The One You Feed - Reframing the Past to Liberate Your Future Self with Ben Hardy

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Learn how psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy confronts and conquers life’s hurdles to achieve his future self’s aspirations. This episode offers plenty of practical strategies for transforming obstacles into opportunities for your personal growth and development. In this episode, you will be able to: Uncover the psychology behind intentional transformation for lasting change Learn effective strategies for setting achievable goals Discover the power of post-traumatic growth and the art of reframing challenges Connect with your future self to gain insight and direction for your personal journey Conquer obstacles and turn your goals into reality with practical, actionable methods To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The obstacle is what transforms you. Going through the obstacle is what takes you from who you are now to becoming a future self that's radically wiser, more capable. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. We hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions

like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist and the world's leading expert on the psychology of entrepreneurial leadership and exponential growth.

His PhD research focused on entrepreneurial courage and transformational leadership. Before completing his PhD, Ben's blogs were read by over 100 million people, and he's the author of six books, including the one discussed here, Be Yourself Now, The Science of Intentional Transformation. Hey, Ben, welcome to the show. Brother, good to be with you. I'm really excited to have you on. We have attempted this conversation a couple times now, and technical difficulties have been our nemesis, but we have got it figured out. I'm optimistic. This time,

no hurricane in your neighborhood this time around? We've recovered from the hurricane. All right, good. Well, we're going to be discussing your latest book, Be Your Future Self Now, The Science of Intentional Transformation. But before we do that, let's start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there's two wolves that inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second and

they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So I think the easiest way I look at that is a lot of it has to do with attention. So like your attention is the monster you're feeding. And whatever you pay attention to, you create more of. And I also look at it from a systems perspective. According to systems theory, and also chaos theory, this is where the butterfly effect comes in. Little things can create huge ripples over time. So essentially, you become whatever you pay attention to, even subtle things that you pay attention to over time can have a compounding effect where it's

like in a year or two or three years, that thing that was small and insignificant actually took over your whole life and it became your entire character. So, yeah, I mostly look at it in terms of attention, that whatever you pay attention to is what you're feeding and whatever you're feeding, you're creating more of and becoming more of. I love that. And as you were talking about that, it made me think about addiction and the way that something that starts really small, like in my case started as, you know, I'm going to have a couple of drinks. I'm going to try drinking with some friends, right? Ends up as, you know, a homeless heroin addict.

Like it's a small thing, but just little by little, it really grew to be kind of an out of control monster. Absolutely. Do you want to go into your father's story? Or would you rather just stay away from that? I'm happy to go anywhere you want to go, brother. All right. Well, when we talked last time, you know, you did bring up that addiction was what came to your mind and your relationship to it. When I asked you what your relationship to addiction was, was that your father was an addict. Can you tell us a little bit about what that journey was like for you? Yeah, absolutely. So for me, what happened was, is I grew up oldest of three boys,

and we grew up in a fairly, honestly, like very conservative religious family even. And what happened was, my parents got a divorce, and it shook kind of the core of what I thought was reality. I thought things were stable. And I think that this is actually an interesting aspect of trauma that I've learned is that with these kind of seismic events, for kids, especially, it feels like you go back to zero. And like, honestly, everything that happened before that, in a lot of ways can be lost in like the chambers of your mind. And it can be hard to even remember things from before that, in certain cases, unless you do some of the deep work, but it feels like you start over from zero at that point. But yeah, my dad was surprised by the divorce, although it had been growing for a long time. And ultimately, he just wasn't able to hold it together. In his deep depression, he got invited by a friend once just to go get some drinks. And he said, yes, I mean, I think he had struggled with addiction in the past, but it was something he had kind of let calm. And that ultimately just opened up the floodgates. And over time, he was doing pretty

much everything. And it was all over my house. Like by the time I'm like 13 or 14, my friends and I are playing World of Warcraft in one room. My dad's doing all sorts of drugs in the next room with a lot of psycho people. Like my house becomes this loony bin place where like the weirdo people are coming over and my friends are like, this is not normal, Ben. Like my house becomes this loony bin place where like the weirdo people are coming over and my friends are like, this is not normal, Ben. Like this is weird. And I just kind of have to push it all out. I'm snowboarding, playing with friends and barely getting through school. I did barely get through school, luckily, and did finish high school and then ended up preparing to go on a church mission. I felt like for me, that was kind of a way to start over.

preparing to go on a church mission, I felt like for me, that was kind of a way to start over. My younger brother ended up joining the Marines. And so I kind of wanted a way to start fresh. And that was the most plausible way for me. And in the process of me preparing and leaving on that age 20, I did start to redevelop my relationship with my dad. We started to go to lunches together. For the previous few years before that, I had completely shut him out. Like he would come to my mom's apartment, try to talk to us, and we would just stonewall him, just tell him to leave, because we could tell he was high. And so, yeah, he started to clean himself up. And then I was gone for a few years on that journey, and he cleaned himself up during that time and ended up even becoming part of, like, addiction recovery circles. So, it's been

interesting. My younger brother's dealt with addiction. I've dealt with various forms of addiction. And so it's something I think about heavily. Yeah. Yeah. So you come back from that and your dad is in better shape. He's doing well. Much better, much better shape. You guys work on repairing your relationship. Have you found that you've needed to go back and do any repair on yourself from what happened to you in those years? Or do you feel like you were able to kind of just be able to let it go and kind of move on? Or do you feel like you had some lasting effects from those years? Both would be my answer. I would say while I was doing that two-year adventure, I guess missionary venture, I did a lot of internal healing, doing a lot of missionary service, community service, having a lot of internal healing, doing a lot of missionary service,

community service, having a lot of big experiences, a lot of spiritual learning, also just a lot of self-developmental learning, a lot of philosophical learning, and just connecting with other people with various backgrounds. And so, I healed a lot on that experience, let go of a lot, and then I would say I got home in 2010. Okay. So, I've been home for about about 12 years and basically I've just been studying psychology ever since. I had zero college credits when I came home. You know, I ended up going obviously through a PhD in psychology, although it was organizational psychology. My undergrad was in what's called philosophical or theoretical psychology. And so, I'm still learning. I would say I don't think anyone's

ever fully recovered, but I'm always learning, you know, better models of reframing my past, present, and future. And I think it's a continuous cycle. I'm now in the process now as a parent, and we adopted three kids from the foster system where now they've got all this baggage, and I can see that stuff I thought I'd overcome is now coming out in different forms, right, as a parent. And so, it's now a new way of going through a healing process so that hopefully I don't pass stuff on to the next cycle. Yeah, parenting will do that for sure. I mean, my son is 23, so I'm at the other end of kind of where you are. But yeah, I mean, it brings all that stuff up, not only in sort of seeing them and thinking about what's good for them, and you can't help but reflect, well, what happened to me? But also, I just think parenting sort of constantly brings us to our emotional edge, where we really learn where we're limited, and we come up against our limits all the time. And that can be overwhelming, and sometimes it is very overwhelming, but it can also, with our minds oriented in the

right way, it can also be an opportunity to grow and heal. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Have you ever read the book Siddhartha? Yep. My wife heavily suggested I listen to that or read or I listen to books usually. And so, I was, I listened to that book while walking the last two days. And I actually really liked what he said at the end, you know, in that book, obviously, his son is totally rebelling against him. And he says he would rather have kind of the suffering and the sadness of that than, quote unquote, a peaceful life without it, right? Yeah, yes.

