DTD 75 Future You
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Amanda:
Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I am Amanda.
Laura:
I'm Laura.
Kendra:
And I'm Kendra.
Amanda:
And don't forget real quick to scroll down and give us a review. We are shooting to get 500, but today we are going to talk about future you. And Laura, how about give us an intro to this topic.
Laura:
Okay. So are you now where you thought you'd be five, 10 years ago? You might be in some ways and might not be in other ways.
Today we're going to talk about how learning to access, imagine, visualize ourselves in the future can help us create the future that we really want. So we are covering an article by Mariana Pogosyan, I hope I pronounced her name right, PhD., from psychologytoday.com. She has a lot of great information about future you that we're going to get into. I think about numbers all the time. And how we talk about gigabytes, we talk about trillion dollar deficits. We talk about really huge numbers.
I love the number googolplex and googolplexion, and I talk about those gigantic numbers with my kids all the time. And looking at those numbers and thinking about them, it's kind of jarring to realize that our lives are so short, and we on average have about 4,000 weeks during our lives. It seems like a pitifully small amount of time.
So Dr. Pogosyan quotes author Oliver Berkman, who described it as "an absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly, short amount of time," which I totally agree. It is. So we want to make sure that we are using our time, our most valuable non-renewable resource, the way we really want to. We want to be intentional and we want to create every day on into the future what we want from our lives, because this is all we get is these 4,000 weeks.
Of which we've already had a lot of them. So talking about our future selves can help us and thinking about our future selves can help us create that whatever it is that we want from our lives. So think about your future self. How do you feel about the person that you're going to be five months, five years from now?
20 years from now, does it seem real that that person is going to exist? Sometimes for me, it's hard to imagine her, but as we bring her more into focus and reality, it will help us. And you've already, you know, if you're a physician listening to this podcast, you know that you already have had experience with Future You.
You've visualized yourself in the future as a doctor. You were able to do the studying, the test-taking the organic chemistry, the biochemistry, the physics, the pharmacology, pathology, and then the residency training all the way to where you were finally an attending physician. And we can do the same thing in other aspects of our lives.
So according to research, for most people, the person in the future seems very distant and not real. I've certainly had that experience in my life as well. I remember that being, as a kid, I, I could not imagine that I would ever live to the age of 20. It just seemed impossible. But it is helpful to behave as if your future you is out there, and that everything that we do today can affect the wellbeing of that future person.
So no matter how unreal and distant they may seem, it's helpful to think about them. And because most of us think that that future person seems very distant and unreal, most of us are willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of that future person for the comfort of present us. So we might be more inclined to say, ah, my sweet husband,
often wanting to start like a new eating program or like wants to get on, you know, wants to be more healthy. Oh, okay. I'll start Monday. I'll start Monday. So that person in the future seems kind of unreal and distant, but right now the cheesecake is in front of us and so we often indulge in present comfort at the expense of the future person.
So this can manifest in many ways. You know, we've talked to, we've talked a lot about buffering throughout this podcast, and buffering is a prime example of how we indulge the present person at the expense of the future person. Buffering is a problem when it creates a net negative in our lives. So overeating, over drinking, over consuming media, these things that don't produce a net positive for the future us, and we're indulging in in the present.
That's what that looks like when we're ignoring future us to make ourselves feel better in the moment. And you know, another way this might manifest is not saving for retirement. Or it might even manifest as not like knowing that we don't want to be in our current job environment, but not taking steps to make whatever change we need to make so that we will have enhanced wellbeing.
Yeah.
Amanda:
Do you mean until a series of plagues happens to you? Oh yeah. And then you're like, oh yeah. Right. You're, you're when you said you didn't imagine that you would live till 21, you know, er doctors had really dark humor. So my dark humor with my husband, he, he always used to say when we were younger that he didn't think he'd live past 40.
He is much past 40. I'm like, tick, tick my friend. Like, what's going on? You're expired already. Like, what's, I thought we had an agreement. No, that's, it's not a funny joke, but that's that's how my humor works.
Laura:
That's funny. Yeah. So you are just, you know what? We're just gonna be better off if we assume that we're gonna live to a hundred and...
