like you said, if I even just look at my
Speaker 1: life right now versus where it was twelve months ago.
Speaker 1: I have intentionally made massive changes, but I've also overcome
Speaker 1: hurdles that I can see we're blocking me for years.
Speaker 1: You know. Just one example is I think for a
Speaker 1: long time I've had a tendency of being more of
Speaker 1: a people pleaser. I think that a lot of people
Speaker 1: have that where I will bend over backwards to get
Speaker 1: certain things, then maybe I don't even want rather than
Speaker 1: just asserting or owning that this is what I want,
Speaker 1: is what I value, and I'm okay walking away if
Speaker 1: if that's not what I get in various situations, and
Speaker 1: I've watched myself go through an emotional transformation to get
Speaker 1: to that point, it takes a lot and most changes
Speaker 1: emotional work. This is why Actually one of my favorite
Speaker 1: concepts is called psychological flexibility, based on what's called acceptance
Speaker 1: and commitment therapy. Becoming more flexible and becoming more emotionally
Speaker 1: pliable allows you to go through some fiery emotional experiences.
Speaker 1: By fiery, I mean just like refining. They could be
Speaker 1: insane transformational experiences, but you come through the other side
Speaker 1: not only refined, but you also come out through the
Speaker 1: other side far more flexible in your options. And so
Speaker 1: this is what I enjoyed, watching myself change how I
Speaker 1: approach situations that are difficult for me emotionally, and then
Speaker 1: through the other side it becoming my new norm, my
Speaker 1: new identity that I can now do this and what
Speaker 1: previously held me back is no longer a constraint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that idea of a psychological concept of time,
Speaker 1: which I promise we're getting to the new book here,
Speaker 1: but kind of what you just said around this idea
Speaker 1: of being able to change how we look at things
Speaker 1: so much I think of psychology. What is really helpful
Speaker 1: about it in a lot of ways is that there
Speaker 1: are real skills that we can learn that enable us
Speaker 1: to see the world differently, to engage with it differently,
Speaker 1: to reframe things. I mean, there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: powerful tools my experiences. They take time. Right, reframing of
Speaker 1: a of a difficult event doesn't happen all in one moment.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it does, but more generally it's like I see
Speaker 1: a glimmer of light with it that I didn't see before. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe I could think about it, Oh, I never thought
Speaker 1: about it like that, And then it reverts into its
Speaker 1: you know the way. I've thought about it a hundred times,
Speaker 1: but then again, oh, maybe I could think about it,
Speaker 1: and just this little slow retraining and something you said
Speaker 1: in the new book. I didn't want to touch on this,
Speaker 1: and you just sort of brought it up, which is
Speaker 1: you say that a reactive narrative about your past stunts
Speaker 1: your future. Talk to me about the correlation of those
Speaker 1: two things. So back to an idea of a holistic
Speaker 1: view of time that as humans, time is not sequential.
Speaker 1: It's also not chronological. In other words, my past is
Speaker 1: not behind me and out there as an unattached entity
Speaker 1: to my present into my future. But obviously my views
Speaker 1: of my past are going to impact not only who
Speaker 1: I am now, but also they're going to impact my
Speaker 1: own views of the future. And from a motivational standpoint,
Speaker 1: goals are usually categorized or couched in two different ways,
Speaker 1: either their approach oriented goals or avoid oriented goals, and
Speaker 1: all behaviors are approach or avoid goals. So if someone
Speaker 1: goes to punch me in the face, I'm probably gonna
Speaker 1: instinctively react and try to get a way, So that's
Speaker 1: me avoiding getting hit. So that you know, it's even
Speaker 1: subconscious but subconsciously the goal in that situation is to
Speaker 1: avoid getting hit or you know, you can consciously think
Speaker 1: about what you want, even if it's just I want
Speaker 1: to go to the fridge and get a drink, and
Speaker 1: then you can walk there and go get it, and
Speaker 1: so all goals are approach or avoid even going and
Speaker 1: getting the drink, though could be actually an avoidance of
Speaker 1: doing your work right. You might get triggered. And that's
Speaker 1: why a lot of times people get on social media
Speaker 1: is because they're actually trying to avoid something else. But
Speaker 1: when you have a reactive narrative about your past, and
Speaker 1: why I say reactive is is that it wasn't proactively reframed,
Speaker 1: you didn't approach it. To have an approach oriented manner
Speaker 1: towards the future, which is where you're approaching goals you
Speaker 1: choose consciously, you're actually consciously thinking about something you want,
Speaker 1: and then you're committing to that and courageously pursuing it.
Speaker 1: To have an approach orientation towards the future also requires
Speaker 1: an approach orientation towards your past, where rather than avoiding
Speaker 1: some of the painful experiences you've had in the past,
Speaker 1: you're no longer avoiding the past, because if you're still
Speaker 1: avoiding the past, then you're also avoiding the future. Usually,
Speaker 1: if you haven't settled things with the past, we're gone
Speaker 1: through a process of continuously resettling them, then a lot
Speaker 1: of your future is going to be about avoiding painful
Speaker 1: emotional experiences in the future because you're still emotionally raw
Speaker 1: from your past. And so usually if you have a
Speaker 1: reactive narrative about the past, what that means is you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a reactive narrative towards the future. You're going
Speaker 1: to spend most of your time tiptoeing and avoiding around
Speaker 1: things rather than going through them, which is essentially what
Speaker 1: acceptance and compartment therapies all about. You want to be
Speaker 1: proactive about the past, the present, and the future, and
Speaker 1: continuously proactive that you can approach your past and you
Speaker 1: can reframe it, you can reshape it, you can remodel it,
Speaker 1: kind of like clay. But I kind of look at
Speaker 1: reframing the past kind of like one of those lenses
Speaker 1: where there's like continuous kind of shifting and it just
Speaker 1: like slight color changes, and so like every day, I
Speaker 1: think I can have a slightly different and nuanced coloring
Speaker 1: or view or angle or meaning of my past. And
Speaker 1: it's never just a one time thing, but it's just
Speaker 1: a continuous then slicing or just subtle changing. But over
Speaker 1: time it's completely not comparable to the past view I
Speaker 1: had before. So that's kind of how I look at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the book you say, having a positive past depends
Speaker 1: very little on what events actually occurred. What happened to
Speaker 1: you doesn't matter as much as what story you decide
Speaker 1: to tell yourself about what happened. And I think the
Speaker 1: idea in there, and this is to me been one
Speaker 1: of the most fundamental liberating insights of the human condition
Speaker 1: has simply been that there's an event and then there
Speaker 1: is my view of that event, and that in between
Speaker 1: those two things, I create an assign of meaning all
Speaker 1: humans do or meaning making machines. I haven't really figured
Speaker 1: out how you turn that mechanism off. Don't know that
Speaker 1: you can, right, It seems endemic to who we are.