I think that that was kind of a cool model or a cool perspective is that obviously there's challenge, but there's joy. I think there's difference between joy and pleasure. And joy is a lot deeper. And it comes with suffering. It comes with pain. It comes with sometimes sorrow and disappointment, but you can still actually have deep joy, which is lasting and something you value, something of more of an enduring value. So, I'm very happy. You know, I have six kids, but even when we first got the three kids as foster kids when I was, it was back in 2015. So, this was the first year of my PhD program. This is also the year I'm starting out as a blogger. And so, I'm taking on all these new things. Now we've got these three kids. I have zero idea how to parent. I fully admit, for years,

I probably inflicted more pain than positivity on these kids because I just didn't know what I was doing. You know what I mean? I mean, that's me being pretty rough on myself, but at the same time, luckily, we still have them and we've still got years and it's a long-term thing and things can transform. Relationships are the reality and so you can heal and change those. And so, it's a beautiful process and I'm continually appreciative of it. Yeah, it is. So over the 12 years you've been back, you've sort of had to continually reframe, you know, your relationship to your past, present and future self. And so I think that's a great place for us to transition into future self. So talk to me about why writing a book about your future self was so important to you? So I was writing a book called

Personality Isn't Permanent back in 2019. And I wrote that book because, number one, I just felt like personality was a good vehicle to talk about change. I actually think personality is very transitory. I think identity is also very flexible. But identity, from a psychology standpoint, identity is internal, personality is external. It was interesting because when I was doing that book, I actually had a lot of professors who I had good relationships with. One of them specifically, he lived in my neighborhood when I was at Clemson doing my PhD and we would walk all the time and we just deep dived on various topics and we even still do every

once in a while. But he was under the assumption and it was, it's kind of the model for a lot of psychologists for a long period of time, that personality is a very stable trait. You know, if you have a full-on continuum from 0 to 100, you might be able to move that dial by like 5%. You know, if you're an introvert, you're not going to become a full-on extrovert. That's kind of the belief system of a lot of psychologists or old theories, but there's just so much new research coming out that proves the opposite of that. But also for me myself, I've just seen myself change intentionally and through healing. And so, I was writing that book and I unexpectedly came across the research on future self. I'd never seen it, never heard of it talked about. It was kind of a small, what they call a vein of research, a vein or a line of research. It was just small,

but I came across it and I realized this is a really big deal. And so it really informed a lot of that book, Personality Isn't Permanent. And I knew that my next solo book, I also write collaborative books on entrepreneurship, but I knew that my next solo book would be a pure dive just on to future self. And to me, I think it's a linchpin concept. I also am starting to see that it's beginning to spread dramatically throughout psychology. So, I believe that that's a big chunk of where the future of psychology and even therapy is going to be. I really want to get into that, but the way you came to my attention was the book personality isn't permanent. And, you know, I've interviewed a lot of people at this point, you know, 500 plus people. And so, you know, we've had a couple people who have the

personality is fairly fixed mindset. And where I landed on this, and I'm just curious your thought about it, which tends to be where I end up landing on anything if I think about it long enough is it's kind of in the middle, right? Which is that not nearly as fixed as we used to think it was personality. And there are some ways in which our personality also does remain consistent over time. So it seems to me that it's a little bit of both. And one of the things that I think I've really noticed is that personality changes more with deeply transformational things that happen. And maybe that's an obvious statement, but, you know, I know like recovery addiction, you know, the early years of that, there was a big change in who I was. I've had some spiritual sort of, the lack years of that, there was a big change in who I was.

I've had some spiritual sort of, the lack of a better word is sort of experiences or awakenings that were relatively dramatic. And I can mark a line where I'm like, I was kind of a different person in a lot of ways after that. You know, where did you land at the end of that book about just how much are we able to change personality? Well, I'll say probably where I landed when I finished that book versus where I land now is probably two different territories. Okay, okay. And that's one of the beautiful evidences of even past, present, and future self models is that even who I am and how I see things now versus where I was, call it probably beginning of 2020 when I finished that book, I know I'm in a different place in how I see things than even two years ago, two and a half

years ago. Where I sit with it now, and I like your initial answer in terms of both. There's a few things I guess I'll point out. One is, is that a lot of psychological perspectives, even William James, who was the father of American psychology, he believed that personality was very flexible up until the mid-30s. And then in the mid-30s, he said it plastered or it became hardened. There is a lot of research. There's even a great book by a psychologist. I think her name is Jay... I forget her name. I apologize. The book is called The Defining Decade. It's all about the 20s and about how your personality is going to change more in your 20s than in any other period of your life. I like that, but it also fits pretty closely with William James's initial perspective. Research now, there's a great book and there's a great long study. It's the Harvard men's study

where they've followed a group of men for literally 80 plus years. And there's a great book that follows that study. It's called The Triumphs of Experience. And literally, it's nice to see longitudinal research where the same group of people, even though they're called an outlier group of people, these are men who went to Harvard, probably a lot of them white men. And there's other longitudinal studies that look at people from different backgrounds, people of different ethnicities and things like that. And so anytime you can look at longitudinal research where it covers a group of people for decades is very interesting.

