Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Benjamin Hardy on the Psychology of Being Your Future Self Now EP 236

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

Organizational psychologist Benjamin Hardy is the bestselling author of books on self-control, self-limiting thoughts, cooperation, and the pursuit of happiness. He appears on the program to talk about Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation, his most recent book. --►Purchase Be Your Future Self Now: https://amzn.to/3WDEmm9  (Amazon Link) What We Discuss About How to Be Your Future Self Now In this episode, Dr. Benjamin Hardy discusses his most recent book, Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation, which outlines what you can do to transform into the person you want to be right now without wasting time in some self-imposed hiatus. Here, we'll talk about the obstacles that might be preventing you from connecting with this future self and what you can do to make choices that steer you in their direction rather than away from them. Enjoy, learn, and listen! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/dr-benjamin-hardy-7-ways-to-be-your-future-self/  Brought to you by American Giant and Omaha Steaks. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  --► Prefer to watch this interview:  https://youtu.be/m4Min1GJHVw  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Want to hear my best interviews from 2022? Check out episode 233 on intentional greatness and episode 234 on intentional behavior change. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/   

Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. And so we're actually being driven by our goals. And so then it forces you to ask yourself, what are the things that I've either consciously or unconsciously committed myself to? And what would happen if I changed my perspective and my commitments to the future so that now my whole life is being driven by something else?

It's very interesting. And obviously our view of our past can dictate which goals we set. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.

Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews, the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become Passion Struck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 236

of Passion Struck and Happy New Year to everyone. I hope that you had a happy and safe holiday. Thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn, had a live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here or you would just like to introduce this

to friends or family members, we now have episode starter packs. These are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organized and to convene the topics to give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything we do here on the show. Just go to either Spotify or PassionStruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And in case you missed it, last week I had two episodes at Focus on the Best Moments of 2022. One was on the power of intentional greatness and the other one focused on leading experts in the areas of neuroscience, behavioral science and alternative health. Please check them both out and thank you so much for your continued

support of the show and all your ratings and reviews which goes such a long way in helping to promote the popularity and rating of this podcast. Now let's talk about today's episode. Did you know that your future drives your present? Your actions are not dictated or driven by your past. They are actually pulled forward by your future. That is because your actions are based on the future you see for yourself, whether that future is yours away or moments away. In fact, the more connected that you feel to your future self, the more likely that you will take sound actions today.

Take care for your future self. In our discussion, Dr. Benjamin Hardy will explain why knowing your why is the deepest form of knowledge because it drives your what and how. You will learn why you should think and act from your goal rather than towards your goal. And why the clearer you are on where you want to go, the less you'll be distracted by endless options. Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist, and best-selling author of Will Power Doesn't Work and Personality Isn't Permanent. Together, he and Dan Sullivan have written Why Not How,

as well as The Gap and The Game. His blogs have been read by over 100 million people, and have been featured in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, on CNBC, among many others. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so ecstatic today to have the privilege of having Dr. Benjamin Hardy on the Passion Stark podcast. Welcome.

Yes. Happy with you, Joan. Well, Ben, you may not know this, but I have actually been stalking you for about 20 months to get you on the show. I think I first heard you with Jordan Harbinger, and I love the episode that you did with him at the gap in the game, and then I happened to interview Rachel Hollis and Rachel had just come out with your episode

a couple of weeks before I interviewed her, and I was like, I have to get him on this podcast. I love his stuff. So I'm so glad that we're finally able to have you here, your books resonate so well with the audience. And we're going to be covering a couple of them today, the gap in the gain and also your most recent one for your future self now. But before we dive into those, I was to give the audience an opportunity to get to know the guest. And a question I

like to ask is we all have different moments that define who we are today and lead us on the path and life that we are. So I wanted to ask you what led you to becoming a psychologist and then deciding to become a professional writer. Yeah, absolutely. I would say a few big events. One was initially like my parents divorce age 11. I was the oldest of three. like my parents divorce age 11. I was the oldest of three and it was very surprising. That's certainly not what like directly led me to becoming a psychologist, but I can see that the effects of that ultimately led me down that path. My father became a drug addict during my youth years and there was just a lot of chaos and a lot of uncertainty. Basically, from me being age 11 to age 20, there was just an enormous amount of uncertainty and, yeah, chaos.

And just exposure to addiction, I barely ended up graduating high school. And I ended up at age 19 beginning to go running on my own. Ultimately culminated me running a marathon, but while running just long distances, I got a lot more connected to myself, ultimately chose to go serve a church mission for a few years

And I would say that that's the that church mission was the primary catalyst for me becoming a professional author and a psychologist What it ultimately led me to was being way outside my sphere of Perspective, I guess you could say like I was in a totally different culture doing a totally different thing mostly community service I've read a huge amount of books obviously like scriptural booksural books, but a lot of personal development, a lot of philosophy, a lot of psychology, and I got really into journaling during that church mission. And so I would just journal, I was having a lot of interesting experiences, doing community service, church service,

and then just reading a huge amount of books. I was reading probably three or four hours a day in journaling about one hour a day, and it was during that experience that I just fell in love with writing. Honestly, I got into a skill where I was just writing completely like stream of consciously consciousness, where I was just writing writing and all by hand. I mean, I still have my journal with me right now. But like I just learned how to learn by writing and learned how to access different parts of myself. And so it was during that experience that I decided I wanted to become a psychologist and a writer. Ultimately, I've been home from that experience for about 12 years and have just been on

my path since then. I've went and got a PhD in psychology and have been writing books for about six or seven years. Yeah. Well, you and my brother have a lot in common. He was also a missionary for a number of years, and he has five kids today, and two of them are adopted. Oh, interesting.

I know you have, I think, at six kids, and a number of them are adopted as well. Yeah, six and three. Yeah, three of them, we adopted through the foster system. Yeah, he, his, he adopted from Haiti, and he did his missionary work in the Dominican Republic, basically helping patients who had crossed over to the DR rebuild their lives and was the principal of a school over there.