Speaker 1: But recognizing that process and just just the question what
Speaker 1: am I making this mean? And what else could it
Speaker 1: mean for me? Just is a profoundly liberating question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's exciting to know that as people we
Speaker 1: do get to choose the meanings. And I think a
Speaker 1: process of becoming mindful is observing yourself assigning meaning in
Speaker 1: the moment. Like, for example, if I'm having an argument
Speaker 1: with my wife, I can catch myself forming the story
Speaker 1: in my head by just actually listening to the thoughts,
Speaker 1: and I'm realizing, Okay, wow, I see what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm painting her into a circle. And so I think
Speaker 1: you you quickly can catch yourself in the unfolding of
Speaker 1: your initial meaning making process. But certainly what you're saying
Speaker 1: is great. That the beautiful thing is is that you
Speaker 1: actually do get to reframe the meaning. And that's ultimately
Speaker 1: what post traumatic growth, the whole field of that is
Speaker 1: all about, is is that you take what was a
Speaker 1: prior painful experience, which was traumatic, simply becau as you
Speaker 1: framed it in a way that disabled you. That's really
Speaker 1: a key aspect of trauma is that something painful happened
Speaker 1: and you now feel like you're disabled in some way
Speaker 1: because of what happened, whereas post traumatic growth reverses that
Speaker 1: and it helps you realize you're actually increasingly enabled because
Speaker 1: of what happened, and now you're grateful for what happened
Speaker 1: because now you are more capable, You've got better perspective,
Speaker 1: stronger sense of meaning and purpose. You can now do
Speaker 1: things and see things beyond what your former self could have,
Speaker 1: and so you become incredibly grateful to that experience, and
Speaker 1: you continuously mind more gold out of it by continuously
Speaker 1: thinking about it, learning from it, and then using it
Speaker 1: in ways that stop you from repeating the past. I
Speaker 1: love that, and I think it takes being proactive again,
Speaker 1: using your agency to choose how you frame the past.
Speaker 1: There is a quote, one of my favorite quotes, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure I threw it in the book. It's from
Speaker 1: a book called Time and Psychological Explanation for those who
Speaker 1: really want to dive into the psychology of time. That's
Speaker 1: a pure book by one of my favorite psychologists named
Speaker 1: Brent's Life. I don't know if this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a direct quote, but it's pretty close. He says that
Speaker 1: it's more accurate to say that the present causes the
Speaker 1: meaning of the past than it is to say that
Speaker 1: the past causes the meaning of the present. And what
Speaker 1: he means is is that in any given moment, you're
Speaker 1: always viewing the past from the perspective of your present self.
Speaker 1: Your whole past is a reconstruction. It's never actually something
Speaker 1: you're looking at objectively. Any time I think of a
Speaker 1: memory from my past, I could think about my dad
Speaker 1: punching a wall because he's upset right in an argument
Speaker 1: with my mom. But I'm always reshaping and I'm reconstructing
Speaker 1: in the moment what that memory is. I can never
Speaker 1: actually go back there. And so what Brent's Life is
Speaker 1: saying is is that the past is actually being caused
Speaker 1: by the present. Whenever I reconstruct a memory, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at it from my present self. And so he says,
Speaker 1: it's actually the present that causes the meaning of the past.
Speaker 1: It's not actually the past that's causing the meaning of
Speaker 1: the present. And so when you change in the present,
Speaker 1: you're going to change how you reconstruct your views of
Speaker 1: the past. And we see this in culture obviously, like
Speaker 1: when culture shifts, it then has a different opinion of
Speaker 1: what actors were doing in the past. And this is
Speaker 1: a lot of what cancel culture is all about. But
Speaker 1: we do it to ourselves all the time. Actually, the
Speaker 1: entire past is imagined. That's actually why framing the meaning
Speaker 1: of the story is very in your own control, because
Speaker 1: you're always imagining the past just as you're imagining the future.
Speaker 1: I've started sending a couple of text messages after each
Speaker 1: podcast listener with positive reminders about what's discussed and invitations
Speaker 1: to apply the wisdom to your life. It's free, and
Speaker 1: listeners have told me that these texts really helped to
Speaker 1: pull them out of dot pilot and reconnect them with
Speaker 1: what's important. When you get a text for me during
Speaker 1: your day to day life, it's one more thing that
Speaker 1: helps you further bridge that gap between what you know
Speaker 1: and what you do. Positive messages when you need them
Speaker 1: for me to you. So if you'd like to hear
Speaker 1: from me a few times a week via text, go
Speaker 1: to one you feed dot net slash text and sign
Speaker 1: up for free. In essence, what we were talking about
Speaker 1: a little bit was a quote by Victor Frankel that says,
Speaker 1: between stimulus and response, there's a space, right. It's a
Speaker 1: very famous quote. At this point, I'm going to use
Speaker 1: that quote as a jumping off point to another quote
Speaker 1: from Victor Frankel that you quote in the book that
Speaker 1: I think it's very core to the future self idea.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that quote? I'm not sure if I
Speaker 1: remember exactly, but I know that in the front end
Speaker 1: of future self there are some very insightful, crucial Franco
Speaker 1: quotes that are very enlightening. So yeah, i'd love you
Speaker 1: to go into whichever one you want, and we'll go
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah. Yeah. It says live as if you
Speaker 1: were living already for the second time, and is if
Speaker 1: you had acted the first time as wrongly as you
Speaker 1: are about to act. Now unpack that one for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'd love your thoughts on any of this as well.
Speaker 1: But that one's really interesting because that one is an
Speaker 1: invitation to view your present self from your future selves perspective.
Speaker 1: So he's saying, just to again state it, live as
Speaker 1: if you had already lived this moment. Now the one
Speaker 1: you're in, you've already lived it, and you actually did
Speaker 1: act as poorly as you are about to act, and
Speaker 1: you're forced to essentially deal with those consequences. But now
Speaker 1: you get to redo it knowing the consequences of what
Speaker 1: are about to unfold. And he essentially says this from
Speaker 1: his standpoint, is the way to live a responsible life.
Speaker 1: I find that quote very interesting because it's an invitation
Speaker 1: to actually look at your present self and your present
Speaker 1: actions from the perspective of the consequences that your future
Speaker 1: self has to deal with. That your future self at
Speaker 1: some point, whether or a year from now, five or
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, is looking back on this moment
Speaker 1: and saying, if I could read do that, here's what
Speaker 1: I would do. And I think that that's actually one
Speaker 1: of the most phenomenal aspects of a nonlinear view of time.
Speaker 1: It's just that you actually can think about your future
Speaker 1: self and then use that to better dictate your present self.
Speaker 1: It's actual an invitation to be more intentional in the present.
Speaker 1: And I catch myself on this all the time. And
Speaker 1: I've actually been thinking interestingly about that quote lately, even
Speaker 1: though I wrote this book almost a year ago, and
Speaker 1: even a book since, that quote has actually been on
Speaker 1: my mind because I've caught myself again letting the time
Speaker 1: go by where I'm getting caught in the thick of
Speaker 1: thin things. I'm getting the cotton business, and then missing
Speaker 1: what's right in front of me, which is my family
Speaker 1: and which even my health, things that are important, and
Speaker 1: then realizing if my future self and a few years
Speaker 1: could come back and talk to me, what would they
Speaker 1: ask me to do. Where would they ask me to focus?
