Make your Future Self Proud

If you're a regular reader of Bar Talk, or have read my 'Achieving Personal Excellence' book, you already know that for years I've been advocating the benefits of perseverance, grit, and making decisions with our future self in mind. That said, you can imagine my delight that a new study was published in March detailing the quantifiable advantages of 'episodic future thinking' (EFT) regarding reducing impulsivity and improving decision-making. EFT has a nice neuroscience ring to it, but put simply, it's thinking about our future selves.  I'll get to the study details shortly, but first, I'll briefly explain why this mindset practice is such a powerful practice.

The idea of developing that relationship with your future self comes from this super common and relatable mindset that so many of us have, where we want to mentally time travel, and unfortunately, that mental time travel is often going backward. It's not unusual for us to look back and say, “I wish I did this differently”, or "Why didn't I (fill in the blank) 5 years ago?"

But that does us no good, especially when it's excessive dwelling on regrets, (aka rumination), that negatively impacts our present outlook. Don’t look backward; that's not where we're going. That said, we can still satisfy that urge to mentally time travel by adjusting the timeline so we're mentally going forward. When we develop a working relationship with our future self, we're basing our ideas and choices on what will do the greatest good for us down the road. We're still able to satisfy that urge to say, I wish I did this differently, but when you're in your future-self perspective and giving thought to how you wish things turned out, you still have time to make those changes in real time. You can think of this in terms of the movie 'A Christmas Carol' when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning after seeing the ghost of the future and realizes he still has time to change things in his life.

It's just a slight but fundamental shift in our mindset. When we look through the lens of our future self, it tends to point us in the right direction, and that can act as our North star in decision making. The choices may not be the easiest or simplest ones in the moment, but they tend to be the right ones. It's like advice coming from an older and wiser relative.

Related to that, there's this excellent theory of today-you, and tomorrow-you. The premise is with today-you, if you are fit and healthy and thinking at peak performance levels, you're doing everything in your power to help pave the way for tomorrow-you, to make his/her life better. The idea is that every day today-you goes to bed and dies. Tomorrow-you is born every morning. The success of Tomorrow-you is, is mainly dependent on what we do today.

If you're eating right, getting proper sleep, adopting a healthy mindset, focusing on growth and goals, you're really doing everything possible to make life a little bit better for tomorrow-you. Conversely, suppose you're living eating poorly each day, cutting sleep short, indulging too much in bad habits, and doing all these things that bring you down every day. In that case, it's living without considering the big picture.  In doing that, tomorrow-you is born with a real disadvantage. Like many other things in life, what starts as a conscious decision becomes a daily practice, which evolves into a habit. Living each day to try to make life as great as possible for tomorrow-you allows you to prioritize what you want most in life instead of settling for what we impulsively want to do in the moment.

Starting off, this can be in the 'simple but not easy' category as it's sometimes difficult to hear tomorrow-you from a distance, while today-you is loud and clear! Once your habit becomes turning up the volume on the voice of tomorrow-you, you ensure they always get an equal voice in your daily decisions.

Returning to the study I mentioned in the beginning, based on data from Virginia Tech, research has found that training people in "episodic future thinking" - vividly imagining specific personal future events - can reduce impulsivity and improve decision-making. Future Thinking Training Reduces Impulsivity - Neuroscience News

When participants practiced visualizing detailed future scenarios (like "In one year, I will be opening my first art gallery in Los Angeles"), brain scans showed increased connectivity in the salience network, a group of brain regions linked to decision-making. This training made participants less likely to choose immediate rewards over long-term benefits, a tendency called "delay discounting," and establishes that 'drills build the skill' when building the 'future-you' thinking habits.

The study is the first to have participants practice imagining specific future events before measuring brain activity changes during those thoughts. It adds exciting scientific proof of concept to the power of making friends with our future selves.

Parting thought: Today is the youngest you will ever be. Act accordingly and make your future self proud!