Wow, since I'm here in Orlando now, we have lots of Haitians here in Orlando, so that's very interesting. Before we get into your newest book, I wanted for the audience to touch on your book before it, because when I read it and when I heard you first talk about it, I'd never heard of this concept of the gap in the game before, but it resonated so well with me.

If the audience isn't familiar with it, I was hoping you could take them through the concept. Oh, yeah, no, I, uh, it's a, uh, originally I'll give the credit where credit is do originally a Dan Sullivan idea, Dan Sullivan's the co founder of Strategic Coach. He's someone who I've written two books with the gap in the game, being one of them and we're getting ready to publish our third, but I originally read Dan's little book, which is called The Gap in the Gain. It's just a tiny little 40 page little thing. That's kind of how he writes. And I read it and I was just shocked by it. I saw so many psychological applications. And when I started writing books with the end, I knew that I wanted to put that book forth in a more expanded science-backed way.

But basically, I'll just kind of give the premise in a really simple form. It's such a deep, but simple concept that I'm not going to be able to give it fully here and obviously you can highlight whatever areas stood out most you. But it's really a model by which you measure your own experience and you measure yourself and you measure other people and really we're all it's we're all measuring ourself and our experiences in certain ways and in society we've been trained to do it in a way that leads to what Dan would call the gap, which is where we're measuring ourself, our progress, our experiences against an ideal. And I see this all the time in myself. And usually if you're feeling bad about yourself, it's because you're in the gap. It's because you're measuring where you are against where you thought you should be or where you could be or what you wish had happened. And this is particularly big for high achievers. I'll give myself an example. When I first published my first major book, Will Power Doesn't Work, my goal was to hit the New York Times bestseller list. And that's a pretty big goal for a first book, and I didn't hit it.

And so as a result, I ended up feeling like a complete loser, went into a depression, honestly for about four months, even though I just had the biggest achievement of my life. And the reason I went into a deep depression is because I was measuring myself against an ideal. And so the gain is a totally opposite way to live life. And it leads to more intrinsic motivation. It leads to getting a lot more connected with your core self and leaving the gap alone, not that none of us are ever perfect. We all go into the gap regularly where we're measuring ourself or some other situation against an ideal.

But the gain is really very simple. It's about just measuring yourself backward against where you were before. So me, Benjamin Hardy, and you, the listener, like, I don't compare myself to anyone else. It's really just, I'm playing my own game. I'm measuring myself backward against where I was yesterday. And so I'm now measuring the gain. I'm not measuring the gap. It's just a really honestly helpful, but also healthful way of living life where you're,

it doesn't mean you stop having ambition. A lot of people think that the gap is what leads to ambition, but it's not. The gap is just an unhealthy way to measure yourself in your life. You can, I would actually argue your ambition as a person goes up by being in the game, but it's a more healthy, proper, intrinsically motivated ambition. And so for me, I'm just, and there's simple ways to do it. I could just pull out my journal and say, how am I different and improved upon from who I was yesterday, what I learned yesterday, even if I'll crap hit the fan and nothing went to plan, how am I better, how am I more wise than I was yesterday, and I could just think about it and thoughtfully do it. I could do that for a month,

I could do that for a year, how am I further, what are my biggest achievements, what's my biggest progress in the last year. And if I'm thoughtful about it, and if I give myself time, I realize that it's actually enormously more than I was giving myself credit for. And then I can use that momentum to think about better gains in the future. It's just an ongoing, beautiful way to live. So that's my initial framing of it. I don't know what sticks out to you and where you would like to go for your listeners. Well, I think I just wanted to be authentic about it.

When I read the book, I kind of wish I had read it maybe 10, 15 years ago, because as I viewed myself and many of the mistakes that I had made, it was because I was trying to compare myself against other people I would see. And so every time I would have a huge success story, I was on this meteoric rise in my career, I just felt like it was never enough because I would have a huge success story. I was on this meteoric rise in my career. I just felt like it was never enough because I would see others who were achieving more. I was constantly measuring myself against others instead of looking in the rear-view mirror

and seeing the growth journey that I'd been on and all the accomplishments that when others would look at my life would say, wow, look at what you've done over the course of your life. And so for me, it's helped me to really work on self-mastery more and to be more conscious of how I am trying to view my future self and the gains that I'm making against it. So that was kind of my biggest takeaway. And so I think it's a good segue into your newest book because I've found that the two complement each other very much.

Yeah, absolutely. I will just say as kind of my own final dose, a genuinen we might end up just weaving these two conversations together because they do complement. But one thing I will say just to what you've said is that as I said before, if you're measuring yourself against an ideal, you're in the gap, but that ideal is often other people. And I would change the word from ideal to idle. You can idolize other people. And you can make them for some, an odd way of measuring your own progress,

even though you're on radically different trajectories. And honestly, you have completely different goals. One problem with measuring yourself against externals all the time is that those externals always change. Just ideals always change based on wherever you're at. Dan kind of likens ideals to a horizon in the desert, right? The horizon's always out of reach. Doesn't matter how much you're sprinting towards the horizon. If you get mad at yourself for not being at the horizon of a desert, then you're never going to feel happy about yourself. And

a lot of people, they make that their way of life. They make happiness and success something that's always out of reach, always, it's, they actually don't realize that they've put themselves into a chasing game, but never a living and never a being game. One just other final thought is that when you are in the gap, where you're measuring yourself against somewhere where you thought you should be. And as a result, you've now devalued your current position in your current self. You now feel like a loser because you're not where you should be. And as a result, you've now devalued your current position in your current self. You now feel like a loser because you're not where you should be. What you've done is you've effectively made your entire past a problem. Your past is now what it shouldn't have been. You're not where you should be. You could have been somewhere

better. And so now you've set yourself up so that your whole past is not what it should have been. And so now you've devalued not only your current position, but you've also devalued your entire past. And if that's the way you live, then there's no reason to believe that the future will be any different. So it's an utterly painful way to live. Obviously, I lay out a lot of the psychological research and benefits of a more gain-oriented approach. I don't think there's any benefit to having a negative past. Luckily, the past is very much within our own control.