Speaker 1: Where would the things that I'm caught up in not
Speaker 1: actually even matter at all? And I'm putting way too
Speaker 1: much weight in stuff that doesn't matter. Matter one other
Speaker 1: thing that I love about this, and then you go
Speaker 1: wherever you want to go with this and what stands
Speaker 1: out or but um, literally, getting in my car on
Speaker 1: the way here to have this conversation, I saw my
Speaker 1: four year old daughter's tricycle sitting in the front yard,
Speaker 1: and I was actually reminded of this quote because I
Speaker 1: just thought, you know, maybe if I was caught up
Speaker 1: in the moment, I'd be a little annoyed that the
Speaker 1: front yards messy. But it's actually pretty freaking awesome that
Speaker 1: right now I still have this moment where these kids
Speaker 1: are four years old, and so I actually love it.
Speaker 1: And I think when from the perspective of your future self,
Speaker 1: the real things matter and the things that don't matter don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much in that basic idea, you know. The
Speaker 1: first that comes to mind a really simple question I
Speaker 1: found that really orients me. And this is more when
Speaker 1: I'm getting, as you say, caught up in the thick
Speaker 1: of thin things, is I asked myself, is this going
Speaker 1: to matter in five days, five weeks, five years, Just
Speaker 1: that that question, having that one at my disposal is
Speaker 1: so helpful, because nine times out of ten I will
Speaker 1: go this thing I'm about to get bent out of
Speaker 1: shape about just doesn't matter, you know. And so just
Speaker 1: as a way offending off the moment to moment, day
Speaker 1: to day minor irritations, I found that to be incredibly helpful.
Speaker 1: And then the second thing is, you know, we've got
Speaker 1: a program we call Circle of Connection where it's really
Speaker 1: people going deeper and deeper into their spiritual lives. And
Speaker 1: one of the things we do is have them do
Speaker 1: an exercise that I first was exposed to from Stephen
Speaker 1: Covey into Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, And it
Speaker 1: is a very cheery sounding exercise called the funeral exercise,
Speaker 1: but it's a really powerful exercise because it's doing exactly
Speaker 1: what you're saying. You're fast forwarding to your death and
Speaker 1: you're then imagining like somebody from your work, somebody from
Speaker 1: your family, one of your friends, all these different people
Speaker 1: from these different domains of your life are going to
Speaker 1: stand up and talk about you, and what do you
Speaker 1: want them to say? This exercise tends to do two
Speaker 1: things and people. One is it often bums people out
Speaker 1: because they realize that what people might say about them
Speaker 1: right now is not what they would want. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's helpful to know, Okay, I want to change direction.
Speaker 1: But moving aside from that, it's more like, okay, I've
Speaker 1: got from now till my funeral. Let's just pretend that
Speaker 1: I was starting from scratch. I've got the chance to
Speaker 1: influence what these people are going to say about me.
Speaker 1: What do I want them to say? And done right,
Speaker 1: It's not like what do I want them to say
Speaker 1: because I want to be praised. It's finding out, like
Speaker 1: you said, what's important to me, what matters the most
Speaker 1: to me? And so this connection between our future self
Speaker 1: and our current self, that's one way in which we
Speaker 1: imagine our future self looking back. But talk to me
Speaker 1: about why it's important to have this connectivity between our
Speaker 1: future self and our present self. What are some of
Speaker 1: the reasons that's really helpful to have. It's huge, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's becoming a dominant theme and core finding. Honestly in psychology.
Speaker 1: One thing I will say as I jump into that,
Speaker 1: and just hitting a final note on what you were
Speaker 1: saying before is we're watching the Lord of the Rings
Speaker 1: series with my older three kids there now and seriously
Speaker 1: never even watched them. We're going through those with my kids.
Speaker 1: And there's a point in the Fellowship of the Ring
Speaker 1: where Frodo is asked to look in like this bowl
Speaker 1: of water essentially, and he's shown what his future is
Speaker 1: going to be, and interestingly, he's actually shown the worst
Speaker 1: case scenario if he doesn't succeed. He's shown like literally
Speaker 1: like the Orcs, like taking over the shire, burning everything,
Speaker 1: his friends, salmon, pipping in them like as slaves essentially,
Speaker 1: and then he's just explained that this is what's going
Speaker 1: to happen to if you fail, which is kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting kind of do me perspective. But I actually
Speaker 1: was watching that, I was thinking, I wish that I
Speaker 1: actually could see what would happen if I didn't fulfill
Speaker 1: who I believe I want to be, Like, I wish
Speaker 1: I could actually see and feel and feel it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Frodo was terrified of it, and he did feel it.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously that would be like a cheat code, right, um,
Speaker 1: if you could see the repercussions and the ripple effects
Speaker 1: of what would happen, and if you chose not to
Speaker 1: be intentional about your future self, and if you chose
Speaker 1: not to be intentional about what's going to happen, that
Speaker 1: even it is another example of how your view of
Speaker 1: your future dramatically and intimately impacts who you're being in
Speaker 1: the present. Interestingly, that just made me think of one
Speaker 1: of the core problems of addiction, which is that there's
Speaker 1: a line in the A Big Book something along the
Speaker 1: lines of like, we can't recall with sufficient force the
Speaker 1: suffering and humiliation of even a week or a day ago,
Speaker 1: right Like that would be the cheat code. If you
Speaker 1: could give somebody who's on the teetering of a brink
Speaker 1: of a of a drink, you know they're a months sober,
Speaker 1: and you could flash them back into some of those
Speaker 1: worst moments, they would run from the drink. Or if
Speaker 1: you could flash them forward to what's the worst case
Speaker 1: of what's ultimately going to be Yes, yes, but either way,
Speaker 1: but that is the thing is that we can't imagine
Speaker 1: or feel with you know, to use the line from
Speaker 1: that Big Book with sufficient force the impact of our
Speaker 1: actions on our future selves. And it ties beautifully with
Speaker 1: the question you just asked which is and this is
Speaker 1: one of the things that the researchers on this topic
Speaker 1: of leg or have dealt with, which is why do
Speaker 1: people under predict what will happen in their future? Because
Speaker 1: that is a core theme that occurs, is that people
Speaker 1: assume only minor changes in the future. As an example,
Speaker 1: if I were to ask the average listener on this podcast,
Speaker 1: this podcast may not be fair because this is an
Speaker 1: outlier group of people who are actually into change and
Speaker 1: things like that. But for the average person, who do
Speaker 1: you think you'll be in five or ten years? Most
Speaker 1: people assume that they're going to primarily be quite similar
Speaker 1: to who they are today. In other words, they think
Speaker 1: that their future self five to ten years from now
Speaker 1: is mostly going to be pretty dang similar to who
Speaker 1: they are today, when in reality, actually we radically underpredict
Speaker 1: how different our future selves will be. As a simple example,
Speaker 1: just looking about who you were ten years ago, and
Speaker 1: if you gave it enough thought, who you are right
Speaker 1: now versus who you were years ago is completely different.