It follows people in one of the interesting things about that book is that it shows that very non-linear, non-expected changes can happen in people's lives in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, where someone can be very outspoken and then become quiet, or they generally have a sad temperament, and all of a sudden they become really happy, you know, maybe in their 70s or 60s, or they go, like, so I'm a big believer that changes can occur at any time. And there's a lot of research now that's showing that personality will change with aging no matter what. But to your point, there are certain features that seem to endure in people,

some of their quirks or general approaches to how they do things or temperaments. I think where I'm at with it now, I actually really don't know how I even feel about personality as a concept. But if I'm looking at a person more as a whole, just as a person, their context, their model for living, their priorities, how they make decisions, how they operate, I think that people change dramatically over time. Like if I was to compare myself to who I was in 2020, and if you were just to look at my environment, my decision making, how I handle things, how I let people treat me, what I value, how I operate in the world, sure, you'll see some similarities. I certainly like still writing books and I like studying

psychology. So, there's certain things that are strong. But if you watched my day-to-day decision making or even my model for decision making or what I care about, you're comparing two very different people. And so, that's more how I look at it. Yeah. This question shows up in lots of different places. You know, the heart of it is the nature and nurture question, right? How much are we born with? How much is our environment? There's all sorts of research about happiness set point, how much of your happiness can you actually change? And at the end of the day, I think they're interesting questions, but they're also kind of ultimately not that important if you get the basic idea. And to me, the basic idea is there's a fair amount of things about your life that you can change, and you might as well focus on those things and the things that you can't

change. You don't even necessarily know what they are when it comes to your internal state. But there's plenty of ways that we can grow and heal. And, you know, to the extent that we can do that is sort of an intellectual question. But in a practical sense, it's just knowing that we can and then getting on about doing it. Yeah, yeah. I'm a big believer that I can change. Not only can I change who I am in the future, but I can change who I am in the present and even I can change my past. That's a big aspect, I think, of a psychological view of time is that time is non-linear from a psychological standpoint. Time is also holistic, which I go into a little bit in the book. But, you know, the past is a framing. It's a perspective. And I may hate who I was in the past. And then in a few years

from now, I might really have empathy and really respect who I was in the past. And so, I believe that change is holistic, it's systemic, and that we carry it all with us. And I also believe it's practical. Like you said, if I even just look at my life right now versus where it was 12 months ago, I have intentionally made massive changes, but I've also overcome hurdles that I can see were blocking me for years. You know, just one example is, I think for a long time, I've had a tendency of being more of a people pleaser. I think that a lot of people have that, where I will bend over backwards to get certain things that maybe I don't even want, rather than just asserting or owning that this is what I want, this is what I value, and I'm okay walking away if that's not what I get in various situations.

And I've watched myself go through an emotional transformation to get to that point. And it takes a lot, and most change is emotional work. transformation to get to that point. And it takes a lot, most changes, emotional work. This is why actually one of my favorite concepts is called psychological flexibility based on what's called acceptance and commitment therapy, becoming more flexible and becoming more emotionally pliable allows you to go through some fiery emotional experiences by fiery. I mean, just like refining, they could be insane transformational experiences, but you come through the other side, not only refined, but you also come out through the other side far more flexible in your options. And so, this is what I enjoyed watching myself change how I approach situations that are difficult for me emotionally, and then through

the other side, it becoming my new norm, my new identity that I can now do this and what previously held me back is no longer a constraint. Yeah, I love that idea of a psychological concept of time, which I promise we're getting to the new book here. But kind of what you just said around this idea of being able to change how we look at things. So much I think of psychology, what is really helpful about it in a lot of ways is that there are real skills that we can learn that enable us to see the world differently, to engage with it differently, to reframe things. I mean, there's a lot of really powerful tools. My experience is they take time, right? Reframing of a difficult event doesn't happen all in one

moment. Sometimes it does, but more generally, it's like I see a glimmer of light with it that I didn't see before. Oh, well, maybe I could think about it. Oh, I never thought about it like that. And then it reverts into its, you know, the way I've thought about it a hundred times. But then again, oh, maybe I could think about it. And just this little slow retraining. Oh, maybe I could think about it. And just this little slow retraining. And something you said in the new book, I did want to touch on this, and you just sort of brought it up, time is not sequential. It's also not chronological. In other words, my past is not behind me and out there as an unattached entity to my present and to my future. But obviously, my views of my past are going to impact not only who I am now, but also they're going to impact my own views of the future. And from a motivational standpoint, goals are usually categorized or couched in two different ways. Either they're approach-oriented goals or avoid-oriented goals. And all behaviors are approach or avoid goals. So, if someone goes to punch me in the face, I'm probably going to instinctively react and try

to get out of the way. So, that's me avoiding getting hit. So, you know, it's even subconscious, but subconsciously the goal in that situation is to avoid getting hit. Or, you know, you can consciously think about what you want, even if it's just I want to go to the fridge and get a drink, and then you can walk there and go get it. And so, all goals are approach or avoid. Even going and getting the drink though could be actually an avoidance of doing your work, right? You might get triggered and that's why a lot of times people get on social media is because they're actually trying to avoid something else. But when you have a reactive narrative about your past, and why I say reactive is that it wasn't proactively reframed. You didn't approach it. To have an approach

oriented manner towards the future, which is where you're approaching goals you choose consciously. You're actually consciously thinking about something you want, and then you're committing to that and courageously pursuing it. To have an approach orientation towards the future also requires an approach orientation towards your past, where rather than avoiding some of the painful experiences you've had in the past, you're no longer avoiding the past. Because if you're still avoiding the past, then you're also avoiding the future. Usually, if you haven't settled things with the past or gone through a process of continuously resettling them, then a lot of your future is going to be about avoiding painful emotional experiences in

the future because you're still emotionally raw from your past. And so, usually, if you have a reactive narrative about the past, what that means is you're going to have a reactive narrative towards the future. You're going to spend most of your time tiptoeing and avoiding around things rather than going through them, which is essentially what acceptance and commitment therapy is all about. Yep. You want to be proactive about the past, the present and the future and continuously proactive that you can approach your past and you can reframe it, you can reshape it, you can remodel it kind of like clay. I kind of look at reframing the past kind of like one of those lenses where

there's like continuous kind of shifting and it just like slight color changes. And so like every day I think I can have a slightly different and nuanced coloring or view or angle or meaning of my past. And it's never just a one-time thing, but it's just a continuous thin slicing or just subtle changing. But over time, it's completely not comparable to the past view I had before. So, that's kind of how I look at it. Yeah. In the book, you say having a positive past depends very little on what events actually occurred. What happened to you doesn't matter as much as what story you decide to tell yourself about what happened. And I think the idea in there, and this is to me been one of the most fundamental liberating insights of the human condition, has simply been that there's an

event, and then there is my view of that event. And that in between those two things, I create and assign a meaning. All humans do. We're meaning making machines. I haven't really figured out how you turn that mechanism off. I don't know that you can, right? It seems endemic to who we are. But recognizing that process and just the question, what am I making this mean? And what else could it mean? For me, just is a profoundly liberating question. Yeah, I think it's exciting to know that as people, we do get to choose the meanings. And I think a process of becoming mindful is observing yourself assigning meaning in the moment. Like, for example, if I'm having an argument with my wife, I can catch myself forming the story in

my head by just actually listening to the thoughts. And I'm realizing, okay, wow, I can catch myself forming the story in my head by just actually listening to the thoughts. And I'm realizing, okay, wow, I see what I'm doing. I'm painting her into a circle. And so, I think you quickly can catch yourself in the unfolding of your initial meaning making process. But certainly, what you're saying is great, that the beautiful thing is that you actually do get to reframe the meaning. And that's ultimately what post-traumatic growth, The beautiful thing is, is that you actually do get to reframe the meaning. And that's ultimately what post-traumatic growth, the whole field of that is all about is, is that you take what was a prior painful experience, which was traumatic simply because you framed it in a way that disabled you.