We can reframe it, we can redefine it, we can continually reshape the meaning of our own past, but there's no value in feeling like your past is negative. Even if you've gone through extreme trauma, which we all have. Well, it's interesting. I'll segue right into it from here because in the book, you show that the research indicates that a person's past doesn't dictate their actions and behaviors.

Why is that and why are we pulled so much towards the future? Yes, this is more the future self-sider things. I will say certainly our view of our own past does dictate the goals that we have for the future. So there's a lot of really interesting research and psychology happening these days in neuroscience. One is the idea that our brain is fundamentally what they would call a prediction machine. The brain is always making a prediction. Even the listener right now,

without even thinking about it, they are automatically predicting what I'm gonna be talking about and they're then making adjustments in their mind. We just can't stop. And so we're always predicting the future and that's why we form memories is so that we can better anticipate life. And so as people, we're always predicting the future. And that's why we form memories is so that we can better anticipate life.

And so as people were always forward orientating, also just as human beings, everything we do is driven by our views of the future. Human beings are different fundamentally than plants and animals. More way more intelligent. We spend a lot more time thinking about options and plans. We're not as reactive.

I mean, we certainly can be reactive, but like we have way more agency, way more opportunity, way more potential options in psychology. They call that prospects or the term is prospection where the listener right now has lots of options. They can actually turn off this podcast. They can go to the store and get a smoothie. Like they can think about a million different things that they want to do. And so as people, we're ultimately driven by the future that we end up committing ourselves most to. And so if

someone's listening to this, it's because they committed themselves to this. And then ultimately, the rest of their day and their week is going to be driven by the future that they're most committed to, whether it's getting to the meeting in two hours or whether it's taking their kids to the tennis match tonight at seven or whether it's paying the bills at the end of the month, like we all have commitments we've made that are driving us forward. And so we're actually being driven by our goals. And so then it forces you to ask yourself,

what are the things that I've either consciously or unconsciously committed myself to? And what would happen if I changed my perspective and my commitments to the future so that now my whole life is being driven by something else? It's very interesting. And obviously our view of our past can dictate which goals we set. One just last thought on this is that goals are often categorized in one of two ways either an approach oriented goal or an avoidance based goal. And usually if you haven't transformed your own trauma, a lot of your goals will be avoidance based where you're trying to avoid conflict, you're trying to avoid feeling uncomfortable, trying to avoid, it could be avoiding hard truths. And so either way, often we avoid things like I could avoid going to work and just fully distract myself on social

media. And so I'm actually engaging in a behavior to avoid something else. And so it's best when obviously your goals are approach oriented where you're actually thinking about what you want and going for it, which does take commitment and courage, but it's a more conscious, healthier way to live. Yeah, well, I've had a number of both psychologists and researchers on the show, primarily behavioral economics or behavioral science professors. And some of those included Katie Milkman,

who wrote, how to change. I recently had, I let Fishback, who studies the Science and Meditation, but it's also in through the lens of change, Ethan Cross from University, Michigan, Max Bayer, Xermen, etc. How would you say that your newest book takes a different approach at how we remove the barriers to change than some of those other authors I mentioned? Lately, I haven't truly studied some of their work. And so I don't know if I could speak for their work.

I don't necessarily be interested in your nuanced answer, because you've interviewed these people. But I think what I do in this book is I help people, number one, see a much cleaner, simpler definition of identity, an identity and perfection fit completely hand in hand. Identity as I see it, and there's a lot of psychological research on this definition, is basically it's your self-concept, past, present, and future, and it's also what you're most committed to in terms of your goals and your standards for yourself.

As I said before, as people we are being driven by the future that we're most committed to, and that also fits with our identity is what we're most committed to. And if something doesn't fit with your identity, then you're not going to do it. And so again, back to me and you, we were both committed to this conversation for one reason or another. And so it fits within our identity that we're having this conversation. And anyone listening also it fits within their identity and their goals to have this. I think a lot of psychologists would be afraid to admit that as people were driven fully by goals. I think that might scare them. And certainly we are driven by context, but the context may shape the goals that I'm pursuing. So I think I just simplified it.

I think I simplified. I think there's a lot of research on future self that's coming out. I'll even show this just because it's kind of cool. This is the psychology today magazine and psychology today, as I would see it, is kind of a broad perspective of where the field of psychology is going. So this is the September magazine and it's all about ways in which personality evolves. Literally, it says that the ways in which personality evolves. And then there's also a lot going on the topic of future self.

And I'm not trying to shoot my horn, but like I wrote this book, personality is impermanent, probably three years ago. And the reason I wrote it is because I was very surprised. During my PhD program, I had many professors tell me personality is a stable trait that if there was like a continuum, right? Like there was a full spectrum, one to a hundred, the amount in which a personality could change would maybe be like five points, right? Max, like you could maybe get small adjustments, but if you're an introvert, you're never going to actually scale over to the other side and be an extra verb, stuff like that. And I just really didn't believe that because it was against my own experience.

And so that led me to digging deep into the most recent research. And I would have conversations. I'm still very close friends with a lot of my professors who hold to kind of the older views that personality is a stable trait that doesn't change over time. But now, there's just ridiculous amounts of research to prove the opposite. Like your personality is going to change just with age, it's going to change with events like with marriage and traumatic events. It's also something you can proactively change through goals. And so I kind of saw that wave coming. And now it's just becoming ubiquitous, but also now, future self.

Like it's just future self is kind of from my belief, it's going becoming ubiquitous, but also now, future self. Like it's just, future self is kind of, from my belief, it's gonna be the crux of how you deal with and promote change moving forward. And I think I'm starting to see that, just in general, with where the field of psychology is going. So I do think future self is kind of a linchpin concept. Well, I'll take my shot at it. I love to hear your thoughts on what's different.

Yeah, I thought your thoughts on what's different. Yeah, I thought your book was most closely aligned to a couple of people I interviewed who I haven't brought up yet. One of those is Dr. Scott Berry-Coffman, who wrote a great book called Transcend. And then another person who actually studied under Marty Selegman when he was getting his PhD and that's Dr. David Yaden. And they both are really looking at self-transcendence and how does a person self-transcend and so much

of that ties into our identity which I thought had a strong link to your book where Katie Melkman and Ilet Fishback and John List and Ethan Cross were they take it is more around the science and microchoises and how— Can you behavior, essentially? Yes, and how these choices that we make, and I don't think people realize you're making thousands of these choices every single day, but if you're not deliberate about how you're making it, or intentional, as I like to say, and you point out in the book, then you're going to be making them towards a future version of you that is different than what you're aspiring to achieve.

