High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 434: Envisioning Your Future

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

In this episode, Cindra Kamphoff shares the power of completing the Best Possible Self where you imagine everything going perfectly in the future for you 1, 5, 10 or 15 years from now. Research has found that by completing this exercise, it helps improve optimism, positive affect, and expectations for the future. Once you complete the Best Possible Self exercise, you can then consider obstacles that might get in your way and plan for them.    Power Phrase of the Week: “I have a clear focus of my future.”  Quote of the Week: “Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.” Oprah Winfrey 

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Time to check in with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. And we are talking about envisioning your future. Now,

Sindra, you usually start with a quote for us. This is by Oprah. She said, doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. I like that. So when we talk about envisioning our future, where do we start? Well, I want people to think today about what do you really, really want? And Lisa, that's a really interesting question because it's a really difficult, you know, difficult for people to answer in general. In fact, a recent study found that only 3% of people actually thought about that in detail and wrote their goals down and less than 1% looked at these goals every day. But Lisa, when we actually write our goals down, we're 42% more likely to achieve it. So the point is, we want

to get clear on what we want, write it down, and then figure out how to get there. And really, our desire comes first, and then our how follows. So how does this connect to our topic then? So today, we're talking about this exercise called your best possible self-exercise. And I came across it last year and I was reading the study by two researchers from Berlin. And they found that just doing this exercise we're going to talk about today to help you really think about your future has a measurable increase in like optimism and positive emotion. And we are we have more clear expectations about the future. And we see our goals the worst pursuing when we do this exercise. And all of these benefits lasted after the exercise, but further into the week, the next week. All right, so we want to start right away with maybe you can share the exercise, or where do we start there?

So it's a pretty simple exercise, so I'm just going to share it with you, and then I'm going to encourage you sometime today to write your answer down. So the exercise is where you think about your life in the future. Perhaps it's like one year or five years or 10 or 15 years from now. And you imagine it in detail, everything going the way that you'd like it to go and the best that it possibly could go. Like you work hard, you stay gritty, and you want to imagine your future self in detail and kind of feel it in your body. And then after you do this exercise, you want to write down everything that you just imagined. And you want to try to be as specific as you can, kind of trying to go big and trying to turn your inner critic off. And this is called the best possible self exercise. The best possible self exercise. Why should we do this exercise?

Well, I shared some research earlier about that it helps us be more optimistic and get clear on our future. But there's also another study that shows that we make better decisions when we think about our future self. We actually save more money. And this author named Caroline Miller in her book called Getting Gritty talked about mental contrasting. And when we kind of think about the future, and then we come back to the present, it helps us really kind of figure out the obstacles that are in our way and recommit to the next step that might have seemed overwhelming, seen overwhelming before. So not only do we get really clear on our future, but we can see the obstacles that are in our way. I like that. I will try that later on. Do you have a final point for us?

Lisa, I would say you today do this exercise and to help you get really clear on your future because this vision should really get you fired up for where you want to go and it'll help other people see the possibilities that you see, but you need to see them first. Cinder, can you summarize today for us? Lisa, we talked today about the power of thinking about this best possible self-exercise where everything goes perfectly for you in the future and this helps improve your mood, helps you be more optimistic and helps you have clear expectations for the future and helps you consider all the obstacles that might get in your way so you can plan for them. What is our power phrase this week, then?

I have a clear focus for my future. Envisioning your future. Let's all do the exercise today. Dr. Sindra Kampoff, how do we get in touch with you to learn more about your work? You can head over to Dr. Sindra, so drcindra.com, and you can find all about my speaking and coaching over there. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe, and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.