Why not? If we treat ourselves like we're gonna live that long, then if we just live to 80, or even if we just live to next week, we're gonna, we're going to have treated our future selves in a way that we feel happy about and we're not gonna be sad that we abused our bodies.
Amanda:
You know, I, I think Kendra will make it clear there's two extremes and we do both.
Like there is delayed gratification where we're not enjoying anything in the moment on behalf of the future self. Then there's the opposite, where we are overindulging in the moment at the expense of our future selves, and there is a sweet spot I think.
Kendra:
Yeah. Researchers call that overfocus on the present at the expense of the future myopia.
And the the other is the hyperopia, like delaying that gratification for like some, when I get done with this, I'll enjoy this or whatever. Also, that arrival fallacy we've talked about in a past podcast, but that instant gratification that we do, like not enjoying the journey, but kind of differentiating things that are just pleasurable, that give us dopamine hits versus like what true happiness is.
So if you crave the dopamine and you're constantly feeding that beast, That's more like hedonism. So you're just going after everything and all things that provide pleasure and that can get us in trouble. But it is also a way that we buffer things. I mean, we've talked about this before, like experiencing that full spectrum of emotion, like also being comfortable sitting with the emotions that are maybe not so comfortable versus like the joy, happiness, excitement emotion spectrum to experience both of those fully and to have that sign wave that is fully experienced, you have to be able to notice, allow and then choose what to do when you experience both ends of that spectrum in order to appreciate it fully.
And so when we do not experience or do not sit with or allow that kind of feelings of being uncomfortable, like dread, worry, fear, anxiety, all of those types of feelings in the moment. Instead we buffer for things that are pleasurable. Housewives and bottles of wine or my sitting in the car in the quiet, refusing to get out, like refusing to open the door to reality.
You know, all of those buffering was just not allowing us to experience this, but also not also giving a chance for possibly experiencing true happiness in the moment. Like, Look at what I accomplished. I showed up for work today. I took care of the patients I took care of today and I completed that and I'm home.
And now I get to be present in this moment. When we delay that true happiness, like we were talking about, the myopia was the term or arrival fallacy, we don't, we're not present in the moment. We're not able to even allow our brains to be gratified by the fact that we have accomplished things like along the journey.
The small wins. We talk about that a lot. And so therefore we continue to just chug along or, or power through and like, wait for this happiness. In this like, nebulous, whenever I'll be happy when this, I'll be happy when this, I'll be happy as soon as I can finish this. I'll be happy when I get into residency, I'll be happy when I become an attending.
I'll be happy when I can retire, I think is what I'm saying right now. But when we delay that that just that part about just not also recognizing that in the moment there's a lot of things along the way that we can get excited about. We just have that over focus and so that's that idea of arrival fallacy.
So in the article she had mentioned this quote, even as you lounge at the very beach where you are certain the future, you would finally find happiness, you start anticipating the delights are yet to come.
Like, we're going to dinner at this nice restaurant later on tonight, or I can't wait for tomorrow. We're going on the boat ride, whatever. Instead of just sitting and soaking it all in. Happiness isn't at the end of the road. It's right here, right now. And that was a quote I think you found Laura, that is quite impactful if you give it a chance to sink in.
If we aren't sure what we want to change in our lives, now we can imagine the future and ask what we want to be different. So, we work with clients and sometimes they may not know exactly what's, if everything's kind of steady going along and nothing in the moment is you know, Laura, you had the client would talk about, well, what does it look like in the future and where do you wanna be and where do you wanna go?
And sometimes that'll stop them dead in their tracks. It did me when I was first thinking about this, like, what do you mean what, well, what do you, where do you wanna be in one year, five years, 10 years? And you just never gave thought to that. And so those are decisions and thoughts and plans that you can start now.
And I mean, even if you can't imagine, because it seems so distant, I can tell you right now I have a senior in high school and. I blinked and we are going through senior activities, like I can't even believe it. So it does give me perspective when I think about where I am now, because now I'm like, ah, I've to do senior activities.
