Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine who has the opportunity to work with youth on a regular basis. During our chat he mentioned how in conversations with them they’d often express their dreams and desires for the future such as going to a prestigious university, graduating with honors, having a family, and obtaining a successful and prestigious career yet he noticed that many of their current actions and behaviors were completely contradictory to what they claimed they ultimately desired. This frustrated my friend and so he was trying to figure out a way he could help these youth understand where their current actions may lead them and how their actions today would determine who they’d become tomorrow.
Much like these youth, as adults we often do the exact same thing. We say we want certain things in our life but then we do things that will never help us accomplish them. Unfortunately, often what we truly want in life is completely unattainable, not because we are incapable of accomplishing it, but because of our current choices.
Let’s us a simple example. We may say we want complete financial independence by a certain age in life but then we keep doing our same job, spend our entire pay check each month on frivolous things, and do very little during our free time to improve ourselves or our financial situation. In these instances our actions, much like the youth my friend works with, are completely contrary to our stated desire. Rather than change our behaviors and begin to do things differently, we act as if we believe one day our desires will magically appear on our door step.
I believe a big reason this phenomenon happens so frequently with all of us is because we fail to have a clear vision of ourselves. We can articulate what we want for the future but our focus remains on the here and now. Rather than believing and seeing our future selves and what we ultimately desire, we focus only on our current self and simply do what makes us feel good right at this moment. Sure we hope for the best yet we continually put off the often difficult things that will help us accomplish our goals. Instead of sacrificing a little now we begin to deceive ourselves by believing we can keep postponing our efforts for a later day. After awhile we even sometimes begin to believe that success and failure in life is merely a matter of chance and we start to lose hope. And before we know it, we end up some place we never wanted or thought we’d be.
Using the earlier example, if we can change and begin to truly see ourselves as someone who is financially independent, we will then begin to act like it. Whereas a lack of vision leads us down the road of redundancy as we continue to do the same things over and over again acting as if someday what we desire will one day just appear, having a clear vision of our future selves helps us to begin to take the necessary steps to get to where we want to go. Decisions become easier when we can see exactly who we want to be.
Having a clear vision of our future self is a powerful way to reach our potential and become our best self. So how does your future self look? And are you doing things that will allow you to become that person? As we hold a clear picture of our future self in our mind we will begin to change those actions that are contradictory to our vision and will replace them with actions that support who we want to become. Only in this way will we be able to move forward and accomplish the great things in life we desire most.
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