So I think they're tackling it, but just through a slightly different lens, and you put a lot more emphasis, I thought, on the intentional aspect of becoming this future self, which becomes your present self at some point in time. Yeah, I mean, definitely we'll admit. One of the things I will say that I like about the research on future self in general is that it enables you to be a lot more humble and flexible in your present self, which is essentially what would be called a growth mindset.

Like I know that as an example, my future self and a week from now, a month from now, a year from now is going to have hopefully updated in better views than I have now. And that's also true of what I've proposed in that book. I can honestly say I finished writing that book eight or nine months ago. And I definitely have updated views since I wrote that book. And so that book is simply a snapshot from my perspective and it's a very limited perspective. And so I think why I like that view is that my own views are very limited and very biased. But what I'm trying to say is everything I try to attempt is trying to hit the root of the equation. And I think if you are focused solely on behavior or even on things like habits, I think you're whacking at the branches. I really do. And although I love behavioral economics, I study the heck out of them. I think that

they're very interesting. I still think that goals and identity and context are the roots and how those three things are kind of influencing each other. And I think that just focusing on manipulating behavior is not a long-term strategy. I wouldn't go for it personally. manipulating behavior is not a long-term strategy. I wouldn't go for it personally. Okay. Well, I can't do this interview without having you talk about Jimmy Donaldson at who you bring up at the beginning of the book. And for those who might know him by his YouTuber name, Mr. Beast, why did you decide to bring him up in the book? Because I think it's a great example of really understanding this future self concept. So I'm a Mr. Beast fan.

I probably watch more YouTube videos than my future self would like me to, but I just enjoy people who are innovators and people who break the norm. There's a term for that, which is called ratebuster. A ratebuster is someone who kind of shatters the typical way of doing things. And that's how I see Mr. Beast is just someone who does something fundamentally different bigger. I was extremely surprised in October of 20, I think it was October of 2020 when just a random video of his published and it was, it looked totally different from all the other videos that he published at the time. Like all of his videos have really flashy

thumbnails and they're all about these big, crazy stunts he's doing. And all of a sudden I see this video with this old picture of a younger version of him. And it says, hi me in five years. And I was like, this is different. And then I click the video. And it's an old video. And he's like, Hey, it's 2015. I'm putting this video to go live. And it's just him talking to the camera, like the much younger, five year younger version of himself. And it's him talking to himself in 2020. And so it was just a really interesting video that I was just completely surprised by because I was in the middle of writing the book. I was in the middle of doing all this research on future self and studying Victor Frankel, which I think Victor Frankel's

perspective is pretty much resonate deeply with all this research. But I was just so shocked that there was this video. And then I found out that there were several others that he filmed, but essentially back in 2015 when Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, was first starting out as a YouTuber. So this was just seven years ago, but at the time it was only five years ago, because this is back in 2020, that he filmed several videos of himself talking to his future self. And I just happened to find the five-year version where he was talking to his future self. And I just happened to find the five year version where he was talking to his future self in 2020. And just saying where he won himself to be and he was being very candid, very honest, very vulnerable and very public about where he thought his future self would be. And he was having the conversation basically with his future self, but on camera. And then he set the video

to go live five years into the future. And so I just thought, wow, and I went back and I went to his other ones that same night. So I think it was somewhere in October of 2015. He filmed like three or four videos. One was just a short, two minute clip talking to his future self six months in advance. Then one talking to his future self, a year in advance and then talking to his future self like two years and then five years. There are different time frames, but he just spent probably 20 minutes talking to his future self at different time frames, and then he set them to go published in accordance with the amount of time he was talking to his future self. And I just thought it was fascinating. I thought, wow, like this guy obviously is one of the most successful people of the last five years. And it's interesting when you actually look at the videos before he made

those, like before he had those conversations with his future self and afterward, it's apparent that was kind of a turning point for not only his YouTube channel, but I would say for his identity, it was an obvious indicator to himself that he was getting very committed to his goals and that before that, he was less committed to that. So it's just very interesting to me. Well, I think it's pretty intriguing that here you have a high school or at the time who was supposed to be studying, I think,

for their final exam. And instead they're recording these YouTube videos. And in each case, he completely, obliterated. Yeah, sometimes 100 acts more than he thought he would do. I think he's over 100 million. Subscribe. 110 million subscribers on his main channel, but he has other channels with tens of millions of subscribers as well. He's probably in the top four or five highest paid earners ever from YouTube, yet I think he gives a lot of it away to charity.

Yeah, he also has enormous businesses built around it, charities built around it, sponsorships. I mean, he, I don't even know it, charities built around it, sponsorships. I mean, he, I don't even know all the things he's doing. I couldn't even comprehend it, but he is very strategic. He's very smart. And even at age 17, he was very intentional about his future self. And also he utilized those kind of tools, such as public commitment and things like that, to get himself hyper committed. I mean, back to the idea that your identity is what you're most committed to, a person goes through an identity change once they've really clarified who they that to get himself hyper committed. I mean, back to the idea that your identity is what you're most committed to, a person goes through an identity change once they've really clarified who they want

to be and they stop avoiding the fears or the consequences socially or other forms involved in going fully for what they want. They stop avoiding those consequences socially and emotionally and they start fully approaching those consequences. They start being completely fine, being public about who they want to be, admitting to everyone else that this is where I'm going. This is what I want, and I'm comfortable with the consequences. And they shift essentially from approach to avoid. I actually did an enormous amount of research in this when I was doing my PhD.