That's really a key aspect of trauma is that something painful happened and you now feel like you're disabled in some way because of what happened. Whereas post-traumatic growth reverses that and it helps you realize you're disabled in some way because of what happened. Whereas post-traumatic growth reverses that and it helps you realize you're actually increasingly enabled because of what happened. And now you're grateful for what happened because now you are more capable. You've got better perspective, stronger sense of meaning and purpose. You can now do things and see things beyond what your former self could have. And so you become incredibly grateful to that experience and you continuously mine more

gold out of it by continuously thinking about it, learning from it, and then using it in ways that stop you from repeating the past. I love that. And I think it takes being proactive, again, using your agency to choose how you frame the past. There is a quote, one of my favorite quotes, and I'm sure I threw it in the book. It's from a book called Time and Psychological Explanation. For those who really want to dive into the psychology of time, that's a pure book by one of my favorite psychologists named Brent Slife. But I don't know if this is gonna be a direct quote, but it's pretty close. He says that it's more accurate to say that the present causes the meaning of the past than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present. And what he means is that in any given moment, you're always viewing the past from the

perspective of your present self. Your whole past is a reconstruction. It's never actually something you're looking at objectively. Anytime I think of a memory from my past, I could think about my dad punching a wall because he's upset, right, in an argument with my mom. But I'm always reshaping and I'm reconstructing in the moment what that memory is. I can never actually go back there. And so, what Brent's life is saying is that the past is actually being caused by the present. Whenever I reconstruct a memory, I'm looking at it from my present self. And so, he says it's actually the present that causes the meaning of the past. It's not actually the past that's causing the meaning of the present.

And so, when you change in the present, you're going to change how you reconstruct your views of the past. And we see this in culture, obviously, like when culture shifts, it then has a different opinion of what actors were doing in the past. And this is a lot of what cancel culture is all about. But we do it to ourselves all the time. Actually, the entire past is imagined. That's actually why framing the meaning of the story is very in your own control, because you're always imagining the past, just as you're imagining the future. Does meditating feel like a chore, another to-do list item to check off, or perhaps it's even fallen off the

list entirely. If you sense that meditating regularly would benefit you, but you struggle to find a sustainable place for it in your schedule, I can help. There are reasons people struggle with creating and maintaining a meditation practice, and it isn't because meditation isn't right for them. In my free guide, The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Seem to Stick with a Meditation Practice and How to Build One That Lasts, I teach you why it can be a struggle to build a meditation practice that lasts and the small fixes that can have a big impact when it comes to getting you where you want to be with meditating regularly. Go to OneYouFeed.net and sign up for this free guide right on our homepage. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In essence, what we were talking about a little bit was a quote by Viktor Frankl that says, between stimulus and response, there's a space, right? It's a very famous quote at this point. I'm going to use that quote as a jumping off point to another quote from Viktor Frankl that you quote in the book that I think is very core to the future self

idea. Do you remember that quote? I'm not sure if I remember exactly, but I know that in the front end of future self, there are some very insightful, crucial Frankl quotes that are very enlightening. So yeah, I'd love you to go into whichever one you want and we'll go into it. Yeah. Yeah. It says, live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now. Unpack that one for us. Yeah. And I'd love your thoughts on any of this as well. But that one's really interesting because that one is an invitation to view your present self from your future self's perspective. So, he's saying, just to again state it, live as if you

had already lived this moment now, the one you're in, you've already lived it, and you actually did act as poorly as you are about to act, and you're forced to essentially deal with those consequences. But now you get to redo it, knowing the consequences of what are about to unfold. And he essentially says this, from his standpoint, is the way to live a responsible life. I find that quote very interesting because it's an invitation to actually look at your present self and your present actions from the perspective of the consequences that your future self has to deal with. Yes. That your future self at some point, whether in a year from now, five or 20 years from now, is looking back on this moment and saying, if I could redo that, here's what I would do. Yes.

And I think that that's actually one of the most phenomenal aspects of a nonlinear view of time, is just that you actually can think about your future self and then use that to better dictate your present self. It's actually an invitation to be more intentional in the present. And I catch myself on this all the time. And I've actually been thinking interestingly about that quote lately, even though I wrote this book almost a year ago, and even a book since, that quote has actually been on my mind because I've caught myself again, letting the time go by where I'm getting caught in the thick of thin things. I'm getting caught in busyness and then missing what's right in front of me, which is my family and which even

my health, things that are important. And then realizing if my future self in a few years could come back and talk to me, what would they ask me to do? Where would they ask me to focus? Where would the things that I'm caught up in not actually even matter at all? And I'm putting way too much weight in stuff that doesn't matter. One other thing that I love about this, and then you go wherever you want to go with this and what stands out, but literally getting in my car on the way here to have this conversation, I saw my four-year-old daughter's tricycle sitting in the front yard. And I was actually reminded of this quote because I just thought, you know, maybe if I was caught up in the moment, I'd be a little annoyed that the front yard's messy, but it's actually pretty freaking awesome that right now

I still have this moment where these kids are four years old. And so, I actually love it. And I think from the perspective of your future self, the real things matter and the things that don't matter don't. Yeah, there's so much in that basic idea. You know, the first that comes to mind, a really simple question I found that really orients me, and this is more when I'm getting,, you know, the first that comes to mind, a really simple question I found that really orients me, and this is more when I'm getting, as you say, caught up in the thick of thin things, is I ask myself, is this going to matter in five days, five weeks, five years? Just that question, having that one at my disposal is so helpful because nine times out of 10, I will go, this thing I'm about to get bent out of shape about

just doesn't matter, you know? And so just as a way of fending off the moment to moment, day to day, minor irritations, I found that to be incredibly helpful. And then the second thing is, you know, we've got a program we call circle of connection where it's really people going deeper and deeper into their spiritual lives. And one of the things we do is have them do an exercise that I first was exposed to from Stephen Covey in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it is a very cheery sounding exercise called the funeral exercise. But it's a really powerful exercise because it's doing exactly what you're saying. You're fast forwarding to your death, and you're then imagining like somebody from your work, somebody from your family, one of

your friends, all these different people from these different domains of your life are going to stand up and talk about you. And what do you want them to say? This exercise tends to do two things in people. One is it often bums people out because they realize that what people might say about them right now is not what they would want. I mean, it's helpful to know, okay, I want to change direction. But moving aside from that, it's more like, okay, I've got from now till my funeral, let's just pretend that I was starting from scratch. I've got the chance to influence what these people are going to say about me. What do I want them to say? And done right, it's not like, what do I want them to say? Because I