Speaker 1: How you see the world, what you value, your habits,
Speaker 1: your goals, your friends, the type of music you listen to,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. I mean, sure, you may listen to.
Speaker 1: I still sometimes listen to some of the same music.
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons and the challenges of this
Speaker 1: Daniel Gilbert. He's the Harvard psychologist. He gave a great
Speaker 1: TED talk in two thousand fourteen on the subject called
Speaker 1: the Psychology of your Future. So he says, one of
Speaker 1: the initial problems and why people have this issue is
Speaker 1: because they don't imagine what will happen. It's not that
Speaker 1: we can't imagine, it's just that literally we don't imagine,
Speaker 1: and so we assume that the changes won't happen because
Speaker 1: we didn't take the time to imagine what changes will
Speaker 1: or could happen. And so a first step is actually
Speaker 1: just beginning to imagine. And that's a skill I think
Speaker 1: adults lose, and it's a playful skill that you can have.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great skill in terms of journaling
Speaker 1: and thinking, and obviously dreaming is great, but actually thinking
Speaker 1: about the context of your future self, what is it
Speaker 1: going to look like in five to ten years, actually
Speaker 1: lay out the context me For example, I got six kids,
Speaker 1: one of them is fifteen, so part of that context
Speaker 1: is that he's gonna be twenty five, and so really
Speaker 1: laying that out and so beginning to imagine is an
Speaker 1: initial step of connection. But to your initial question, maybe
Speaker 1: just the why of the question, why is being connected
Speaker 1: to your future self so essential? It's right back to
Speaker 1: what we were talking about with the addiction and with
Speaker 1: the Frodo example, is is that what the research shows
Speaker 1: is that the more connected you do get to your
Speaker 1: longer term future self call it three, five, ten plus
Speaker 1: years out, even the eight year old future self that
Speaker 1: Stephen Covey invites. The research is very explicit on this.
Speaker 1: The more connected you are to year longer term future self,
Speaker 1: the better and more thoughtful and more proactive decisions you'll
Speaker 1: make in the present. It's very ubiquitous. You're gonna make
Speaker 1: better health decisions, better financial decisions, you're gonna make better
Speaker 1: friend decisions, like really just being aware of, first off,
Speaker 1: where you want those decisions to go, but also thinking
Speaker 1: through the consequences of what's going to happen and beginning
Speaker 1: to direct where you want things to go. It's the
Speaker 1: opposite of I guess you would say addiction, because addiction
Speaker 1: is a is connection to the future self and more
Speaker 1: of a present self orientation. Yeah, yeah, it's a present
Speaker 1: self orientation. In a really destructive way. But you just
Speaker 1: led me into a question I wanted to get to
Speaker 1: at some point, So I'll get there now. You say
Speaker 1: in the book, you know, continually position your future self
Speaker 1: for freedom of time, money, relationships, and overall sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: So that all makes sense, right. We can all think
Speaker 1: of ways that had we done that in the past,
Speaker 1: we'd be in a better shape now. Right, my question,
Speaker 1: And when we think about a future self, this is
Speaker 1: to me the future self gone wrong, right, which is
Speaker 1: I'm going to work for sixty years and a job
Speaker 1: that I hate, and I'm going to save all my money,
Speaker 1: and everything is about what's coming. You know. Either I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of what's coming, but my whole life is about
Speaker 1: there's gonna be another moment and then I'm going to live.
Speaker 1: So how do we avoid that? If what we're sort
Speaker 1: of doing is, on one hand, trying to make sure
Speaker 1: that our future self is in good talk to me
Speaker 1: about how you think about that. I think it's beautiful
Speaker 1: and brilliant, and it actually cruxes or hits the crux
Speaker 1: of what I believe. The purpose of the book is
Speaker 1: just to hit the title one more time. It's literally
Speaker 1: called be Your future self now, and so the goal
Speaker 1: of the book is to think about where you want
Speaker 1: your future self to be and then ultimately to assume
Speaker 1: the identity of that person. Now, this would fit into
Speaker 1: what would be called like the b then do then
Speaker 1: have model which is the opposite of what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: What you're talking about is what Tim Ferris would call
Speaker 1: the deferred life plan, which is I'll be happy when
Speaker 1: you know, we're all under this terrible thing for thirty
Speaker 1: or forty years, so that eventually my future self can
Speaker 1: go and sit on the beach when he's old, fat
Speaker 1: and tired. And you know what I mean, Like that
Speaker 1: is the future self gone wrong. So there are extremes
Speaker 1: and there's nuance here. I'm not one for a deferred
Speaker 1: life plan, although I don't want to be reckless with
Speaker 1: my future. At the same time, I think you can
Speaker 1: have both. I think you can continuously be investing in
Speaker 1: a compounding future self, you know, whether that's just on autopilot,
Speaker 1: having a certain amount of money that's going into a
Speaker 1: retirement nest egg that you know, is building towards the
Speaker 1: future of freedom that you increasingly want. Having that process
Speaker 1: and those systems where you're continually creating a compounding future
Speaker 1: is great, but it's also misleading to overly assumed that
Speaker 1: you'll even be in that future, right Like, you might
Speaker 1: be dead, you could get hit by a car, right
Speaker 1: And so if you're only preparing for the future and
Speaker 1: never actually living in the present, certainly you're going to
Speaker 1: miss a lot of the gold that's right here right now.
Speaker 1: How I try to use this to move my life
Speaker 1: forward dramatically now in the present is is I tried
Speaker 1: to assume. There's actually a great quote from Neville Goddard.
Speaker 1: He said, assumed the feeling of your wish fulfilled, and
Speaker 1: assume the consciousness of being the one you want to be,
Speaker 1: and then you'll be saved from your present state, is
Speaker 1: what he also says. So for me, I think about,
Speaker 1: back to the frontal quote, who is my future self?
Speaker 1: Not where are they? But who are they? Who do
Speaker 1: I imagine them to be? And who would I want
Speaker 1: them to be? And then also where, what where? And
Speaker 1: what would I like their life to be like? But ultimately,
Speaker 1: the usefulness of thinking about the future self is so
Speaker 1: that I can start being that person now, you know,
Speaker 1: back to the idea of the eighty year old self,
Speaker 1: It's really about using who you want to be to
Speaker 1: impact who you're being now. And so if I want
Speaker 1: my eight year old self to have, you know, great relationships,
Speaker 1: I can use that. You know, that's what Fruncal invites
Speaker 1: us to do. I can use that to immediately change
Speaker 1: who I'm being right now. I can go home and
Speaker 1: be an amazing father and and be thoughtful about who
Speaker 1: I want to be. I can also stop avoiding situations
Speaker 1: out of fear, because now I'm operating more from the
Speaker 1: premise or the identity of my future self, who has
Speaker 1: far more courage, far more forthesight. And so I think
Speaker 1: the major goal is to use your future self as
Speaker 1: inspiration and as the identity from which you can move
Speaker 1: forward in the isn't from a lot more of a
Speaker 1: powerful place rather than kind of the weekend state which
Speaker 1: often people are operating from their past self. I think
Speaker 1: it's much more powerful to operate from your desired future self.