I was studying the difference between wannabe entrepreneurs and actual entrepreneurs, and I was very interested in where they made the identity shift from being an a wannabe to actually going on. And so I interviewed a big number of successful entrepreneurs and a big number of people who said that they wanted to be entrepreneurs, but we're still employees and hadn't made that jump. And I ended up conceptualizing that identity shift into what I called the point of no return, which is basically the moment that they become fully committed. I think courage is the moment of full commitment. Even if you're courageously jumping into a building to save someone from a fire, the moment of courage is actually the moment of full commitment, where it is kind of a point of no return moment where now there are consequences of taking action. And so courage is really just the moment of full commitment. And I found that

over and over is that's the distinguishing full commitment. And I found that over and over is that's the distinguishing difference between the wannabes and the actual people is that the wannabes actually anticipated a moment of point of no return in the future, but that they admitted fully that they hadn't had that experience yet. Well, I wish I would have interviewed you last week. I my solo episode this past week was on what does it mean to be a person a courage? And I did it through more of the lens of it takes courage to offer forgiveness to someone. It takes courage to trauma. It takes courage to be a bigger person. But that example you just gave is another great one because people confuse courage with bravery. Bravery is just tends to be more just second nature to us, where to me what makes

someone courageous is it takes forethought and it takes intentional decision or choice to pursue it. I'll give you the psychological definition of courage just because literally I did my master's thesis on entrepreneurial courage. And if anyone Googles this, all you have to do is type in Benjamin Hardy, does it take courage to start a business? And you will find my master's thesis on entrepreneurial courage. And if anyone Googles this, all you have to do is type in Benjamin Hardy, does it take courage to start a business? And you will find my master's thesis. I lay out literally not only my own findings of interviewing on it, want to be versus actual entrepreneurs, but you will find a huge literature review on all of the definitions of courage, the ways in which you can see courage. But the most kind of simple definition of the concept or

the construct is that it's a threefold concept. One is it's an intentional, volitional act, which is what you said. It's not purely reactive. Yes, sometimes you are reacting to a situation, but in the end, you are volitionally moving forward and making the decision of your own conscious will. The second is that it involves some form of risk to you, and that risk is subjective. It could be social

risk. It may be asking or asking someone for their phone number and getting rejected, right? Or it could be physical risk. It could be, but you perceive risk in moving forward. And it's towards the third one to be what you perceive to be a noble or worthwhile aim. In other words, you believe that doing this thing is noble and worthwhile. from your perspective, you're volitionally moving forward towards it and you're doing that in spite of what to be as risks involved, whatever those risks may be. Those are the three core components of what would be called psychological courage. Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought that up. And it goes hand in hand with the episode that I did. I'm not sure I labeled them those three, but I definitely captured an element of all three of those.

Well, another thing Ben, that's pretty interesting, is as we discussed before the show, I have my own book that hopefully will get published in the near future. And one of the chapters I wrote on was the psychology of progress. And I used the analogy in this chapter of playing the game of pinball. To look at going after our goals and I talked about it. That oftentimes we're on autopilot. It's like the game of pinball playing us. And we're in the subconscious state is what I talk about.

And then I said what really you've got to orient your mind to is how do you be conscious so that instead of the game playing you, you're playing the game, which is very akin to life. And you talk about in your book that our goals can be conscious and subconscious. And I was hoping you could discuss that. Yeah, absolutely. I've had a lot of conversations about this

and I've thought deeply about it. It's really back to the idea, is it true that every human behavior is goal oriented? That's the claim I'm making. I'm not the only one who's made that claim. Aristotle even made that claim two thousand years ago. The philosophical term for it is teleology, which is basically the idea that every human action, even me responding to your question, is goal oriented? And so if I want to get up and go to the bathroom, the goal is obviously driving my behavior, which is to go to the bathroom. Once I get up and go home, it's because going home becomes the goal driving my behavior. And so one question is that actually true. Is every human action truly driven by a goal? Certainly not every action is driven

by a conscious goal. So for example, if I was walking in someone's swung at me, I might reactively try to move back, right? Where unconsciously, I tried to avoid getting hit. In that case, it's an unconscious behavior, but the goal was an avoid based goal, where unconsciously, I avoided being hit in the face. I still had a goal, which was simply to avoid being punched. I think that life presents us with an interesting situation where goal, which was simply to avoid being punched. I think that life presents us with an interesting situation where I think that the process of waking up is realizing that the things that you've been driving towards weren't actually your choice. Maybe they were your parents goals. Maybe it was your conditioning. Maybe

it's your being reactive to trauma in the past. Maybe it's just that you're trying to do what friends have told you to do or maybe you're just going for what society has told you should want. Maybe you spend way too much time on social media. And so you just want what your newsfeed tells you to want. That's actually, and there's a lot of research on this at this point. Now that social media is genuinely intended to alter people's goals,

their identity and their behavior. Again, those three things are completely aligned, but you're constantly fed algorithmically things that over time, subtly change your desires, right? They change what you want, what you go for, but you're constantly fed algorithmically things that over time subtly change your desires, right? They change what you want, what you go for, what you seek. So I think that the goal for every person trying to become more conscious is to become aware. And that's really making the subconscious conscious, becoming aware of what you're doing, becoming aware.

Oh, I now realize why I get so triggered in these certain ways and why I want to cigarette, right? Or why I keep sabotaging my relationships. I think becoming more conscious allows you to stop being driven by unconscious, whether their goals, society is fed you, whether it's you of avoiding dealing with hard truths and trauma, eventually you become a lot more approach oriented, which is another way of saying a lot more conscious. Not only about what you want, but also about clearing away the clutter that's still unconscious about yourself, like being proactive, maybe going to therapy, maybe figuring out why do I keep creating these patterns in my life that aren't serving me anymore? So, yeah, I think the goal is to become increasingly conscious. And I'm actually a big fan of David

Hawkins' work. And he created what he calls the map of consciousness, but I think it's really just a scale of what he would call emotional development, which is the first stage of getting to a healthy place in your life is what he calls courage, which is similar to what I would call kind of the combination of courage and commitment, which is being a lot more honest with yourself, actually beginning to uncover the weeds that are muddling and confusing you. But yeah, I think the goal is to become

more conscious and approach-based in what you're going for. Yeah, it reminds me of one of the favorite sermons I have ever heard was by Terry Moore, who I went to the United Methodist Church when I was in North Carolina, and the sermon was on the main thing about the main thing is keeping the main thing, which I'm sure many people have heard. But to me, this conscious versus subconscious in many ways is finding your main thing. Because when you are pursuing your main thing and you have a main thing, you're much more conscious about that pursuit. And I think a great example of this is you look at President Abraham