want to be praised. It's finding out, like you said, what's important to me, what matters the most to me. And so this connection between our future self and our current self, that's one way in which we imagine our future self looking back. But talk to me about why it's important to have this connectivity between our future self and our present self. What are some of the reasons that's really helpful to have? It's huge. I mean, it's becoming a dominant theme and core finding, honestly, in psychology. One thing I will say as I jump into that and just hitting a final note on what you were saying before is we're watching the Lord of the Rings series with my older three kids. They're now 11, 13, 15. Seriously, never even watched them. We're going through those with my older three kids. They're now 11, 13, 15. Seriously, never even watched them. We're going through those with my kids. And there's a point in The Fellowship of the Ring

where Frodo is asked to look in like this bowl of water, essentially. And he's shown what his future is going to be. And interestingly, he's actually shown the worst case scenario if he doesn't succeed. He's shown like literally like the orcs like taking over the Shire, burning everything, his friends Sam and Pippin and them like as slaves essentially. And then he just explains that this is what's going to happen to you if you fail, which is kind of an interesting kind of doomy perspective. But I actually was watching that and I was thinking, I wish that I actually could see what would happen if I didn't fulfill who I believe I want to be. Yes.

Like, I wish I could actually see and feel. And feel it. Yeah. Yeah. Frodo was terrified of it and he did feel it. I mean, obviously that would be like a cheat code, right? Yes. If you could see the repercussions and the ripple effects of what would happen if you chose not to be intentional about

your future self. And if you chose not to be intentional about what's going to happen, that even is another example of how your view of your future dramatically and intimately impacts who you're being in the present. Interestingly, that just made me think of one of the core problems of addiction, which is that there's a line in the AA Big Book, something along the lines of like, we can't recall with sufficient force the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a day ago, right? Like, that would be the cheat code. If you could give somebody who's on the teetering of a brink of a drink, you know, they're a month sober, and you could flash them back into some of those worst moments, they would run from the drink. Or if you could flash them forward to what's the worst case of what's ultimately going to be. Yes, yes. But either way, that is the thing is that we can't imagine or feel with, you know, to use the line from that big book, with sufficient force, the impact of our

actions on our future selves. And it ties beautifully with the question you just asked, which is, and this is one of the things that the researchers on this topic have plagued or have dealt with, which is why do people underpredict what will happen in their future? Because that is a core theme that occurs, is that people assume only minor changes in the future. As an example, if I were to ask the average listener on this podcast, this podcast may not be fair because this is an outlier group of people who are actually into change and things like that, but for the average person, who do you think you'll be in five or ten years? Most people assume that they're going to primarily be quite similar to who they are today.

In other words, they think that their future self five to ten years from now is mostly going to be pretty dang similar to who they are today. When in reality, actually, we radically underpredict how different our future selves will be. As a simple example, just looking about who you were ten years ago. And if you gave it enough thought, who you are right now versus who you were 10 years ago is completely different. How you see the world, what you value, your habits, your goals, your friends, the type of music you listen to, blah, blah, blah. I mean, sure, you may listen to, I still sometimes listen to some of the same music, but one of the reasons and the challenges of this, Daniel Gilbert, he's the Harvard psychologist, he gave a great TED Talk in 2014 on the subject

called The Psychology of Your Future Self. He says one of the initial problems in why people have this issue is because they don't imagine what will happen. It's not that we can't imagine, it's just that literally we don't imagine. And so we assume that the changes won't happen because we didn't take the time to imagine what changes will or could happen. And so a first step is actually just beginning to imagine. And that's a skill I think adults lose. And it's a playful skill that you can have. I think it's a great skill in terms of journaling and thinking. And obviously dreaming is great.

But actually thinking about the context of your future self. What is it going to look like in five to ten years? Actually lay out the context. Me, for example, I got six kids. One of them is 15. So part of that context is that he's going to be 25. And so really laying that out. And so beginning to imagine is an initial step of connection. But to your initial question, maybe just the why of the question, why is being connected to your future self so essential? It's right back to what we

were talking about with the addiction and with the Frodo example is that what the research shows is that the more connected you do get to your longer-term future self, call it three, five, ten plus years out, even the 80-year-old future self that Stephen Covey invites, the research is very explicit on this. The more connected you are to your longer-term future self, the better and more thoughtful and more proactive decisions you'll make in the present. It's very ubiquitous. You're going to make better health decisions, better financial decisions. You're going to make better friend decisions. Like really just being aware of, first off, where you want those decisions to go, but also thinking through the consequences of what's going to happen

and beginning to direct where you want things to go. It's the opposite of, I guess you would say, addiction. Because addiction is a disconnection to the future self and more of a present self orientation. Yeah, yeah. It's a present self orientation in a really destructive way. But you just led me into a question I wanted to get to at some point. So I'll get there now. You say in the book, you know, continually position your future self for freedom of time, money, relationships, and overall sense of purpose. So that all makes sense, right? We can all think of ways that had we done that in the past,

we'd be in a better shape now, right? My question in when we think about a future self, this is to me the future self gone wrong, right? Which is, I'm going to work for 60 years in a job that I hate, and I'm going to save all my money, and everything is about what's coming. You know, either I'm afraid of what's coming, but my whole life is about there's going to be another moment, and then I'm going to live. So how do we avoid that if what we're sort of doing is, on one hand, trying to make sure that our future self is in good shape. Talk to me about how you think about that. I think it's beautiful and brilliant. And it actually cruxes or hits the

crux of what I believe the purpose of the book is. Just to hit the title one more time. It's literally called Be Your Future Self Now. And so the goal of the book is to think about where you want your future self to be, and then ultimately to assume the identity of that person now. This would fit into what would be called like the be then do then have model, which is the opposite of what you're talking about. What you're talking about is what Tim Ferriss would call the deferred life plan. Yeah. Which is, I'll be happy when, you know, or I'll endure this terrible thing for 30 or 40 years so that eventually my future self can go and sit on the beach when he's old, fat and tired. And you know what I mean? Like that is 100 eventually my future self can go and sit on the beach when he's old, fat and tired.

