The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 91 - Future Self

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, listeners. Before we get to this week's episode, Pete and I would love to invite you to our next Learning Lab. It's happening this week, Thursday, June 25th, at 6pm Eastern Daylight Time. In Australia, that's Friday, June 26th at 8am Australian Eastern Daylight Time. We will be leading a Learning Lab on our episode called Decide, which you probably heard a couple weeks ago. So, please join us. It's free, but you do have to register at thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/learninglab. Now on to this week's episode.

Jen: Hi, Peter.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: We're recording this in the present, but the listeners will be listening to it in the future.

Pete: Mmm. But I guess for them in the future, it will also be the present.

Jen: Ooh. Sounds like today, we should jump into a time machine. I want to talk to you about a concept called "future self".

Pete: Mmm. Alright, I'm hopping in the time machine. Let's do this. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: This came up a couple weeks ago actually, in the learning group that you and I are doing right now.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: It came up as a prompt I offered to one of the people in our cohort and it got me thinking about all the times I've actually used "Dear Future Self" on myself, and all of the times I've used "Dear Future Self" on my clients. And I thought it might be useful to talk about what it means to be doing something for your future self.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, I'm super intrigued by how you're thinking about this because I've talked about what I think might be the inverse of this. Which is like, "Dear Current Self, From Your Future Self", which I'm realizing is possibly the inverse.

Jen: Ooh.

Pete: However, I want to start with you. "Dear Future Self".

Jen: It is, it is. It's the inverse. This is so exciting.

Pete: Yeah. It's almost like The Long and The Short of it.

Jen: Wow, wow, wow. Okay, this is cool. So the Dear Future Self exercise is essentially, you write yourself (your future self) a letter, or an email, or record a video message. And you're essentially thanking your future self for the work they did to get you from where you are right now to where you're headed. And you say things like, "Dear future self, I remember how afraid you were. How you wanted to run and quit. But remember how you plucked up your courage by...". And then you list the specific things your future self did in order to get you from here to there.

Pete: I love this. I love this. I love this.

Jen: Sometimes I use this if I'm working with a client, we're at the beginning of what is a long-term project.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And then we'll refer back to it from time to time. And sometimes I use it with a client for a very short-term project. Like if we have a one hour coaching, let's say, and we're going to like dig in to some really hard stuff. I'll say something like, "What will your future self, the you one hour from now, thank you for doing?".

Pete: Ooh. So like, on the micro as well as the macro.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: I love that. I love that. I love that. Immediately on the micro, you just like sparked a thought in me that I've heard people say in relation to running a marathon, or doing an Ironman, or doing some sort of grueling exercise. And I've heard folks have like a mantra in their head, which is, "You will be in your bed tonight. You will be in your bed tonight. You will be in your bed tonight.".

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: Like basically, this pain that you're feeling is short term. And tonight, you will be in bed and it'll all be okay. Which feels like a related micro: what's a message to my future self that I'm trying to send?

Jen: Yes. And as I'm in this conversation with you, I'm recognizing that...and maybe I like subconsciously knew this. I have some clients who are drama therapists, one in particular who works with high-risk adolescents. And this is an exercise that she uses where she will play the role of the client or the patient in the present moment. And then the patient or the client plays themself in the future. And so, present self interviews future self about, "How did you do this? I remember you were facing this obstacle, how did you overcome it?". And they actually like have a conversation with each other. And in many cases, this will help someone to unlock an idea that they were missing, or a strategy that they didn't know they already had, or like a tool that they have inside.

Pete: I mean, naturally, as a coach, I absolutely love this idea because of what you just said, which is the assertion that most of us know what we need to do. And most of us are in our own way for preventing ourselves doing it.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: So I love this as like a, almost like a tactic and a tool to unlock or unblock yourself, and just head towards that future version of yourself that you know you're wanting or could get to, you just kind of need to get out of your own way. Huh.

Jen: It feels like the kind of thing you could do with a trusted friend, or with your actual coach. To say, "Can you just play me, in this moment?".

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "I'm going play myself, you know, three months from now when this is over, and ask me questions about how I did it because right now I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do it.".

Pete: I just have scribbled down so many things, like, ways that I can see how this connects to various things that we've talked about and have noodled on before. One is, it feels like this is a cool strategy to think about counteracting The Dip.

Jen: Mmm. Yeah.