Lincoln. And for 30 plus years of his life, he self-described himself as being an aimless piece of driftwood, just going down the river of life and it wasn't until he kind of found that main thing of abolishing slavery and taking the country to a different place where everything that he had worked on in his life kind of fell in place. And you just see it once he got that targeted viewpoint, everything kind of aligned. And I think that's an extreme example, but it's a good one for people to realize this importance of finding that thing and then making sure you're eliminating all the noise and the subconscious

things that halt you from pursuing it. Yeah, I like that a lot. I think that you won't quote unquote find that main thing if you're remaining unconscious as a piece of driftwood. I think you won't see it subconsciously. You'll be too distracted by the things that you're allowing to distract you because you're avoiding looking at it. I think that the reason Abraham Lincoln was able to find that main thing is because he did a lot of the approach oriented work of clearing away the clutter. That was whether it's his own emotional baggage, whether it's reading books and educating himself, but he did a lot of self work that enabled him to actually identify what he wanted to commit himself fully to and what he resonated most with,

which was obviously something very purpose oriented and extremely amazing cause. And I think that it's very difficult to commit to a cause that you're willing to die for and give your life for if you're still mostly unconscious and just being dragged to and fro by whether it's your bodily distractions and addictions or whether it's newsfeed distractions. And so you do have to do a lot of internal work, which I'm sure Abraham Lincoln did, which allowed him the mental capacity to see something he wanted to commit to and then to fully commit to it. But I think everyone can and should do that. I think that this goes right straight back to Victor Frankel, that without having a purpose and a mission

to which you are willing to fully dedicate yourself to, your life is kind of aimless and meaningless. And I think Abraham Lincoln's a great example of someone who committed to something that really mattered to him and that he was willing to stretch himself for, learned for, and ultimately live for, and die for. And I think we can all ultimately choose that.

I mean, that's I think, for me, why I like all of this research on future self, and first off, our future self will be different, and they'll see things differently, but also, we in a lot of ways get to choose what we commit ourselves to. As much as I believe Abraham Lincoln found slavery, I also think he chose it.

I think that he saw huge importance in that, and he made a conscious decision to dedicate himself to that. And I think we can do the same. I think we can think about who we want to be and what we want to dedicate ourselves to and I have a cause and a purpose that drives our life. And that leads us to being and doing things that we wouldn't and couldn't do without that cause. It leads us to transforming ourselves and expanding as people and having hope and commitment and courage and transformation. And it's it's what allowed. Fronkle and the people in the concentration camps not only to survive, but thrive. And I think it's similarly what we need as well is a goal that we choose and commit ourselves to

that we really believe in. Yeah, one of the things I like that you brought up in the book is humans act the way we do based on the future we see for ourselves whether it's something we're trying to avoid or in the case that we're talking about here with Abraham Lincoln, something we're trying to create. So I think a follow on question to this, if you're someone who's trying to figure out your future self, what are some of the threats that you might run across to your future self? I think some of the main threats that I laid out in the book are number one, and I laid this out initially is not having purpose for your future. That was the Victor Frankel scenario, right, is if you don't actually have a connection to your future self, if you don't have a seeming sense of purpose or mission, then you're not clear on the future that's driving your present. Your future is still being driven by something, but it's probably more myopic. It's probably more short term. It's probably the next dopamine hit,

the next scroll, or paying the bills. If you don't have a bigger picture vision, similar to Jimmy Donaldson, who was thinking 5, 10, 15 years in advance, how I look at it is this. There's a few quotes that help. One is the bigger the vision, the better your decisions. So without having a clear and bigger picture longer term perspective, philosophers are now calling this long termism, it's really hard to drive your behavior in a thoughtful way. Instead, you actually are being just driven by urgent short term goals, whether that's paying the bills, whether that's fulfilling your next dopamine hit.

So it is a big threat. This is where a lot of the original research on future self was. There's actually even a TED Talk, I think from 2010, called the battle between your present and your future self. By a psychologist, I believe his name is Daniel Goldstein. I could be wrong on that. But he describes the inherent problem of not being connected to a bigger picture future self and using that bigger picture to determine consciously your choices here and now. If you're not connected to that bigger picture feature self and using that bigger picture to determine consciously your choices here and now. If you're not connected to that bigger picture feature self, then your present self is going to win the battle between your present and your future self. And what the present self just wants is comfort. It wants to numb itself. It wants to distract itself, right?

It wants that donut, right? Because it's phenomenal. There's a lot of rewards and dopamine that you can get in the present, right? Because it's phenomenal. There's a lot of rewards and dopamine that you can get in the present, but ultimately end up having negative long-term repercussions to your future self if you go all in on those short-term dopamine hits. Obviously, having a bigger picture future and a commitment to and a connection to your future self, not having those things as a huge threat. Unresolved trauma can be a huge threat to your future self because it leads to an avoidance oriented approach to life being unaware of your environment, which is basically just not being conscious of how your goals are being fed to you by your environment, whether that's your friends, culture, social media, your environment certainly can

be a huge threat to your future self, especially if your environment isn't leading you where you want to go. Instead, it's leading you some other way. There's a lot of threats to your future self. I'm trying to think of what I mean, I know, I mean, another one is the types of relationships that you have. I recently interviewed a big part. I recently interviewed Robert Waldinger, his books, going to come out in January, but it's all about the grant study at Harvard where they've been studying this group of men for 75 plus years. And I found that I love that study, by the way, love that study. Yeah, and it's remarkable. I mean, that the whole key to it is your relationships determine your happiness. It's not how much money you have. It's not your social status. It's not your

political party. It's not this. It's not that. So that's a pretty amazing. Well, I think I'll say just really quickly about that study is if anyone wants a deeper dive into that study, I think his name is George Vellant. I think he was the psychologist who kind of oversaw that study for about 30 or 40 years. He wrote a book called The Triumphs of Experience. And that book goes deep into the Harvard study. One of the things that I loved about his research, by the way, and about that study,

was as it did show nonlinear changes in people's future selves. Like people who are one way for 20 or 30 years, they call it, they were a certain way up until like their 30s, 40s or even 50s made massive changes. Like they were completely nonlinear and unexpected, big changes in who they were. Some people who were totally unhappy, like all the way up until their 70s or 80s, obviously became wildly happy, right? And like that just as you study people, like the long run decades, you see really interesting. So I think it's hopeful.