And you know what I mean? Like that is 100% the future self gone wrong. So there are extremes and there's nuance here. I'm not one for a deferred life plan, although I don't want to be reckless with my future at the same time. Like I think you can have both. I think you can continuously be investing in a compounding future self, you know, whether that's just on autopilot, having a certain amount of money that's going into a retirement nest egg that you know is building towards a future of freedom that you increasingly want. Having that process and those systems where you're continually creating a compounding

future is great, but it's also misleading to overly assume that you'll even be in that future, right? Like you might be dead. you'll even be in that future, right? Like you might be dead. You could get hit by a car, right? And so if you're only preparing for the future and never actually living in the present, certainly you're going to miss a lot of the gold that's right here right now. How I try to use this to move my life forward dramatically now in the present is I try to assume, there's actually a great quote from

Neville Goddard. He said, assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and assume the consciousness of being the one you want to be, and then you'll be saved from your present state, is what he also says. So, for me, I think about, back to the Frankel quote, who is my future self? Not where are they, but who are they? Who do I imagine them to be and who would I want them to be? And then also where, what, where, and what would I like their life to be like? But ultimately the usefulness of thinking about the future self is so that I can start being that person now. You know, back to the idea of the 80 year old self, it's really about using who you want to be to impact who you're being now. And so,

if I want my 80 year old self to have, you know, great relationships, I can use that, you know, that's what Frankel invites us to do. I can use that to immediately change who I'm being right now. I can go home and be an amazing father and be thoughtful about who I want to be. I can also stop avoiding situations out of fear because now I'm operating more from the premise or the identity of my future self who has far more courage, far more foresight. And so, I think the major goal is to use your future self as inspiration and as the identity from which you can move forward in the present from a lot more of a powerful place rather than kind of the weakened state, which often people are operating from their past self. I think it's much more powerful to operate from your desired future self. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no really yeah no really go to really no judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I keep giving these sort of like little questions or little tag-ons, but one of them for me that I often do is if I'm sitting there and I'm like, I don't want to do whatever this thing is right in front of me. I think about my future self and I'm not talking about like my 20-year future self. In like an hour. Exactly. In an hour from now, because he's coming, right? I can feel fairly confident that hopefully in an hour, I'm going to be here. And if I spent that hour working on what I wanted to

work on, or I spent that hour playing solitaire, that has an immediate consequence. That guy in an hour is going to feel different. It's not even that an hour at the end of the day makes a huge difference, right? It's an hour of your life, right? But as we talk about things compound, but it's that in an hour, how do I want to feel? Amen. Amen. I just use that as a way to make myself exercise, as a way to make myself actually write, as a way to make myself prepare for the interview when I'm having some resistance to doing so. One of my favorite examples from the book was from Jerry Seinfeld. And he talked about night guy versus morning guy, right? And he talked about how night guy always screws morning guy because he stays up late. And then morning guy's got to

wake up with four hours of sleep and go to work, right? And that's the present self paying little heed. And so for me, similar to what you're describing, one of the huge things my wife and I have been placing emphasis on is usually trying to get eight hours of sleep a night. And that's a form of, I'm going to cultivate this for tomorrow's self. Like, I love waking up having gotten a deep, impactful seven plus, eight plus hours of sleep. And that was an investment in tomorrow rather than doing some form of mindless, low, very low grade consumption, you know, usually scrolling or some form or just whatever it was, even if it was decently a decent quality of activity, the cost to the benefit analysis is quite low. And so, yeah, I agree with you. And I'm big,

is quite low. And so, yeah, I agree with you. And I'm big, big, big on morning routines for this reason is that I know that if by call it 9am, if I've actually done a lot of amazing things that morning, I will feel and be a different person for the rest of the day. I'll show up differently with my family. I'll just in general be more present because I put first things first. If it's like 8 or 9 in the morning and I've already done general be more present because I put first things first. If it's like eight or nine in the morning and I've already done my morning journaling, I've gone on a walk or something, I've gone to the gym, but I've also done some hard creative task, whether it's working on the book. And it's usually not that hard hilariously when you actually just allow yourself to get into it. It's actually something that you can train yourself to just prime a flow state. And the hard part's just maybe the initial resistance

of jumping in. Yes. But when I've actually just allowed myself to be proactive for the first hour or two in the morning and done something that's important to that idea of the feeling of the future self, even just thinking about where do I want to be and how do I want to feel by 7, 8, 9 a.m.,

I feel excellent when I've done first things first and I then operate excellently for the rest of the day. That's the reverse of Seinfeld. The morning guy is making the evening guy happy. He's like, you know, because you get to the end of that day, you know, a day well lived like that, and it feels good, right? You can sort of relax and go, ah, you know, versus we all know what it's like to, you know, piss away a day, right? I don't mean like do something we enjoy. I mean, like as Tim Urban brilliantly wrote about, you know, the dark playground, right? Like, you know, you should be working, but you're on Facebook. You're not enjoying it.

You should be working, but you're on ESPN. It's not like there are things that would be fun in the right context, but in the context they're in, they have this yucky feeling to them. We all know what a day spent like that feels like at six o'clock at night versus a day where you really just got in there and did what mattered to you. I mean, that guy at 6pm or gal at 6pm feels radically different. Yeah. And the nice part is you can have both if you put first things first. Yes. Totally.

You know, if you put first things first, you know, then by all means, scroll on Facebook or do whatever form of lazy consumption you want to do. Yeah, I think you can have both when it's in that way, but I agree with you. And I actually think that the thing that ages people the most is when they're essentially having deep cognitive dissonance, which is where they want to be doing something, but they're purposefully or they're watching themselves do something that's essentially taking them the opposite direction. You know, if you want to be working on that book or you want to be, you know, exercising, but instead you're eating the cake, it kills 90% of the enjoyment of it because it's going against the goal that you primarily want to be pursuing.

Yes. And so, you're essentially watching yourself shoot yourself in the foot. And I believe that ages people a lot. I really do. I believe that that is more of an aging effector than even putting chemicals in your body. And I actually believe that you'll put more chemicals in your body that are bad for you because of numbing yourself. Oh, yeah. Because you just simply won't set your future self up, even in micro future selves. You're who you want to be in the morning, like just by using your future self to just advance yourself forward

and watching yourself do it well, then you can enjoy and you no longer have that internal regret or frustration with yourself. Yep. So, what are some practical ways that we can use this idea of future self? Like, what are some things listeners could sort of say, all right, a couple of things I can go do that are going to help me use this future self-concept today? One thing I will say, and then jump into the practicalities, is that every one of us listening to this, or you and I talking, is being driven by whatever view we most hold for our future self. 100%, the more you realize this, the more you can't disagree with it, which is just that we all

already have a future self to which we've committed ourselves to, and everything we're doing right now is being driven by that. You know, you may be driving your car on your way to work. So, that is the future that you committed yourself to, and you're just going through the motions of living it out. And so we're all being driven by, or pulled forward by, however you want to look at it, by whatever future we've most committed to ourselves to. And so that's just a humble admittance. And I have to acknowledge that myself sometimes and ask myself, what future have I settled myself to, either in the short term or the long term, that's driving everything I'm doing right now? So there have been points in my life where I spent my day, literally a day, largely sitting in my office playing solitaire. In what way does that person, that situation align with what you're saying about I was committed to a

