Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation

by Benjamin P. Hardy

Many, if not most, goals are reactive to one’s environment or situation. The more intentional and proactive you become in your actions, goals, and thinking, the more intelligent and freer you’ll be.

Go for goals regardless of current capabilities, circumstances, environment.

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.” —Dr. Daniel Gilbert19

Their interests are different. Their perspectives, values, and circumstances changed. Their focus and goals changed. In many instances, what was important ten years ago is no longer relevant to who they are today.

The changes within a decade are vaster than we can imagine.

At every age, people underestimate how much their personalities will change in the next decade.

Psychologists call this the end-of-history illusion.23,24 It’s the belief that you’ve substantially changed in the past, but likely won’t change much in the future.

Because remembering is easier than imagining according to Dan Gilbert

People with a fixed mindset overemphasize and overly define their current selves, believing who they are now is their core self. Unchangeable and innate, their inner dialogue states, “This is who I am and who I’m always going to be.”

Your current self is temporary. This refreshing truth enables a growth mindset, where you’re more interested in learning and growing than trying to prove yourself. It creates a flexible identity, where you actively update and alter your perspectives, and continually upgrade how you think, what you measure, and what you value.

Commitment to a better future through specific goals acts as the FORCING FUNCTION for our current self to have to be flexible and adaptive to whats required.

It’s okay that you don’t have all the answers. It’s okay if you’re a bit disorganized and camped in the messy middle. Things will change. If you’re committed to a certain change or outcome, then you will figure it out.

Messy middle happens. Its ok. Always a part of change.

You’ll even be different tomorrow. Let this truth free you. Enhance the compassion, empathy, and love you have for your current self, as well as your former and Future Self.

Think back to even last month. We are rapidly evolving. And if not, we could be.

“Time will be your friend or your enemy; it will promote you or expose you.” —Jeff Olson27

TRUTH. Work hard on big goals so time becomes a positive multiplier.

In reality, the Pied Piper is your Future Self. The Pied Piper will be paid. You can’t escape your Future Self. You can’t escape paying the Piper. The only choice you have is, when will you pay the Piper, and how much?

Discipline costs dollars. Regret costs millions. This same principle applies to paying your Future Self. If you pay the Pied Piper every single day, by making small and consistent investments, you’ll get a massive bargain. Every time you invest in your Future Self, you’ve not only paid them, but you’ve invested in them. By investing in your Future Self, your Future Self continually gets bigger and better.

Daily discipline paid. Invested over time leads to a bigger future self.

The reverse is to continually borrow from your Future Self, and wait until some future time to pay them back. A cost to your Future Self is anything that has more downsides than upsides. Generally, a cost is some short-term reward or indulgence that has no positive aftereffects, and often has negative consequences.

Borrowing, stealing from your future means future self me will be less off.

If repeated, costs make you fatter, lazier, hazier, and less connected. A cost is something that comes to control you, rather than you controlling it.

Once you pop, you can’t stop. For example, if you open your phone to reactively or randomly check some input, you’re going to addictively continue that behavior repeatedly throughout the day. Pop, pop, pop. Cost, cost, cost. Reactively opening your smartphone at the beginning of the day is akin to grabbing that first chip.

Phone is like pringles. Its too addictive. Its too costly. Be without it more. It can be done. Have a work phone. Just googlechat, notion, drive, docs, sheets.

Rather than putting your Future Self in deeper debt, make your Future Self wealthier. Continually position your Future Self for freedom of time, money, relationships, and overall sense of purpose.

In life, you not only reap what you sow, you reap more than you sow. Everything compounds over time. Little things become big things, for better or worse.

Compounding of results mean you reap more than you sow. What a thought!

If you invested $50 per week in the stock market, you’d build your portfolio. Initially, $50 seems inconsequential. But after six months, the balance totals $300. This may be the most money you’ve ever accumulated in your life. This then impacts your identity capital. You identify yourself as someone who invests and can grow your income.

If I can get to $300, I can probably get to $3,000. If I can get to $3,000, I can probably get to $300 thousand.

So, I started blogging. I found an online course for $198 by a guy named John Morrow. With my wife’s blessing, because this was an expensive investment for our former selves, I made the purchase and learned how to create viral headlines and article structures, and pitch my articles onto platforms like Forbes and Psychology Today.

Get a course that teaches you how to pitch to the major publications!

However, by continually applying what I learned, and through deliberate practice, it only took a few months to write my first viral article, which received over 20 million views.

Grt the bad ones out the way first until virality can occurr. Why? To grow audience goal. Why? To get a publishing deal goal. Why? To write a best selling book,

The point of no return occurred the moment a person got 100 percent committed to their objective of being an entrepreneur. It was an identity shift. That moment of decision was usually initiated by making a financial investment in their business.

Yeah, once we had all of our money in the same inventory it was all or nothing. That really scared me, just knowing that it was like do or die. I had to sell the shoes. You couldn’t turn back; you couldn’t just get rid of them and get cash back; you had to go forward.