First off, that people can and do change on the regular. And then it's like, I think it points obviously to future self concepts and that actually you can. It doesn't really matter that you've been a certain way for a really long time. You are different from your past self already. And your future self will be wildly and even non-linearly different than you are today. But if you're thoughtful about it, if you're a little bit more conscious about it, you can really direct that shit. To me, I think that's exciting. I do too. So we've covered a lot here about the psychology of the future self. If I'm someone who's listening to this podcast

If I'm someone who's listening to this podcast, and they're wondering, how do I apply this in my life? What are some of the action steps that they can implement to help them clarify, prioritize, and be their desired future self? So I'll combine gap and gain with future self right now, because I think they go together really hand in hand right here. A lot of the research that helps you to get more connected to and imaginative towards your future self starts by actually inviting you to think about your past self. This is where Dr. Daniel Gilberts research comes in handy. He also highlights a lot of this in his 2014 TED Talk,

called the psychology of your future self. But the first step honestly is a simple invitation to look at who you are now versus your past self. You can go back 10 years. And I think this is really helpful. It's helpful first off because it gets you in the game, but second off, it actually, if you're really thoughtful about it, think about who you are and how you operate in the world. It takes time to get good at this is a skill, it's a skill you can build.

You can start looking at surface level differences. What's the difference between you right now versus you in 2012? You could look at external things like the people you hung out with, the types of music you listen to. You could look at surface level things like that and like how much money you made, how you thought about the world,

what your goals were back then, what your priorities were, how you thought about things, how you thought about the world, what your goals were back then, what your priorities were, how you thought about things, how you thought about the world. And if you take a lot of time, you'll see that if you actually think about it in depth a little bit more than a surface level, you will see that. Yeah, you're quite different from your past self 10 years ago. You could go a level deeper and actually think about what was the mental models, like the belief systems you had, the there's a great quote that says that you're not going to be that different than you were five years ago, except for the books you read and the people you meet.

But if you're someone who's actually read a lot of books and had a lot of experiences, your entire frame of how you make decisions, how you value and decide what matters, what doesn't, everything you do and how you see the world and operate in the world is completely different and who you were even two or three years ago. The first step is honestly just regularly taking time to reference back on your past self. And this is how I live. And again, as I do this, I could look at myself back at the beginning of November, honestly, and be like, and again, we're filming this on November 14th.

But like I could look back on myself two weeks ago and be like, how am I actually operating in the world differently? I'm actually a different person than I was 14 days ago. But first step, it's just go back 10 years and make a list of all the ways in which you've changed and that you're different. You can do that from shorter time frames as well. This allows you to recognize that you're not your past self. And I think that's a very vital first step. A second step is then to start to think about your future self. The general first assumption that most people make is that their future self is going to be the same person they are today. And the

number one reason for that is is because they don't imagine their future self. They don't spend very much time thinking about it. But I think a second step after you've truly identified and spent time thinking about how different you are from your past self and you acknowledge that and you appreciate that is to start getting a little bit more imaginative about who your future self will be. And you can start it a longer time frame 10 years. You can certainly shorten the time frame, but I think it's really great to think about who your future self could be

and where they could be and what they could be like and what matters to them. And I think a helpful way of doing that is imagining the context. And you can make it a lot more vivid. Psychologists talk about making your future self vivid in order to get connected with them. So I would think about other aspects of your future self's life 10 years from now. I'll give myself an example right now. I have six kids. The oldest one is 15. The youngest one is two. So I could really start to make my future self vivid by saying, okay, in 10 years, my oldest son's going to be 25, right? My youngest is going to be 12. What's my life going to be like? What's my life going to look like? What's going to matter to me?

I don't honestly can't fully predict it, right? Because it's, my future self's going to be so different. But I think starting to think about, starting to imagine what your future self's going to be like and appreciating that they're going to be more different even than you are now compared to your past self is a big first step. Yeah, I think that's a great first step. The one thing that I like to tell listeners

and I've said it before is that sometimes, I like to look at my future self by writing a resume of five years in the future, what I want my resume to look like. So. I think that's sweet. Yeah, so let's go back to your story, the first book that you wrote that you wanted to be

a New York Times best-selling author. I mean, if you write this resume and your top headline is Dr. Benjamin Hardy, New York Times best-selling author, TEDx speaker with two million views, whatever it is, I'm a true believer that you manifest what you put out there to the world and the affirmations that you give yourself. And when we don't allow ourselves to dream big, we end up getting this feature version of ourself that is our less than we have the aptitude to create. So I would just add that as another element of this. I love it.

I mean, the resume is cool because it's really tangible and you could just write down here the list of accomplishments that I want. This is what's normal for my future self. It's normal for my future self to have X amount of money. Another way of looking at it is standards. What is the standard that my future self lives to that is totally normal to them. That could be in terms of how much money they make, what their normal day to day life is. Yeah, I really like that. There's another concept I don't talk about explicitly in the book, but I think it's a great concept and it's called fitness function. And fitness function is basically just an idea of what is the, what are you optimizing for as a person? Like basically it asks, what is it you're

really going for in very specific terms? What's the specific standard that you're going for and that you're essentially focusing on and turning yourself into? Someone who's like a high school football player wanting to be like a high school football player wanting to be like a quarterback, like their fitness function is they wanna be an NFL quarterback, right? And so there's very specific things that they need to develop and become and learn

in order to go on that growth curve. But we all have our own goals, our own desires. And it's really nice to get hyper-specific about what do you actually wanna become? As an example, I referenced back to you research that I did in 2014 as a first year PhD student, which was I was studying entrepreneurial courage. Because back then in 2014, I wanted to really be established as a thought later in not only in the psychology world, but in the entrepreneurial