future outcome? Talk to me about how that concept plays into that sort of behavior. So there's a few different ways of looking at it. One is, is that the bigger picture future you see for yourself allowed for that, right? So that's one is, is that usually you will not do things that the bigger picture future you have for yourself filters out. The future in a lot of ways is a filter. And so one thing is that in the longer term, you see that this behavior somehow fits with that future. Even if maybe in your head, you might say, well, my future self won't waste a day on solitaire. But the truth is, is that if you're engaging in something,

it's because you haven't released it from your future. You truly haven't. But in a shorter term, there was some side of you that either the day before thought to yourself, tomorrow I'll probably play solitaire. Like seriously, like in the short run, that's probably one of the things that you were most looking forward to doing when you woke up, even if you have some gnawing sense of this is self-defeating behavior. There's some side of you that places a lot of emphasis on that and you look forward to it and you have a lot of meaning to it. And so, you were looking forward to it and you've ritualized it. And so, you were thinking about it long before you actually did it. Because what it feels like is when I would wake up, you know, back to morning guy and nighttime guy, morning guy or nighttime guy the night before would be like, we're not

doing that again tomorrow. Like, but then you do it. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, then you do it, you know, and then it's the avoidance that we talked about, right? A lot of people have an avoidance. And so, you know, there's some sort of avoidance going on there. So maybe it's that, you know, I'm trying to look at it through that lens. Maybe it's that there's a vision of my future self, even if that future self of me is only an hour away that thinks I can't do this. Well, how I think about when you bring up the avoidance side is that the future you say you want

is not something you're yet committed to. Yes. And it's not vivid enough. It's not something you're pulled towards enough that you're actually still avoiding it. You're still actually avoiding that future either because you don't believe in it, you're not committed to it. If you were truly committed to it, you wouldn't allow this thing. And so, you know, there's something there that you're actually still avoiding. It could be fear. Yeah. It could be a lot of things, but you're still avoiding that future and you're committing to the solitaire instead. What it clearly is to me is an inability to connect to my future self, right? It's an

inability to say my future self is going to feel this way in an hour, a week, a month. There's no part of me in those moments. Thankfully, this is multiple years in the rear view, although it shows up in brief moments, but I have strategies for working with it. But there was no part of me that would engage in an hour of that and be like, well, that was time well spent. That was really good.

Good work. It was dread. It felt like addiction, right? And the way addiction feels, as we've talked about, is I know I shouldn't be doing this, and yet I am doing it, and that feels awful. I'm thinking out loud here, but sometimes when I think about addiction recovery, we often talk about the consequence. There has to be a consequence. And that is true that consequences help us see like this isn't working, but I think the other thing that has to be there for recovery to flourish is hope, right? Consequence alone needs to despair,

right? But, oh, this isn't working, but now I see something that might, and I can actually envision a future self version of me that is better, is healthier. You know, those two things happen. And so I think that to a certain extent, it is the inability to connect with the future self with, and when you said sort of have any vivid clarity on what the future is going to hold and what about it I want. It's a state that feels profoundly disconnected. pretty deep into the psychological literature, they have a huge amount of respect for what hope is. Basically, hope is to the psyche, like what oxygen is to the body. It really is that important without hope. And this is essentially Frankel's premise. Without hope, the psychology suffocates and dies, you know, which leads to the death of the body and you can see it if the economy doesn't have hope in the future the stock market tanks yep you know and so you can equate that to yourself that if you don't have a hopeful purposeful future your own stock market whatever that

means for you is going to tank yep your behavior is going to tank etc and so yeah i mean that was i think frankel's core message of everything he taught was is that you need to have hope and a meaning to fulfill in your future in order to have a functioning life in the present. And that was his premise for everything he did. He even said, you know, what man needs is not a tensionless state, but the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. And so he believed that you need a future self that is specific, vivid, purpose-oriented, meaning it's a goal oriented. And that's where a lot of the research on hope has found itself, is that to be high hope,

which is the opposite of what you're describing. And I do it, by the way, regularly, where I'll catch myself, you know, numbing myself in some way in an avoidance of what I would like to be doing. And so, we all do it. That's when you've shifted away from your future self and you're now not connected to your future self. And so, you're now numbing your present self with short-term rewards, short-term dopamine. You're numbing yourself because you're not connected. And so, obviously, Frankel's invitation, especially for people in dire situations, is you got to be connected. Without a why to live for, you can't bear the how, right? Yep.

So, I think that that's actually, honestly, the first practical step is getting connected to your future self and getting excited about your future self. That's exactly, if you listen to Elon Musk as just an example, he says that that's why he wants to go to Mars. It's because he wants a mission that excites him so much in a sense of adventure that it gets him out of bed wanting to see what's going to happen. Wanting to see where it's going to take him. Wanting to have something that's pulling him forward rather than something he's just pushing along. Yeah. And so that's another model in addition to the approach and avoid model of motivation is

push and pull, which is you want to be pulled toward a future that excites you rather than feeling like you have to push something along with willpower. I do think about my future self 10, 20, 30 years into the future. And I also do surround myself intentionally with people who continuously trigger me towards a better future self. I'm proactively around, and I've done this for a long time, I'm proactively around people who are decades older than me who have made really smart decisions. It's not hard because we're lucky enough to be around millions of people or even in our circle thousands of people, but we see enough examples. And if you're mindful, you can look at the examples and you can say,

I can see that this person's life is the way they are because of certain things that they did. And we all go on our own path and there's no judgment. It's more just about learning, but I'm very intentional around being around certain people that then force me to introspect. I then look at some of my behaviors that I'm enabling or have allowed to continue and say, if I keep this up for another five or 10 years, I don't know exactly what the compounded effect is going to be, but it's probably going to be many degrees off from where I'm actually wanting to go. Yeah.

I mean, there's a great quote from J.M. Berry. He's the playwright to the original Peter Pan. And he said that the life of every man is a diary in which he's keeping one while hoping to be writing another. And his humblest moment is when he compares the volumes, what's actually happening with what he wanted it to be. Yeah. We can go off there, but I certainly have plenty of practical steps if we want to go into them, wherever you want to go from here. Well, let's hit a couple practical steps because we're nearly out of time. Let's do that.

So one is how I look at it. Obviously, it can be plaguing to try to set concrete plans for a future self. You can. As I said, I have every week on autopilot, a certain amount of money leaves my bank account and goes into my investment account. And that's just gonna be on autopilot for a long time, hopefully over time, continuously change the amount that goes in. But that's me strategizing for my longer term future self. In terms of strategizing for a more practical future self, I really think that three years is a good round number. Certainly, I'm strategizing for the beginning of next year as well. You know, we're recording this close to the end of a year, 2022. So I do, obviously, I can be practical and think about yearly goals. But I like thinking about a bigger picture, holistic transformation.