I'm, I'm struggling with the fact that I actually have a senior in high school. But where did that go? What, how did that get here? What? What? You know, and it just takes you by surprise. But it does make you now get that perspective where I would make every moment count, you know, for this next year or whatever.
And also teaching our children, I think once we do that and model that our kids too, being able to be very specific about like, okay, let's make every moment count. Let's do what we can today and plan for a great tomorrow. So I think those are all really great perspectives.
Amanda:
That's great, Kendra. So now I'm going to talk about how Hirschfield is a researcher who studies how people's perceptions of time affect their decision making. He says, when we focus too much on arriving at some finite destination in the future where we think we'll have narrative closure and we'll finally be happy, we miss the whole journey along the way. We miss the present. And that's that thing like when we have complete, total delayed gratification for the future, we're miserable for the majority of our lives until we get there. And anyone who's ever accomplished something big, that is tremendous satisfaction for a little bit of time.
You've all graduated med school, or at least a lot of you have. How long were you happy about that? I mean, when you were shooting for that goal, you, you thought that it would give you lasting happiness forever. That's not how it is and that's how every single goal is. So if we're choosing to delay gratification until we hit the goal, that's a mistake.
That's the vast majority of your life that you're waiting to be happy. On the other side when you were only living in pleasure in the moment, you are really screwing over your future self, right? That is most of the things that we overindulge in and most of the things that we consider pleasurable.
Again, pleasure is not happiness. Come at a detriment for the future self. So what we want to do is create a situation where all of ourselves, past, future, and present. It's the best scenario for all of us. So some of the ways where we can do that is to start to strengthen the connection between all of ourselves. I feel like it's pretty easy for a lot of us to say, if you had to give advice to your younger self, like to me, that's a pretty easy exercise.
Well, I would tell her like just like maybe relax, maybe enjoy the moment, maybe, you know, do those sorts of things. You can do the exact same thing. With a mind exercise where you're your future self giving advice to your current self. It's strange where when you ask your mind to do that, it'll 100% give you really good advice from the future self.
Like what is the 100 year old version of me say about what I'm going through right now? A lot of times, for me at least personally, is like, Sweetheart, you don't need to worry about this. It, it all works out in the end. Like, just enjoy the moment. Spend time with what's important to you, with your kids, with your family.
Stops ruminating about this stuff. It works out. Just relax. Enjoy the moment. You know, not at detriment to future self, but in a way where, These are the moments that I'm missing that she wants to remember because I'm, you know, up in my head about something. The hundred year old version of me actually has great advice for present me.
Another way to strengthen the connection between the two selves is to consider things that will likely remain consistent between your past, present and future selves. I can just put it out there that I'm probably pretty sassy. Like that part doesn't change. I'm probably smart. Like I, you know, I that is a characteristic.
I think I'm probably. I'm pretty good at figuring things out. Like that's something that has been consistent throughout my life. again, it's not what you do that makes you, you, it's who you are, what has always been, and what always will be about you and strengthen that connection.
The other thing is to visualize the best version of yourself and I, a lot of people. This is like an intro to manifesting, and I think we'll include a link to one of my favorite aspects of manifesting is a talk by Eckhart Tolle is imagine how that best version of you thinks, what do they do on the day-to-day basis?
How do they feel when they wake up in the morning? And the more you actually not just think about that best version of you, but you live into how she feels, that is manifesting, you are raising your vibration. And the person who is living as that. Makes different kinds of decisions than the one who isn't living as the best version of themselves.
And by making different decisions, by feeling as that best version of yourself, you do different actions, which then creates different results for your life. So the more time you can spend actually feeling that you are the best version of yourself, you create the best version of your life. It's not as meta as it sounds, it's because you really are doing different actions to create different results.
A final way that you can create a better connection between all of the versions of yourself is to imagine yourself in old age, what life will be like. What if you continue your current habits? Is that setting the 100 year old version of you up for success? Are you really putting her at a disadvantage?
For those of us who are people pleasers imagining the future version of you as a, as a person helps, at least me have a little accountability to her. Sometimes it's hard for me in the moment to make the best future decision for myself, but when I sit and think about myself as my future me, I really do want to be able to say thank you to the version of me now that is setting her up for success.
