Why Your "Future Self" Should Be One of Your Most Important Relationships

An executive I once reported to made something very clear: His job was to focus one to five years out, my job was to focus three to 12 months ahead, and the people reporting to me were to focus on the current quarter.

I remember being somewhat relieved by this limited responsibility, thinking, “I can’t imagine our business, or even myself, one to five years out, so I’m happy to defer to someone who apparently can!”

That was 25 years ago, and sometimes my 47-year-old self wishes I had, in fact, focused more energy on what would matter in the future — and not just at work. I wish I’d practiced languages, the guitar, tennis. I just didn’t fully value the gifts to my future self.

There are plenty of days when it feels like we hardly have enough mental and physical capacity to attend to the present demands. But maybe you and I need to pay more attention to our future selves as another very important person who deserves attention and gifts.

Why It’s Hard to Relate to Our Future Selves

It’s not easy to maintain a productive relationship with our future selves, and there are several reasons for that.

Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert conducted a study of thousands of people over several years and discovered that people vastly underestimated how much they’d change in the future. His team and other researchers refer to this as “the illusion of continuity.” As Gilbert explains it, “All of us are walking around with an illusion that we have just recently become the person we’re meant to be, and we’ll always be that way.” So, we assume the things we’re focused on today will matter to our future selves, even though that’s not usually the case.

Additionally, things that are psychologically near are much more concrete than things that are psychologically far. Psychologists call this Construal Level Theory. In other words, it’s much easier to think about today’s meetings and to-do list than it is to contemplate yourself in five years. That future self is vague and ambiguous.

A third reason comes from Hal Hershfield, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. According to fMRI scans, one part of the brain shows activity when you’re thinking about yourself right now; another part shows activity when you’re thinking about another person. Here’s the interesting thing: The part of your brain that thinks about other people is the same part of your brain that thinks about your future self! That means there’s a version of yourself in the future who you really don’t feel all that emotionally connected to or invested in. Hirschfield put it this way: “Why would you save money for your future self when, to your brain, it feels like you’re just handing away your money to a complete stranger?”

How Do You Strengthen a Relationship with Your Future Self?

1. Embrace prospection. This is the ability to be future-minded. Practice envisioning yourself in the future in vivid, realistic, and positive terms. Imagine your financial, physical, spiritual, emotional, and relational health. Picture what your work looks like. Write it down and/or share it with others. When you do that, research shows you’re more willing to make choices today that may benefit you at some point in the years to come.
2. Communicate with your future self. Consider writing your eulogy or a letter to your future self. This can be a great practice to do regularly or at certain key points during the year when you’re forming your habits and commitments. A study involving 500 college students found that those who wrote a letter to their future self in 20 years exercised 40% more than the control group.
3. Appreciate the gifts you’ve already received. Through conducting training and coaching programs, I’ve found that there’s often a halo effect when people realize how much they’ve benefited from a choice they previously made. When someone affirms how much they’ve grown from a program they reluctantly signed up for, perhaps one they had protested to themselves would be too much time or money, they form a stronger connection between their current and future self.

Joseph Butler wrote in 1736, “If the self or person of today, and that of tomorrow, are not the same, but only like persons, the person of today is really no more interested in what will befall the person of tomorrow, than in what will befall any other person.”

Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell this to my 22-year-old self. Alas, all we can do now is give gifts to our future selves.

What gift can you give to your future self this week?

Improve how you influence people. Pre-order my new book Lead with Influence to become a better communicator and gain buy-in from others. Don’t “tell” people what they should think or do. Improve your ability to “sell” them on the value of doing it.

Analyze Your Opportunities for Growth.?Join other leaders and discover how well you are leveraging your strengths and opportunities. It’s a free tool for your self-awareness. Just click here.

About the Author. Matt Norman coaches and advises executives on how to build great people and culture. He is president and CEO of Norman & Associates, which offers custom coaching and consulting in the areas of talent strategy, personal effectiveness, planning, and goal alignment to help people improve how they communicate, lead, influence, and work together. He’s also the award-winning author of Four Patterns of Healthy People.

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