world. And so it's no, it's no that I've written three books with Dan Sullivan, who is considered one of the top entrepreneurial coaches in the world. Because even back in 2014, before I ever even started blogging, I was studying those things. Like I knew that I was optimizing for certain things towards my future self. The only reason I say that is because you can get very fine grained in how you think about your future self. Obviously you can get better and better in a week from now and a year from now you're

going to be a little clearer, but you can really think in specific terms. And I think being in a gain in the gain is really healthy because it stops you from trying to compete with other people. It stops you from trying to create a future self that's actually in competition with others. Instead, it's more intrinsic based, kind of what you were talking about with Abraham Lincoln, where it's like, no, this is what I want because this is what excites me. It's intrinsically motivating to me. That's very purposeful towards me. And so I just think you can get very specific. It's not just about, for example, me being a

professional author with a million books sold. Instead, it's about what kind of author am I? What kind of books am I writing? What's also my lifestyle. You can get very specific about who your future self is, and the more specific the better, because the clearer the goal, the more direct the path, if you got broad goals, then it's very difficult to find a pathway forward. Well, and one of the lines in the book that I like the most is that when you become your future self in the current moment, you feel a seismic shift. And I can tell you, I felt that in my own career many times, probably more as I've gotten older and have become very much more targeted on the legacy I want to leave the world and my kids and for myself. So I thought that was a very powerful quote.

And speaking of quotes, I wanted to end the episode on this. You have a quote in the book. I think it's twice by $0.50 and Robert Green. Can you tell the audience what the quote is and why it was so significant for you. Yeah, I think this quote highlights very dramatically the battle between your present and your future self, and a lot of what we've been talking about today. I'll see if I still have it memorized. I had a memorized view to talk to my past self maybe six months ago, but basically Robert Green in the book,

the 50th Law, which is I was surprised how good that book was by the way I did some research on that book when I was writing the year future self now But a line from that book is that Basically by our nature is rational conscious creatures We cannot help but think of the future. We can't like it's rational conscious creatures We can't help but think of the future, but most people out of fear And this goes to an avoidance orientation But most people out of fear limit their views of the future to a narrow range. Thoughts of tomorrow, a few weeks ahead, perhaps a vague plan for the months to come.

We are generally dealing with so many immediate battles that it is hard for us to lift our gaze above the moment. It is a law of power, however, that the further and deeper we contemplate the future, the greater our capacity to shape it to our desires. I just think that that quote kind of in a large part summarizes a lot of the threats to future self and also a lot of the power of getting clear and committed to a bigger term, longer term, future self. And ultimately, if you're not clear and committed to a bigger picture, future self, then what that truly means is that you're being driven by urgent battles, urgent goals, urgent fires. And the reason your life is so urgent is because you're avoiding out of fear, the bigger questions. You're avoiding facing your trauma, avoiding facing yourself, avoiding getting clear on what you

want, avoiding dealing with letting people down for leaving a bad relationship, leaving a job that you no longer, there's so much fear that leads us into dealing with just short-term battles or just short-term distractions. And as they say at the end of that quote, the further in the deeper we contemplate the future the greater our capacity, shape it toward desires, I think that quote is the reason why Jimmy Donaldson is who he is today. And it's also an example of why all of us are who we are today is it's we're somewhere on the continuum of either being overly driven by our current self and short term battles or we're being driven by a much bigger clear vision of our future self. I actually do the quote from Dan

Sullivan where he says that the only way to make your present better is by making your future bigger. I would also say future longer. Yeah, that's that quote. I don't know what you liked about that quote. What'd you like about that quote? Well, I thought I brought the whole concept together and I have not had a chance to read the book. I heard Robert Green might have been on impact theory or might have been with on purpose. One of those two I heard the interview about it

and it just sounded really intriguing. It's an older book. It was about a 2010 book. Yeah, well, they had Robert Green on. He was just talking about the concepts from. Well, they had Robert Green on. He was just talking about the concepts from it because they still resonate so well today. But it's a surprisingly good book. Yes.

Well, Ben, I know I'll put the book up here one more time. I'll make sure in the YouTube we're going to highlight it even more. You can find this book anywhere you find books. But if someone wants to learn more about you and what you're up to, what's the best way for them to do that. They're really just two websites. One is either Benjamin Hardy.com or future self.com. I actually have future self.com. So I'd say just go to either of those places. We have free resources on those pages. Benjamin Hardy is more kind of like the hub of what I'm up to future self is. Kind of more just direct to that. So yeah, those are the two places. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

And I know that this is a topic our audience is going to love. So appreciate it very much. It's super important. Yeah, super important topic and grateful for your deep thought on it, for sure, John. So thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Benjamin Hardy. And I wanted to thank him for the honor of being a guest on the show. Links to all things Ben will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

Please use website links if you buy any of the books from the featured guests. It helps to support the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John Armiles and passion struck clips. Everties or deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com. Slash deals. I'm at John Armiles, both on Instagram and Twitter. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. Lebs. Avertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. I'm at John Armiles, both on Instagram and Twitter, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. You're about to hear a preview with a passionstruck podcast interview that I did with Bernie Marcus,

co-founder of Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement retailer, who throughout his career was dedicated more than just his day job. Even in the midst of trying to build the Home Depot, Bernie became a pillar of philanthropy as he created institutions and invested in programs to better the lives of people all over the world. I had never had this feeling of all of a sudden out of work. No money coming in, no money coming in your family. It was hard. It was hard. And all the people out there, I will tell you, if you dwell on the negatives, you're going to end up being negative for the rest of your life. You will not recover. You have to think about what you're really good at,

what you're able to accomplish, what your character is like, and what your abilities are like, and you have to go for your strengths. And I think that can't be alive. The fee for this show is that you share it when you find something useful or interesting. If you know someone who's interested in learning about the science of future self, definitely share this episode with them.

The greatest compliment that you can give this show is to share it with those you care about. In the meantime, be your best who apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live life Ash and Strut. you