I've seen that I can really transform my life in a big way in a two to three year period of time, if I'm really thoughtful and intentional. And so I like having no more than a three year time frame on specific goals and no more than three priorities. That was something that I've learned heavily through Jim Collins, who wrote Good to Great. He wrote B2.0. Peter Drucker said, do first things first and never second things second, because if you go for second things, you'll never get the first things done. And so, for me, I only have three core areas where I'm thinking about my future self. And those are the areas I'm, if you think about watering a garden, you know,

those are the areas where I'm watering. And so, for me, I have three core priorities that I'm like, these are the few areas that are essential to me. Everything else is outside of these areas, so everything else is noise. This is the signal. This is where I'm going to pour the water on these. Anything outside of these is me watering weeds. So I'm going to invest all sorts of time, energy, and attention into transforming these as much as possible over the next few years, because I believe that once I get there, that opens up additional freedoms that I'll want. But this is where I want to be focusing. So can you give us an example of one of your three core priorities for three years? I'll give you mine right now as an example. So, you know, as we're talking, it's the end of 2022.

So if I'm starting to think about where I want my future self to be and call it 2025, there's a few things that really matter to me. One would be obviously my family. So like my three older kids are essentially teens. And I see that lots of changes are going on in their life, right? My family will probably, just based on my philosophy, be a core priority, hopefully for the rest of my life. I believe relationships are important. But it's insane emphasis right now.

Even more of an emphasis, like if I number ordered them, and if I was honest with myself, I would say my career, even though I might have said my family came first, if I was actually thinking about actual priority with how I spent my time and my energy and attention going through a PhD, building a writing career, I just have to be honest, my career came first. Even though I wouldn't like to say that to myself in the mirror. Sure. have to be honest, my career came first, even though I wouldn't like to say that to myself in the mirror. But I can honestly say that that is taking a backseat for the next three years and hopefully increasing over time. But family is truly like where I'm putting so much energy. And that looks like a lot of different things, you know, me and my wife doing therapy and even doing therapy with our kids, but also just having a lot better communication, having a lot more peak experiences, investing in their goals, taking them on adventures,

traveling, also just doing small, simple things, getting better at talking. And so, you know, thinking about where I want those relationships to be. When my son's 18, he's really into tennis as an example. And so, like, he wants to play college tennis. He probably wants to go on a mission himself in some way. And so, helping him think about his future self. And so, like, he wants to play college tennis. He probably wants to go on a mission himself in some way. And so, helping him think about his future self. And so, a big part of my future self and my top priority is I want those relationships to be in a great place, but also where do they want those to go? So, I'm just constantly trying to put quality energy and effort into that and being aware when things are taking me away from that. That actually is one of the

core principles and premises of this book. And it actually is a quote that I think I lace multiple times throughout the book, which is that we're kept from our goal, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to some lesser goal. And so, I catch myself when I'm in the lesser goals, which is where I'm watering the weeds. I'm in the thick of thin things. I'm outside my priorities, but I keep doing those things. And so, I think catching yourself when you're in a lesser goal and it's taking you away from your core goal. So, another one of my big three would certainly be writing. You know, that's even a bigger emphasis. In the past, I think, maybe even up until now, I was more interested in building a business and writing was the driver, but now way more emphasis on actually just quality of writing, growing as a writer, putting out

intensely better work. So, if I'm thinking about myself in three years, I'm hoping that the quality of what I'm putting out is incomparably better than what I've done to this point. And that as an author that shows, you know, so those are just two examples, you know, of priorities for me, based on the future self that I most want. One other just key point here is, is that I love the quote, and this is a quote from a statistician, but the quote is basically that no model is accurate, or no model is true. But some models are useful. So if you don't like the idea of having three priorities, that's just a model, throw it away. You know, you can do whatever you want. You can have a 50-sided future self if you want. I think that that would be less focused. But these are just principles or models that you can

use if they're helpful. Yeah. Give us the quote again about the goal. I think that's where we're going to end. That's such a great quote. Yes, this is from Robert Brault. Seriously, a quote for the ages. But it's just so easy to get distracted into things that just aren't that important. Think about email, right? Like the reason that I think most of us spend too much time on email is because it's easy. It's a clear path. It's a clear path and it feels like you're doing something and it's easy. It's a clear path to an easier goal. You know, most of us are not in a position where we're going to get rid of it. But I spend way too much time when I'm mindful, just, you know, that's the 17th time I've checked my inbox today. Like, how can that possibly be helpful? But it's exactly that. It's easy. It's an easy way to feel like I'm doing something. I'm not making progress on the big thing because

there's an obstacle. It's that I'm choosing the easy thing. Yeah. And the obstacle often is the thing we're avoiding because we're not connected and committed to our future self. The obstacle is what transforms you. The obstacle, going through the obstacle is what takes you from who you are now to becoming a future self that's radically wiser, more capable, just better, is transforming yourself through the obstacles of climbing some peak towards a desired goal. When your life is built around lesser goals, and the lesser goals are anything that you're pursuing either out of perceived need or just out of avoidance of what you really want to be doing. Perceived need could be, I'm doing this because it's the job that's paying the bills,

even though I'd really like to be doing this. That's still a lesser goal. You know, playing solitaire when you want to be working as you pursuing a clear path to a lesser goal. Jumping on social media and scrolling around is probably a clear path to a lesser goal, unless that's for some reason relevant to the real goal. When you're investing enormous amounts of time into clear paths to lesser goals, what that means is that you have a present self-orientation and that you're setting your future self up for disaster. And it can even be in subtle ways where you're on the hamster wheel and you're putting forth a lot of effort, but you're ultimately not making a lot of progress. Yes.

And the only way to make true progress is to go through the obstacle towards your goal and to eliminate all lesser goals and to continuously do this because it's a continuous process. As you said, the world is not going to stop coming at you. And you're also never going to reach a place of perfection where you're not going to try to avoid the truth or avoid what you really want. And so, not only do you have an outside world that's coming at you, you have an inside world that you have to navigate to push those things away and to recommit continuously to what matters to you. One thing I will say just is that when you

actually use your future self as the model for making decisions on a daily basis, doesn't mean you have to be perfect throughout the day, but certainly for a lot of your decisions throughout the day, you're going to be making real strides towards something that's important and continuously you will eliminate the daily battles, the daily worries, or the lesser goals that continuously ultimately keep you where you're at. Yeah. Lesser goals keep you where you're at, whereas what you really want is what would ultimately move you forward. But every time you invest in a lesser goal, you've opted to stay where you're at in most forms. You've opted to say, I'm not going

to advance the position that I'm at, whether it's an hour on solitaire or whatever you're saying, I will stay here for now. And I'm going to let the present self win. Yep. Well, that is a perfect place to wrap up. Thanks so much, Ben. I'm so glad we finally got to do this and overcame our technological challenges. And I've really enjoyed this conversation. Huge. It was a lot of fun. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support.

Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor. What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500 a guest spot

on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.