Speaker 1: I keep giving these sort of like little questions or
Speaker 1: little tag ons, But one of them for me that
Speaker 1: I often do is if I'm sitting there and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do whatever this thing is right
Speaker 1: in front of me, I think about my future self.
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about like my twenty year future
Speaker 1: second in an hour, exactly in an hour from now,
Speaker 1: because he's coming, right, I could feel fairly confident that
Speaker 1: hopefully in an hour, I'm going to be here. And
Speaker 1: if I spent that hour working on what I wanted
Speaker 1: to work on, or I spent that hour playing solitaire,
Speaker 1: that has an immediate consequence that guy in an hour
Speaker 1: is going to feel different. It's not even that an
Speaker 1: hour at the end of the day makes a huge difference, right,
Speaker 1: It's an hour of your life, right, But as we
Speaker 1: talk about, things compound, But it's that in an hour,
Speaker 1: how do I want to feel? Amen? Amen? You know
Speaker 1: I just used that as a way to make myself
Speaker 1: exercise as a way to make myself actually right, as
Speaker 1: in a way to make myself prepare for the interview
Speaker 1: when I'm having some resistance to doing so. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite examples from the book was from Jerry Seinfeld,
Speaker 1: and he talked about night guy versus morning guy, right,
Speaker 1: and he talked about how night guy always screws morning
Speaker 1: guy because he stays up late, and then morning guys
Speaker 1: got to wake up with four hours of sleep and
Speaker 1: go to work right, and that's the present self paying
Speaker 1: little heat. And so for me, similar to what you're describing,
Speaker 1: one of the huge things my wife and I have
Speaker 1: been placing emphasis on is usually trying to get eight
Speaker 1: hours of sleep at night. And that's a form of
Speaker 1: I'm going to cultivate this for tomorrow's self, Like I
Speaker 1: love waking up having gotten a deep, impactful seven plus
Speaker 1: eight plus hours of sleep, and that was an investment
Speaker 1: in tomorrow rather than doing some form of mindless, low,
Speaker 1: very low grade consumption, you know, usually scrolling or some
Speaker 1: form or just whatever it was. Even if it was
Speaker 1: decently a decent quality of activity, the cost through the
Speaker 1: benefit analysis is quite low. And so yeah, I agree
Speaker 1: with you, and I'm big, big, big on morning routines.
Speaker 1: For this reason is that I know that if by
Speaker 1: call it nine am, if I've actually done a lot
Speaker 1: of amazing things that morning, I will feel and be
Speaker 1: a different person for the rest of the day. I'll
Speaker 1: show up differently with my family. I'll just in general
Speaker 1: be more present because I put first things first. If
Speaker 1: it's like eight or nine in the morning and I've
Speaker 1: already done my morning during knowing I've gone on a
Speaker 1: walk or something I've got you know, got to the gym,
Speaker 1: but I've also done some hard creative task, whether it's
Speaker 1: working on the book, and it's usually not that hard, Hilariously,
Speaker 1: when you actually just allow yourself to get into it,
Speaker 1: it's actually something that you can train yourself to just
Speaker 1: prime a flow state, and the hard parts just maybe
Speaker 1: the initial resistance of jumping in. But when I've actually
Speaker 1: just allowed myself to be proactive for the first hour
Speaker 1: two in the morning and done something that's important to
Speaker 1: that idea of the feeling of the future self even
Speaker 1: just think about where do I want to be and
Speaker 1: how do I want to feel by seven eight nine am.
Speaker 1: I feel excellent when I've done first things first and
Speaker 1: I then operate excellently for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: That's the reverse of Seinfeld. The morning guy is making
Speaker 1: the evening guy happy. He's like, you know, because you
Speaker 1: get to the end of that day, you know, a
Speaker 1: day well lived like that, and it feels good, right,
Speaker 1: you can sort of relax and go, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: versus we all know what it's like to you know,
Speaker 1: piss away a day, right. I don't mean like do
Speaker 1: something we enjoy. I mean like as Tim Urban brilliantly
Speaker 1: wrote about, you know the dark playground, right, Like, you
Speaker 1: know you should be working, but you're on Facebook. You're
Speaker 1: not enjoying it. You should be working, but you're on ESPN.
Speaker 1: It's not like there are things that would be fun
Speaker 1: in the right context, but in the context they're in,
Speaker 1: they have this yucky feeling to them. We all know
Speaker 1: what a day spent like that feels like it's six
Speaker 1: o'clock at night versus a day where you really just
Speaker 1: got in there and did what matter? Do you? I
Speaker 1: mean that that guy at six pm or gall at
Speaker 1: six pm feels radically different. Yea. And the nice part
Speaker 1: is you can have both if you put first things first.
Speaker 1: You know. If you things first, you know, then by
Speaker 1: all means scroll on Facebook or do whatever form of
Speaker 1: lazy consumption you want to do. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: can have both when it's in that way. But I
Speaker 1: agree with you, and I actually think that the thing
Speaker 1: that ages people the most is when they're essentially having
Speaker 1: deep cognitive dissonance, which is where they want to be
Speaker 1: doing something but they're purposefully or they're they're watching themselves
Speaker 1: do something that's essentially taking them the opposite direction. You know,
Speaker 1: if you want to be working on that book or
Speaker 1: you want to be, you know, exercising, but instead you're
Speaker 1: eating the cake. It kills the enjoyment of it because
Speaker 1: it's going against the goal that you primarily want to
Speaker 1: be pursuing. And so you're essentially watching yourself shoot yourself
Speaker 1: in the foot. And I believe that ages people a lot.
Speaker 1: I really do. I believe that that is more of
Speaker 1: an aging effect or than even putting chemicals in your body.
Speaker 1: And I actually believe that you'll put more chemicals in
Speaker 1: your body that are bad for you because of numbing yourself.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because you just simply won't set your future
Speaker 1: self up. Even in micro future selves, you know, you're
Speaker 1: who you want to be in the morning. Like, just
Speaker 1: by using your futureself to just advance yourself forward and
Speaker 1: watching yourself do it, well, then you can enjoy and
Speaker 1: you no longer have that internal regret or frustration with yourself.
