Use Time Travel to Power Your Career

Next time you are confronted with a critical decision in your career, don't use your best judgment; you'll be relying on your conscious brain. Instead, leverage your much more powerful subconscious brain and pick the choice that actually worked best in the future, your future.

This sounds crazy, I know, but stick with me.

I got the idea for my Simplify Your Future guide when a photographer led me through a guided relaxation exercise at the beginning of our session. She asked me to close my eyes, relax, and imagine a great success that would occur to me two years in the future. Almost immediately, the words "Simplify Your Future" popped into my head and I saw myself signing books in a packed room.

So far, over 30,000 people have downloaded the free guide.

Over the weekend, I was left alone early one morning and spent an hour sitting quietly in my favorite chair. One thought kept circling in my head: pick the future that worked best for you.

Yes, I got the tense right. Worked.

That bastion of crazy New Age journalism (I'm joking), MIT Technology Review, published an article a few years back that started:

The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is the idea that all possible alternate histories of the universe actually exist. At every point in time, the universe splits into a multitude of existences in which every possible outcome of each quantum process actually happens.

In one universe, you are the founder of Google. In another, you are a Google intern. In a third, you don't know how to spell Google.

Which sounds most attractive to you? Pick that path.

Just to be clear, the folks over at MIT never claimed you can consciously pick the universe that works best for you. In the spirit of complete disclosure, it's not clear whether I can do it either.

But the idea of occasionally closing your eyes and envisioning that "best outcome" universe has a lot going for it.

In my experience, most people can't answer the question, "What do you want from life?"

To be more accurate, that question scares the hell out of most of us. We have no idea.

By freeing yourself from practical restrictions (this reality, your mortgage payment, the three projects hanging over your head...), you have the potential to unleash the best that's lurking inside of you.

Is this radical, insane thinking? Have I finally gone off the deep end? Perhaps.

But who among us knows precisely how the universe works? Maybe you really do exist in a trillion different universes. So, next time you face a big decision, suspend this reality for 30 minutes and pick a better one. It might lead you to a far, far better place.

P.S. For the skeptics among us, let me remind you what Woody Allen once said: I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

Bruce Kasanoff is a ghostwriter for entrepreneurs, executives and social innovators. Learn more at Kasanoff.com. He is the author of How to Self-Promote without Being a Jerk.

Image: Dave Askwith