Your Past, Present, and Future Selves: Behind the Scenes
Several people have shared with me uplifting, encouraging, and energizing experiences after completing 'Your Past, Present, and Future: A Conversation’.
Today we delve into what is happening 'behind the scenes' with this practice.
Behind the Scenes
I have the privilege of accompanying remarkable individuals as they explore their hopes, concerns, aspirations, challenges, and actions in life. Through this journey, I've learned to relate to my own future-self differently.
Traditionally, I, like most people, saw my future self as simply a more mature version of my present self. Research by Daniel Gilbert highlights this common perspective: paradoxically, although we can recognize how radically we have changed throughout our lives in the past, we tend to think of our future selves as not much different from our present selves—just older.
To me, this future self felt like a kind of parental figure to my present self. Over time I have come to see how our future self emerges through our present self, just as our present self emerged through our past selves. This means that our present self is actually much more the parent to our future-self than the other way around! We are, in every moment, parenting our emerging future selves—right now!
Additionally, Hal Hershfield's research suggests that our brains perceive our future selves as if they were literally other people. It is our future self that will deal with the consequences of today's choices, not ‘me’. This makes it even more challenging to make choices and take actions today that may be difficult for our present selves but will benefit our future selves.
Something unique and beautiful becomes possible when we consider our present selves as the parent to our future selves—as the nurturers of our emerging future selves, caring intently about who they are becoming, what they will be experiencing—as we would our own children. No longer abstract people who are simply ‘not-much-different-but-older’ versions of ourselves who we don’t experience a visceral connection with—rather our future-self is a precious human we are in an active relationship with, who we are shaping, day by day, by the choices we make and the actions we take.
With this shift in perspective, we have the opportunity to build a co-creative relationship with our future selves, dancing together. This is enhanced when we consider five more important things:
Acknowledge the impact of the negativity bias.
Shift from a 'gap' to a 'gain' orientation.
Connect intimately with our future self.
Focus on who we aspire to become and adopt a long-term perspective.
Give ourselves just enough time between now and then (or now and 'them').
The exercise I shared last week came from my daily journaling as I explored how to incorporate these shifts in perspective into a simple practice.
Negativity Bias
Negativity bias is a generally recognized psychological phenomenon where humans tend to pay more attention to, remember, and be affected by negative experiences, information, and emotions compared to positive ones. In other words, negative events or aspects of life have a stronger impact on our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors than positive ones.
This bias has evolutionary roots and likely developed as a survival mechanism. Throughout our evolutionary journey, being highly attuned to potential dangers or threats in the environment could increase the chances of staying safe and alive. Therefore, our brains give more weight to negative stimuli as a way to prioritize avoiding harm.
In modern times, this bias can lead to several cognitive and emotional impacts, such as dwelling on criticism more than praise, remembering traumatic events more vividly than positive experiences, and being generally more sensitive to negative information. Awareness of this bias can help individuals consciously focus on positive experiences and balance their perspective.
Shift from Gap to Gain
Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy's frame of 'Gap to Gain' thinking contrasts two approaches to evaluating life situations and progress. It involves shifting from focusing on what one lacks (the "gap") to appreciating and building upon what one already has (the "gain"). This shift in mindset can significantly affect well-being, motivation, and one's overall outlook on life.
Gap Thinking: This mindset involves looking ahead to what one has yet to do and accomplish. Yet, no matter how far we go, the horizon keeps moving out ahead of us, leading to endless pursuit without satisfaction.
Gain Thinking: This mindset involves recognizing and appreciating the positive aspects of one's current situation, accomplishments, and personal attributes—how far we’ve come, how we’ve grown.
Shifting from gap thinking to gain thinking can lead to improved well-being, increased motivation, reduced stress, enhanced resilience, and better relationships. Funny thing: we can gap-mindset ourselves about our persnickety gap-mindset! Negativity bias means that the vast majority of people live in a gap orientation, and we are surrounded in modernity with cultural myths about the importance of maintaining a gap mindset in order to stay competitive—locking us into this way of being.
Research demonstrates that those who live by a gain mindset actually accomplish more than those who live by a gap mindset. Even in the spheres of the entrepreneurial world— where Dan Sullivan’s work developed—steeped in capitalist, patriarchal, supremist systems, gain orientation consistently outperforms—hands down. Take that, harmful cultural myths.
Connect intimately with your future selves
Hal Hershfield, a psychologist and researcher known for his work in the areas of time perception, identity, and decision-making, has focused on how people perceive and make decisions about their future selves. He has coined the term "future self-continuity," which refers to the extent to which individuals view their future selves as connected to their present selves.
One of Hal’s recommendations for building a direct and intimate relationship with our future selves is to become pen-pals of a sort: writing letters from our present self to our future self, and also from our future self to our present self—in this way creating a dynamic relationship across time.
Focusing on who we aspire to become and adopting a long-term perspective
In his book 'Outlive,' Peter Attia emphasizes the significance of playing the long game when it comes to our health. Instead of setting short-term health goals, he encourages us to participate in what he calls the 'centenarian decathlon.' This involves approaching every aspect of our wellness journey with an eye on our well-being in our later years, often referred to as our 'marginal' decades. The idea is to care for ourselves now in ways that will make it possible to align our healthspan with our lifespan.
In '4,000 Weeks,' Oliver Burkeman highlights how we often mistreat our sense of time by trying to cram more and more into our lives. Instead, he suggests embracing the liberating reality that our time truly is limited. Rather than seeking more to do, we should choose according to what holds meaning and purpose for us.
If we gap-mindset ourselves in our centenarian decathlon with endless lists of how we need to improve, our present selves will declare: “no way! I want to enjoy my life now!” If we gain-mindset our 4,000 Week journey of life, all of our days have the possibility to be profoundly rich.
Just enough time between now and 'them'
Jane McGonigal, a game designer, author, and advocate for the positive applications of gaming and technology, has worked extensively with The Institute for the Future (IFTF), a think tank focused on various projects that incorporate game-like elements to promote forward-thinking and innovative solutions to complex problems and has organized large-scale future simulation games.
As outlined in her book, 'Imaginable,' Jane has gained valuable insights regarding the importance of selecting a time horizon that extends beyond the current moment. This horizon should be distant enough to allow us to perceive it as the point where 'the future starts,' but not so distant that we lose our ability to connect with it and influence it. Through her work, she has discovered that "ten years is by far the most commonly cited answer to the question, 'When does the future start?'" This is a period during which both society and an individual's life can undergo dramatic transformations.
Conclusion
Some feedback from last week's exercise suggested that the focus felt too much on accomplishments—the doing side of life. I hear you… and, I invite you to revisit the exercise after having read this page. You may see that the focus is on “what comes to mind”—which can include accomplishments, but can also include insights, new people you’ve met, surprise conversations, encounters with nature, dreams that grabbed your attention upon waking—anything, anyone, everything-all-at-once!
As you enter the Labor Day Weekend, I wish you precious moments connecting with those who are dear to you—including your future selves. 😊
Next week, we'll explore how to move the conversation from a one-time exercise to a dynamic and collaborative partnership among your many selves across time.
References, and resources for further exploration:
Podcasts:
Hidden Brain—You 2.0: Your Future is Now
the Drive—Time, Productivity, and Purpose: Insights from 4,000 Weeks
Books:
Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things that Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal
Be Your Future Self Now: the Science of Intentional Transformation by Benjamin Hardy
Outlive: the Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia
4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
This post is part of a weekly series exploring how we care well for ourselves on behalf of our purpose and service to others and the world.