Speaker 1: So what are some practical ways that we can use
Speaker 1: this idea of future self? Like, what are some things
Speaker 1: listeners could sort of say, all right, a couple of
Speaker 1: things I can go do that are going to help
Speaker 1: me use this future self concept today. One thing I
Speaker 1: will say and then jump into the practicalities, is that
Speaker 1: every one of us listening to this, or you and
Speaker 1: I talking, is being driven by whatever view we most
Speaker 1: hold for our future self. The more you realize this,
Speaker 1: the more you can't disagree with it, which is just
Speaker 1: that we all already have a future self to which
Speaker 1: we've committed ourselves too, and everything we're doing right now
Speaker 1: is being driven by that. You know, you may be
Speaker 1: driving your car on your way to work, so that
Speaker 1: is the future that you committed yourself too, and you're
Speaker 1: just going through the motions of living it out. And
Speaker 1: so we're all being driven by or pulled forward by,
Speaker 1: however you want to look at it, by whatever future
Speaker 1: we've most committed to ourselves too. And so that's just
Speaker 1: a humble admittance. And I have to acknowledge that myself
Speaker 1: sometimes and ask myself, what future have I settled myself to,
Speaker 1: either in the short term or the long term that's
Speaker 1: driving everything I'm doing right out. So there have been
Speaker 1: points in my life where I spent my day, literally
Speaker 1: a day, largely sitting in my office plane solitaire like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, who, in what way does that person that
Speaker 1: situation align with what you're saying about I was committed
Speaker 1: to a future outcome. Talk to me about how that
Speaker 1: concept plays into that sort of behavior. So there's a
Speaker 1: few different ways of looking at it. One is is
Speaker 1: that the bigger picture future you see for yourself allowed
Speaker 1: for that right. So that's one is that usually you
Speaker 1: will not do things that the bigger picture future you
Speaker 1: have for yourself filters out. The future in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways is a filter. And so one thing is
Speaker 1: is that in the longer term you see that this
Speaker 1: behavior somehow fits with that future, even if maybe in
Speaker 1: your head you might say, well, my future self won't
Speaker 1: waste a day on solitaire. But the truth is is
Speaker 1: that if you're engaging in something, it's because you haven't
Speaker 1: released it from your future. You truly haven't. But in
Speaker 1: a shorter term, there was some side of you that
Speaker 1: either the day before thought to yourself, tomorrow, I'll probably
Speaker 1: play solitaire, like seriously, like in the short run, that's
Speaker 1: probably one of the things that you were most looking
Speaker 1: forward to doing when you woke up. Even if you
Speaker 1: have some gnawing sense of this is self defeating behavior,
Speaker 1: there's some side of you that places a lot of
Speaker 1: emphasis on that and you look forward to it and
Speaker 1: you have a lot of meaning to it, and so
Speaker 1: you were looking forward to it and you've ritualized it,
Speaker 1: and so you were thinking about it long before you
Speaker 1: actually did it. Because what it feels like is when
Speaker 1: I would wake up, you know, back to morning guy
Speaker 1: and nighttime guy, morning guy or nighttime guy the night before,
Speaker 1: we'll be like, we're not doing that again tomorrow, Like,
Speaker 1: but then you do it. Is that what you're saying? Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you do it, you know, And then it's the
Speaker 1: avoidance that we talked about, right, A lot of people
Speaker 1: have an avoidance, and so you know there's some sort
Speaker 1: of avoidance going on there. So maybe it's that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to look at it through that lens. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's that there's a vision of my future self, even
Speaker 1: if that future self for me is only an hour away,
Speaker 1: that thinks I can't do this. Well. How I think
Speaker 1: about when you bring up the avoidance side, is that
Speaker 1: the future you say you want is not something you're
Speaker 1: yet committed to, yes, and it's not vivid enough. It's
Speaker 1: not something you're pulled towards enough that you're actually still
Speaker 1: avoiding it. You're still actually avoiding that future either because
Speaker 1: you don't believe in it, you're not committed to it.
Speaker 1: If you were truly committed to it, you wouldn't allow
Speaker 1: this thing. And so you know there's something there that
Speaker 1: you're actually still avoiding. It could be fear, it could
Speaker 1: be a lot of things, but you're you're still avoiding
Speaker 1: that future and you're committing to the solitaire instead. What
Speaker 1: it clearly is to me is an inability to connect
Speaker 1: to my future self, right. It's an inability to say,
Speaker 1: my future self is going to feel this way in
Speaker 1: an hour, a week, a month. There's no part of
Speaker 1: me in those moments. Thankfully, this is multiple years in
Speaker 1: the review, although it shows up in in brief moments.
Speaker 1: But I have strategies for working with it. But there
Speaker 1: was no part of me that would engage in an
Speaker 1: hour of that and be like, well, that was time
Speaker 1: well spent. That was really good, good work. It was dread.
Speaker 1: It felt like addiction, right, And the way addiction feels,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about, is I know I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing this, and yet I am doing it, and that
Speaker 1: feels awful. I'm thinking out loud here, but sometimes when
Speaker 1: I think about addiction recovery. We often talk about the consequence.
Speaker 1: There has to be a consequence, and that is true
Speaker 1: that consequences help us see like, this isn't working. But
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that has to be there
Speaker 1: for recovery to flourish is hope. Right, consequence alone leads
Speaker 1: to despair. Right, But oh, this isn't working. But now
Speaker 1: I see something that might. And I can actually envision
Speaker 1: a future self version of me that is is better,
Speaker 1: is healthier, you know, those two things happen. And so
Speaker 1: I think that to a certain extent, it is the
Speaker 1: inability to connect with the future self with when you said,
Speaker 1: sort of have any vivid clarity on what the future
Speaker 1: is going to hold and what about it I want.
Speaker 1: It's a state that feels profoundly disconnected. Yeah, people who
Speaker 1: are pretty deep into the psychological literature, they have a
Speaker 1: huge amount of respect for what hope is. Basically, hope
Speaker 1: is to the psyche like what oxygen is to the body.
Speaker 1: It really is that important. Without hope, and this is
Speaker 1: essentially Frouncle's premise. Without hope, the psychology suffocates and dies,
Speaker 1: you know, which leads to the death of the body.
Speaker 1: And you can see it. If the economy doesn't have
Speaker 1: hope in the future, the stock market tanks, you know,
Speaker 1: And so you can equate that to yourself that if
Speaker 1: you don't have a hopeful, purposeful future, your own stock market,
Speaker 1: whatever that means for you, is going to tank, your
Speaker 1: behavior is going to tank, et cetera. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that was I think Fruncle's core message of
Speaker 1: everything he taught was is that you need to have
Speaker 1: of hope and a meaning to fulfill in your future
Speaker 1: in order to have a functioning life in the presence.
Speaker 1: And that was his premise for everything he did. He
Speaker 1: even said, you know, what man needs is not a
Speaker 1: tentionless state, but the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal,
Speaker 1: a freely chosen task. And so he believed that you
Speaker 1: need a future self that is specific, vivid, purpose oriented,
Speaker 1: meaning it's a goal oriented. And that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of the research on hope has found itself is is
Speaker 1: that to be high hope, which is the opposite of
Speaker 1: what you're describing. And I do it, by the way
Speaker 1: regularly where I'll catch myself, you know, numbing myself in
Speaker 1: some way in an avoidance of what I would like
Speaker 1: to be doing, and so we all do it. So
Speaker 1: that's when you've shifted away from your future self and
Speaker 1: you're now not connected to your future self, and so
Speaker 1: you're now numbing your present self with short term rewards,
Speaker 1: short term dopamine. You're numbing yourself because you're not connected.