Pete: So we've done an episode on The Dip, which is a book by Seth Godin, and a concept that essentially, when creating something new, when embarking on a new project, or business, or endeavor, there will be a dip, which is the drop in energy, the drop in motivation, the feeling that you just want to give up because you've put in so much emotional labor, and you're not sure if you can continue because you're just kind of feeling a bit stuck. And in that episode, we talked about the fact that the right time to decide what you're going to do in the dip is before you get to the dip, not when you're in the dip.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And this feels like it, you know, it's like a strategy for handling that. Is, "Future self, you're going to go through this, this, and this. And I'm so thankful that you did this, this, and this when you did that.". So it's like, when I'm in the dip, I go back to my little cheat sheet and go, "Oh, that's right. I said I was going to do this, so I better go and do this now.".

Jen: Now, you said that you do this in reverse. I want to hear about that.

Pete: Yeah. So I've been trying to work out as we're talking, is it the inverse? Is it the same thing, but slightly reframed? Is the result the same? So let me just like, share a couple of ways that I've used this in the past, and currently. The first is one of my favorite podcasters, writers, creators, educators (as many of the listeners know), is Debbie Millman. And in a podcast episode, in an interview she did (I believe it was with Tim Ferriss), she talked about this...I think it was called the Future Self Exercise. I can't remember the name of the exercise, but the idea was, she takes...she does this every year with her students, when she's teaching. She tells them to imagine themselves in ten years time, or twenty years time, or thirty years time, and write like page after page after page, in as much detail as possible, describing a typical day as that person.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And it might be, you know, "I wake up in my beautiful house, and I'm living in the countryside, and I turn to my partner and I give her a kiss.". Like, really go in to detail. And she encourages her students to basically go into as much detail as possible. Nothing is off-limits. Be as ridiculous, audacious, you know, dream-like as you want. And it's like a creative writing exercise, essentially. However, what she said is since doing that, she gets email after email after email from past students saying, "Debbie, it's been five years, and I've already...I went and reread my ten year version of what I thought I would be, what I thought would be happening, and I'm like, I did it. I'm there. And so, thank you so much.".

Jen: Wow.

Pete: Yeah. And she's sort of like, "I don't understand...you know, like, it sounds a bit woowoo. And I don't know if there's science behind it. But it's just, the amount of times that I've had the feedback of 'that thing happened'. It's almost like it manifested itself because of the exercise.". So I've heard that years ago, and I've been thinking about it a lot. I've done it a couple of times in writing, but I didn't quite I don't think nail it. And then actually, when I was a student in the altMBA about three years ago, my amazing coach, Shannon Weber, somehow did a Shannon Weber thing and prompted me to do a video version of this. Where I stared down the camera, and for three minutes, I was Pete in two years time talking to Pete who just finished the altMBA.

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: Which feels like the inverse. It wasn't "Dear Future Self". It was like "Dear Pete, Right Now. Dear Current Pete". It was the same thing, in that I was like, "Thank you for doing this. This is what happened. You showed up this way. You wanted to do meaningful work with interesting people. Now you're collaborating with three amazing people. Blah, blah, blah.". And like, I described it in a fair bit of detail, in three minutes. And in a year's time, I would think I was probably having a conversation with you, or something...at some point, I was like, "Oh, wait. I think I did it. I think I got to that place that I wanted to get to, in a year as opposed to two years.".

Jen: Huh.

Pete: And so, yeah, it feels like it's an inverse, but it's also the same result. It's chasing the same result, really. Is like, it's like a pep talk to yourself.

Jen: Yeah. Well, okay. So, I'm still also trying to decide if this is an inverse, or this is like...is it a mirror? Like, what is it?

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Because on one side, it's about the process of how you're going to actually move forward toward the things that you want. And on the other side, like the version you're talking about, it's crystallizing some sort of vision for, "What are the things I actually want? What are the things I actually want to do?". So it feels like it's tending to both elements that are necessary in order to have a vision, and create a plan for how you're going to get there.

Pete: Mmm. Yeah, I wonder...I wonder if it's personal in terms of which one feels harder. Like for me, speaking for myself, the trying to articulate what it is I want, or what it is I desire in that two year, three year, five year, ten year time frame is like paralyzing. As we've joked about in this podcast, my ability to plan ahead is non-existent. [laughter]

Jen: Yes. [laughter]

Pete: So I, I like stared at the camera, or the blank bit of paper when I was doing Debbie's exercise, for hours. Being like, "What, what is it I want?". In order to then give myself the message. Like I can't even, my brain can't even stretch that far in advance, is the story I was telling myself. So to me, that was the hardest part, was just articulating what that is.