So to live the life that we want in the future, we have to imagine it and we have to work towards it intentionally and not just in our heads. We have to feel the best version of our future self. What does she do? What advice does she have for us? Otherwise, life is happening to us and we weren aren't making any progress to creating what, what we want.
And for a lot of us that have lived in this burnout space, 100% life was happening to us. We had become exactly like the dogs in the learned helplessness experiments life was happening to us and we felt like we had no agency. That's never been true. That is a, that is just another thought error that we have.
So if anything, spending time with the future, you can be such an enlightening, empowering exercise that is surprising when you really do ask your future self for advice, it's amazing that your brain will start to offer things up that are incredibly wise and insightful, and that came from you.
Laura:
Yeah, I think that that exercise, I mean, it could even be if you have a project that you're working on and you feel stuck or you don't know how to start, you can even ask your future you: Okay well, my future you has already finished this, and if I were to tell present me how to do it, what would I say to do first? It's crazy. It's amazing how helpful it is because we all, it just kind of pulls you out of your, out of yourself for a moment. We're generally able to be able to see where other people could start a project or start, you know, what their first step might be.
But we're less able to see it for ourselves in the moment. But getting, getting out and literally getting a different perspective, it's amazing. It's amazing what our brains can do for us.
Amanda:
Right? Yeah. So I, I do ask clients all the time, like, what would for future you say, and that does throw some people off, but you, you said it perfectly well, what would somebody else do that got this accomplished?
But that is wisdom from future you. It just is sometimes an easier stepping stone to get to the place where you're actually talking to the future version of you. It was still out of your brain how you figured out all the solutions. So if it's easier for you to think of how somebody else would do it, start with there.
But that wisdom really is coming from the future version of yourself.
Kendra:
That's really good. I know that, I think a part of too, what helped me do this was just being, feeling so disempowered about life happening to me. Like feeling just that helplessness just trying to break the cycle of just be doing, I guess is trying to kind of formulate words for this, but like always saying, I don't have time, or I'm just doing, I'm doing, I'm doing, I'm doing like, I'm feeling my days with doing all this stuff, which yes, we have responsibilities.
Yes, we have to do some things, but just I think what ultimately drove me kind of just to finally, I don't know if you wanna call it the breaking point, but it was like, it, it was almost like you were in this glass box and you could see out all of these wonderful things, but I felt stuck in the box that if I even were to reach out, there was just that glass or that plexiglas stopping me from ultimately getting it until you just wanted to scream and, and throw your arms to the side and break those glass walls down, and finally go after what really is fulfilling, what really is writing my story.
I think, you said this one time, we are the producer of our movie, and what does that script look like? Even that kind of helped my brain wrap around it a little bit better. Like, what does this script I'm writing? My feelings are disappointment, disempowerment, frustration, you know, all the things.
Am I really gonna write this script? So then I look back and I finally produce a movie on my life to be so sad.
Amanda:
I know. But like, if I had done this exercise much earlier, like asking my 80 year old or a hundred year old version of ourselves for advice, she would say, what the heck are you doing?
Get up. Like go do something. These are the things you don't care about. Any of this stuff like that. If I had done that exercise much earlier than whenever I did finally do it, she knows exactly what matters to me. She knows exactly what does not matter to me, and she also isn't very fond of me just sitting on my butt waiting for stuff to happen. Get up, right?
Kendra:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think also the second part of that is just you know, being in that, you know, my faith is so important. It was almost like dis, I, I felt dishonoring myself. You get one life, you get one body, you get one moment, you, you're here and really, A breath when we think about eternity, and I just thought, wow, how dishonoring, I mean, you know, I'm big on the honor thing and just how dishonoring am I being to myself, just not realizing and taking for full advantage of this one life I'm given.
I think that also caused me to pivot and was like a huge thing too, okay. , this is my one breath that I get, or my one, wisp of time. It's too short. Let's get moving. So thank you for listening today and thank you for being here. And just hopefully one thing, just maybe will cause you to pivot or at least cause you to pause and think about your future, you and the life that you could possibly have.
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