Speaker 1: And so obviously Froncle's invitation, especially for people in dire situations,
Speaker 1: is you've got to be acted without a why to
Speaker 1: live for you can't bear the how, right, So I
Speaker 1: think that that's actually, honestly, the first practical step is
Speaker 1: getting connected to your future self and getting excited about
Speaker 1: your future self. That's exactly if you listen to Elon
Speaker 1: Musk as just an example, he says that that's why
Speaker 1: he wants to go to Mars is because he wants
Speaker 1: a mission that excites him so much in a sense
Speaker 1: of adventure that it gets him out of bed, wanting
Speaker 1: to see what's going to happen, wanting to see where
Speaker 1: it's going to take him, wanting to have something that's
Speaker 1: pulling him forward rather than something he's just pushing along.
Speaker 1: And so that's another model, in addition to the approach
Speaker 1: and avoid model of motivation is push and pull which
Speaker 1: is you want to be pulled toward a future that
Speaker 1: excites you um rather than feeling like you have to
Speaker 1: push something along with willpower. I do think about my
Speaker 1: future self ten years into the future, and I also
Speaker 1: do surround myself intentionally with people who continuously trigger me
Speaker 1: towards a better future self. I'm proactively around and I've
Speaker 1: done this for a time, and proactively around people who
Speaker 1: are decades older than me, who have made really smart decisions.
Speaker 1: It's not hard, because we're lucky enough to be around
Speaker 1: millions of people, or even in our circle thousands of people.
Speaker 1: But we see enough examples, and if you're mindful, you
Speaker 1: can look at the examples and you can say, I
Speaker 1: can see that this person's life is the way they
Speaker 1: are because of certain things that they did, and we
Speaker 1: all go on our own path and there's no judgment.
Speaker 1: It's more just about learning. But I'm very intentional around
Speaker 1: being around certain people that then forced me to introspect.
Speaker 1: I then look at some of my behaviors that I'm
Speaker 1: enabling or or have allowed to continue, and say, if
Speaker 1: I keep this up for another five or ten years,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what the compounded effect is going
Speaker 1: to be, but it's probably gonna be many degrees off
Speaker 1: from where I'm actually wanting to go. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a great quote from J. M. Barry. He's the
Speaker 1: playwright to the original Peter Pan, and he said that
Speaker 1: the life of every Man is a diary in which
Speaker 1: he's keeping one while hoping to be writing another. And
Speaker 1: his humblest moment is when he compares the volumes what's
Speaker 1: actually happening with what he wanted it to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can go off there, but I certainly have plenty
Speaker 1: of practical steps if we want to go into them.
Speaker 1: Wherever you want to go from here, well, let's hit
Speaker 1: a couple of practical steps. Because we're nearly out of time.
Speaker 1: Let's do that. So one is is how I look
Speaker 1: at it. Obviously it can be plaguing to try to
Speaker 1: set concrete plans for a future. Stuff you can, as
Speaker 1: I said, I have every week on autopilot, a certain
Speaker 1: amount of money leaves my bank account, goes into my
Speaker 1: investment account, and that's just gonna be an autopilot for
Speaker 1: a long time. Hopefully over time continuously change the amount
Speaker 1: that goes in. But that's me strategizing for my longer
Speaker 1: term future self in terms of strategizing for a more
Speaker 1: practical future stuff. I really think that three years is
Speaker 1: a good round number. Certainly I'm strategizing for the beginning
Speaker 1: of next year as well. You know, we're recording this
Speaker 1: close to the end of a year two, so I
Speaker 1: do Obviously it can be practical and think about year legals,
Speaker 1: but I like thinking about a bigger picture or holistic transformation.
Speaker 1: I've seen that I can really transform my life in
Speaker 1: a big way in a two to three year period
Speaker 1: of time if I'm really thoughtful and intentional, and so
Speaker 1: I like having no more than a three year timeframe
Speaker 1: on specific goals and no more than three priorities. That
Speaker 1: was something that I've learned heavily through Jim Collins, who
Speaker 1: wrote Good to Great. He wrote B two point oh
Speaker 1: Peter Drucker said do first things first and never second
Speaker 1: things second, because if you go for a second things,
Speaker 1: you'll never get the first things done. And so for me,
Speaker 1: I only have three core areas where I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: my future self, and those are the areas I'm If
Speaker 1: you think about watering a garden, you know, those are
Speaker 1: the areas where I'm watering. And so for me, I
Speaker 1: have three core priorities that I'm like, these are the
Speaker 1: few areas that are essential to me. Everything else is
Speaker 1: outside of these areas, So everything else is noise. This
Speaker 1: is the signal. This is where I'm gonna pour the
Speaker 1: water on these. Anything outside of these is me watering weeds.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to invest all sorts of time, energy
Speaker 1: and attention into transforming these as much as possible over
Speaker 1: the next few years, because I believe that once I
Speaker 1: get there, that opens up additional freedoms that all want.
Speaker 1: But this is where I want to be focusing. So
Speaker 1: can you give us an example of one of your
Speaker 1: three core priorities for three years? I'll give you mine
Speaker 1: right now as an example. So you know, as we're talking,
Speaker 1: it's the end of twenty twenty two. So if I'm
Speaker 1: starting to think about where i want my future stelf
Speaker 1: to be and call it five, there's a few things
Speaker 1: that really matter to me. One would be obviously my family.
Speaker 1: So like my three older kids are essentially teens, and
Speaker 1: I see that lots of changes are going on in
Speaker 1: their life. Right my family will probably, just based on
Speaker 1: my philosophy, be a core priority hopefully for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. I believe relationships are important, but it's
Speaker 1: insane emphasis right now, even more of an emphasis like
Speaker 1: if I number ordered them, And if I was honest
Speaker 1: with myself, I would say my career even though I
Speaker 1: might have said my family came first. If I was
Speaker 1: actually thinking about actual priority with how I spent my time,
Speaker 1: in my energy and attention, going through a PhD, building
Speaker 1: a writing career, as had to be honest, my career
Speaker 1: came first, even though I wouldn't like to say that
Speaker 1: to myself in the mirror um, but I can honestly
Speaker 1: say that that is taking a back seat for the
Speaker 1: next three years and hopefully increasing over time. But family
Speaker 1: is truly like where I'm putting so much energy, and
Speaker 1: that looks like a lot of different things, you know what,
Speaker 1: me and my wife doing therapy and even doing therapy
Speaker 1: with our kids, but also just having a lot better communication,
Speaker 1: having a lot more peak experiences, investing in their goals,
Speaker 1: taking them on adventures, traveling, also just doing small simple things,
Speaker 1: getting better at talking, and so, you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: where I want those relationships to be. When my son's
Speaker 1: eight teen, he's really into tennis as an example, and
Speaker 1: so like he wants to play college tennis. Uh, he
Speaker 1: probably wants to go on a mission himself in some way,
Speaker 1: and and so helping him think about his few yourself
Speaker 1: and so a big part of my future stelf and
Speaker 1: my top priorities. I want those relationships to be in
Speaker 1: a great place, but also where do they want those
Speaker 1: to go? So I'm just constantly trying to put quality
Speaker 1: energy and effort into that and being aware when things
Speaker 1: are taking me away from that. That actually is one
Speaker 1: of the core principles and premises of this book, and
Speaker 1: it actually is a quote that I think I lace
Speaker 1: multiple times throughout the book, which is that we're kept
Speaker 1: from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear
Speaker 1: path to some lesser goal. And so I catch myself
Speaker 1: when I'm in the lesser goals, which is where I'm
Speaker 1: watering the weeds, I'm in the thick of thin things,
Speaker 1: I'm outside my priorities, but I keep doing those things.