Jen: Ooh, that is so interesting, Peter.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: Because that is one way that you and I are so different.

Pete: [laughter] Yeah.

Jen: Is, I like to cast a very long-term vision, and then work backwards from there. So, being the person in this moment is less comfortable for me.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: And being the person in the far away moment is less comfortable for you. So, no wonder we came at this from totally opposite sides. That's so interesting.

Pete: That is hilarious. Yeah. I think related, another useful way of thinking about future self, and how that can help oneself is...I believe it was our mutual friend, Kirsty Stark, who said to me one day...I was faced with like a difficult decision, and trying to unpack what it meant, and how to make that decision, and how I was going to deal with the ramifications of said decision, and all of the in between. And Kirsty said something to me like, "Think about eighty-year-old Pete, and what would he say to, what would he say to thirty-year-old Pete?". And I took that as a creative writing exercise, as well. And got like right into it, of like, "Eighty-year-old Pete is sitting in an armchair, puffing a cigar.". (I've never smoked a cigar in my life. I don't know why I was smoking a cigar. [laughter]) Anyway, "He was by a log fire, in a cabin in the woods. And this is what he said...". And I wrote this like, monologue of what I would say to myself right now. And it was so helpful, so helpful.

Jen: Wow. This is, this is making me want to grab a journal and start writing.

Pete: I know.

Jen: Okay, I want to actually inverse for a second.

Pete: Please.

Jen: Like, an actual inverse. Adam Grant does this exercise called "Reflected Best Self".

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: Which is about actually going backwards, and looking for the things that you have done that have made it possible for you to be who you are in this moment. And I'll include some resources about this in the Box O' Goodies, in case anyone wants to do this.

Pete: Mm-hmm.

Jen: Where essentially, you reach out to people who have worked with you in some capacity, and have seen you at your best. And you ask them to tell a specific story about what you did that actually made you someone who was operating at their best. So it almost feels like if you did a Reflected Best Self exercise where you got all of that data, and you're standing in this present moment and you're able to look back and go like, "Wow, this is how I got from where I was to where I am.".

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And then you stand in this present moment and you cast this forward facing vision, it feels like you can create a larger context for life.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: I don't even know if what I'm saying is making sense. But it's almost like...we talk about this in my acting classes sometimes that the characters that we play, they have a lights up and a lights down. And the part that the audience sees is the three parts of the story: beginning, middle, end. But they had a story before the lights went up, and they'll continue to have a story after the lights go down. So is that really the beginning, middle, end? And so it feels sort of like Reflected Best Self is Act One, you right now is Act Two, and then Dear Future Self is Act Three.

Pete: Ooh. I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah. I think that, hearing you talk about it, I was thinking you get clarity on essentially who you are through the Reflected Best Self exercise. And then looking forward, it's almost like what does 10x of that look like?

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: You know, "If people say this, this and this about me, what if I 10x that? What would they then say about me? And maybe that's me in twenty years, or ten years, or something.". The other thing, just hearing you talk about that lights up, lights down....I don't even know if this is related to the episode, but it just made me, it reminded me of how people come in and out of your life, and don't know what the first act may have been. Like, you and I have been working together for three years. And so, if I asked you some questions around the Reflected Best Self, it would be only within the context of the last three years.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And like, what is, what does that mean for me looking forward? If I do the Reflected Best Self exercise, do I need to take, like, should I include my parents, who have known me my entire life? As opposed to Jen Waldman, my favorite collaborator, but you've only known me for like three or four years? So like, what is the difference there? And how does the, how is that playing a role in me looking forward?

Jen: Ooh, that's so interesting. That's so interesting. I have no idea how to answer that...

Pete: [laughter] Neither do I.

Jen: ...except to say that the wonderful thing about doing exercises that are about finding yourself, is you will be living with yourself for the rest of your life. [laughter]

Pete: Yes. Mmm.

Jen: So to bring this back around, Peter, I feel like this is the moment to dig in and do this Future Self exercise. So I'm challenging you, I'm challenging me, and I'm challenging all of you listeners to grab a journal, or keyboard, or whatever it is you like to noodle on, and perhaps even look at it from both perspectives that we've discussed here. Sitting in this present moment as the you right now, casting a vision to your future self in gratitude, thanking future self for the work they did to get you to where you will be. Or inversely, (but maybe not), sitting in this moment as if you are your future self, speaking to your present self about what you've accomplished.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.