Future Me Method

Future Me Mindset Shift #3

"I am making my future bigger than my past" 

What is success? I believe success is a state of mind. It is having the determination to keep trying while applying lessons from past failings or experiences. Success is the willingness to pursue your dreams and goals while facing challenges to reach your goals.

Take Winston Churchhill for an example; did you know that he failed sixth grade or that he was defeated in every election for public office until he finally became the British Prime Minister? He is now known as one of the world's greatest leaders. What was his state of mind? Do you think he said to himself, "wow! That was a horrific failure; I am never going to run for public office ever again!" No. Instead, Churchhill said , "Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." 

In his TED Talk "The Psychology of our Future Self ”, Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert explains a bias that almost all of us have: We tend to think that the person we are today is the person we will always be.

Most people, when asked if they are the same person they were 10 years ago, will say no — but we have a much harder time seeing potential for change in the future. Gilbert and others refer to this as the "end of history illusion.” Despite awareness that our past self is clearly different than our present self, we tend to think that who we are right now is the “real” and “finished” version of ourselves, and our future self will be basically the same as who we are today. Gilbert puts it simply: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.”

Learn The Surprising Secret of Expert Thinkers

I am going to level with you. It's about how you think. You have been lied to. The process of thinking like an expert is not what you believe. In fact, they've sold you a lie about how they come up with solutions to a major problem.

When in reality, the opposite is true. 

First, the lie.

Here's how we THINK experts come up with solutions:

1. They gather the data
2. They interrogate the data
3. They come to the rational conclusion the data demands.

But in the real world? 

It rarely works this way. 

Here's the reality

1. Take a quick glance at the situation.
2. Come up with an instinctive hypothesis, half jokingly.
3. Try it on for size and if it seems to fit, attempt to put it into practice so that they can look into it more deeply. 

It's messy. It's lazy. It's casual. It's unrigorous. It's unprofessional.

But it works! But why?

"There are far more good ideas you can post-rationalise than pre-rationalise"  Rory Sutherland

This is even how science works. 

Almost no drugs were designed for the purpose they ended up being used for ( pre-rationalisation). 

Pretty much every single one was stumbled upon and post-rationalized. 

What about analysis?

Analysis is great.

But for testing hypotheses, not generating them. 

For checking your thinking, not for doing it for you. 

Lead with imagination.

End with analysis.

So that's the trick.

Breakthroughs emerge not because of what you know, but because of what you notice.

Knowing takes time!

But noticing happens in an instant. 

And you can easily live out of that skill of noticing by using the Future Me Method because it creates a framework by which engage any idea from the future, present and past. 

Discover how to connect to your Future

• The Future Me App only takes 10 minutes to set up so that you can write your first letter to your Future Self.
• It's quick, confidential and enables you to create your own future journal.
• Join millions of other people worldwide who have discovered how to connect to their future with letters, photos, messages and videos