Speaker 1: And so I think catching yourself when you're in a
Speaker 1: lesser goal and it's taking you away from your core goal.
Speaker 1: So another one of my big three would certainly be
Speaker 1: writing you know, that's even a bigger emphasis in the past.
Speaker 1: I think maybe even up until now I was more
Speaker 1: interested in building a business and writing was the driver.
Speaker 1: But now way more emphasis on actually just quality of writing,
Speaker 1: growing as a writer, putting out intensely better work. So
Speaker 1: if I'm thinking about myself in three years, I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that the quality of what I'm putting out is incomparably
Speaker 1: better than what I've done to this point, and that
Speaker 1: as an author, that shows you know. So those are
Speaker 1: just two examples, you know, of priorities for me based
Speaker 1: on the future self that I most want one other.
Speaker 1: Just key point here is that I love the quote,
Speaker 1: and this is a quote from a statistician. But the
Speaker 1: quote is basically that no model is accurate or no
Speaker 1: model is true, but some models are useful. So if
Speaker 1: you don't like the idea of having three priorities, that's
Speaker 1: just a model. Throw it away. You know, you can
Speaker 1: do whatever you want. You can have a fifty sided
Speaker 1: future self if you want. I think that would be
Speaker 1: less focused. But these are just principles or models that
Speaker 1: you can use if they're helpful. Give us the quote
Speaker 1: again about the goal. I think that's where we're gonna end.
Speaker 1: That's such a great quote. Yes, so this is from
Speaker 1: Robert Brault, seriously, a quote for the Ages. But it's
Speaker 1: we're kept from our goal, not by obstacle, but by
Speaker 1: a clear path to a lesser goal. That's really powerful.
Speaker 1: And I think any of us, if we look in
Speaker 1: our lives, we can see that the world throws so
Speaker 1: many things at us, and we allow so many things
Speaker 1: to get thrown at us, that it's just so easy
Speaker 1: to get distracted into things that just aren't that important.
Speaker 1: Think about email, right, Like, the reason that I think
Speaker 1: most of us spend too much time on email is
Speaker 1: because it's easy. It's a clear path. It's a clear path,
Speaker 1: and it feels like you're doing something, and it's easy.
Speaker 1: It's a clear path to an easier goal. You know,
Speaker 1: most of us are not in a position where we're
Speaker 1: going to get rid of it. But I spend way
Speaker 1: too much time when I'm mindful, just you know, that's
Speaker 1: the seventeenth time I've checked my inbox today, Like, how
Speaker 1: can that possibly be helpful? But it's exactly that. It's easy.
Speaker 1: It's an easy way to feel like I'm doing something.
Speaker 1: I'm not making progress on the big thing because there's
Speaker 1: an obstacle. It's too that I'm choosing the easy thing,
Speaker 1: and the obstacle often is the thing we're avoiding because
Speaker 1: we're not connected and committed to get yourself. The obstacle
Speaker 1: is what transforms the obstacle. Going through the obstacle is
Speaker 1: what takes you from who you are now to becoming
Speaker 1: a future self that's radically wiser, more capable, just better.
Speaker 1: Is transforming yourself through the obstacles of climbing some peak
Speaker 1: towards a desired goal. When your life is built around
Speaker 1: lesser goals, and the lesser goals are anything that you're pursuing,
Speaker 1: either out of perceived need or just out of avoidance
Speaker 1: of what you really want to be doing. Perceived need
Speaker 1: could be I'm doing this because it's the job that's
Speaker 1: paying the bills, even though I'd really like to be
Speaker 1: doing this. That's still a lesser goal. You know, playing
Speaker 1: solitaire when you want to be working as you pursuing
Speaker 1: a clear path to a lesser goal. Jumping on social
Speaker 1: media and scrolling around is probably a clear path to
Speaker 1: a lesser goal, unless that's for some reason relevant to
Speaker 1: the real goal. When you're investing enormous amounts of time
Speaker 1: and too clear paths to lesser goals. What that means
Speaker 1: is that you have a present self orientation and that
Speaker 1: you're setting your future self up for disaster. And it
Speaker 1: can even be in subtle ways where you're on the
Speaker 1: hamster wheel and you're putting forth a lot of effort,
Speaker 1: but you're ultimately not making a lot of progress. And
Speaker 1: the only way to make true progress is to go
Speaker 1: through the obstacle towards your goal and to eliminate all
Speaker 1: lesser goals, and to continuously do this, because it's a
Speaker 1: continuous process. As you said, the world is not going
Speaker 1: to stop coming at you, and you're also never going
Speaker 1: to reach a place of perfection where you're not going
Speaker 1: to try to avoid the truth or avoid what you
Speaker 1: really want. And so not only do you have an
Speaker 1: outside world that's coming at you, you have an evan
Speaker 1: inside world you have to navigate to push those things
Speaker 1: away and to recommit continuously to what matters to you.
Speaker 1: One thing I will say just is is that when
Speaker 1: you actually use your future self as the model for
Speaker 1: making decisions on a daily basis, doesn't mean you have
Speaker 1: to be perfect throughout the day, but certainly for a
Speaker 1: lot of your decisions throughout the day, you're going to
Speaker 1: be making real strides towards something that's important, and continuously
Speaker 1: you will eliminate the daily battles, the daily worries, or
Speaker 1: the lesser goals that continuously ultimately keep you where you're at.
Speaker 1: Lesser goals keep you where you're at, whereas what you
Speaker 1: really want is what would ultimately move you forward. But
Speaker 1: every time you invest in a lesser goal, you've opted
Speaker 1: to stay where you're at. In most forms, you've opted
Speaker 1: to say, I'm not going to advance the position that
Speaker 1: I'm at, whether it's an hour on solitaire or whatever.
Speaker 1: You're saying, i will stay here for now and I'm
Speaker 1: going to let the present self win. Well, that is
Speaker 1: a perfect place to wrap up. Thanks so much, Ben,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we finally got to do this and
Speaker 1: overcame our technological challenges, and I've really enjoyed this conversation huge.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of fun. If what you just heard
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