Money all in created an all or nothing moment. Burn the bridges? But nights and weekends (Tom Bilyeu) works too. Do what you can live with.

Once invested, he became fully committed to a singular focus. With his new commitment, his identity aligned with that commitment, and his behavior followed his new identity.

In the beginning of your entrepreneurial growth test rapidly wihout betting the farm. Get validation! Your ignorance is too vast. MVP built, get first customers, do it on nights and weekends. Workout, pay the bills, go to work to grow and learn what works. That's it.

The more you invest, the more committed you’ll be. The more you invest, the bigger your vision will be. Invest your time, your money, and your talents.

Time, money (a percentage of paycheck after livEx and savings), effort to ine singular focus.

As Dr. David Hawkins stated, “The unconscious will only allow us to have what we believe we deserve.”33

How do we train our subconscious to show we are deserving of the next level? By acting on that next level today.

Once Kaleb had a clear goal and measuring process, he won nine matches in a row. He had a reason to win. Each match impacted his UTR score. Having clear measurables and milestones motivated Kaleb to become enormously more effective in how he practiced, and strategic in which tournaments he played.

Keeping score is so underrated. Gamify everything. Numbers for anything that matters. Make progress tangible.

Yet, despite their confidence, GPS data showed that they walked in loops as tight as 20 meters in diameter.36 As it turned out, “People really [do] walk in circles when they do not have reliable cues to their walking direction.”37

We default without guidance.

The more vivid, detailed, and measurable your Future Self, the easier to become your Future Self.

Make the journey linked up with milestone goals. Think of airport strip lights. Light the way to the next.

There was nothing distinctive about his style. He decided to master the fundamentals of skateboarding with utter precision and consistency beyond the level anyone had mastered before. He developed his own style, and invented tricks no one else did to stand out in competitions. Pablo Picasso said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

Same in developing product. Understand the fundamentals so well you can create new innovations.

He invested hours imagining innovative tricks and practiced executing the feats with style. Watching Yuto skateboard is a visual feast of practice, precision, and intelligent design. The tricks are polished, technical, and performed seamlessly.

Hours spent innivating and perfecting the innovations.

Yuto took advantage of the additional time to train and invent new routines.

Alchemize setback time into set apart time.

Yuto succeeded because he created with extreme detail and craftsmanship. Not only did he see himself becoming the best in the world, but he invented the most technical, challenging, and beautiful performance seen on a skateboard. His goal shaped his process.

Craftsman mindset towards a BHAG

For Josh, “investment in loss” is “giving yourself to the learning process.” This means putting yourself in difficult situations that force you to adapt. Facing your weaknesses. And sometimes, literally, using Josh’s words, getting “thrown around.”

Invest in loss.

Rather than having 20 years of experience, they often have 1 year of experience repeated 20 times.

You have to consciously design your practice so it streches you.

Habits are your current self; deliberate practice is focused striving toward your desired Future Self. Reverting to habits or your comfort zone isn’t how you advance.

Habits are for maintaining present self. Stop championing them. To get better we need deliberate practice.

Because the other students weren’t purposefully putting themselves through constant and painful failure like Josh, he advanced much faster than his peers. He adapted up to the skills of those he trained with.

Failing up. This is painful but enjoy the painful pursuit.

Only through imaging a Future Self with improved skills may we be able to motivate, plan, and execute the honing of skills through deliberate practice.

You have to see a clear vision of your future self to inform what you eed to practise on and to remember why it matters when things tough.

The more willing you are to invest in momentary loss and pain directed at a goal, the faster you’ll adapt to the level of your Future Self.

If you want to become your desired Future Self, play at their level as quickly as possible. Commit at the level of your Future Self. Adapt at the level of your Future Self. Your current self is clearly not there yet, and will therefore need serious training, humility, and feedback.

Invest quickly to level up. Play at the next level asap.

To quote Steven Pressfield in The War of Art: You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist . . . Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

Never take failure too seriously or personally. It's a gift of feedback. It actually gets you closer.

Shadow Career is the term used to describe people who go on an alternative path from their true dream because they’ve given up on themselves. To requote Robert Brault, “We are kept from our goals not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”

Please no shadow careers. No plan Bs. Have your bill paying career and work on your plan A, true calling.

If that person is living the life they truly want to live, then they are absolutely successful.

‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” —Marianne Williamson

Shrinking is of no use to anyone. You were not put here for that. Play big.

From my standpoint, any perspective that limits your Future Self should be questioned, especially when it comes to God.

If the views we hold don't allow us to play big and expand to a better future, the views need changing.

Other people are merely mirrors of you—you cannot love or hate something about someone unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

What you make of life is up to you—you have all the tools and resources you need, what you do with them is up to you.

Being a literal child of God means there is a reason for being here. Life isn’t random. We came from God and chose to come here for development, education, and experience. Moreover, being a literal child of God means that within us is the inherent capacity to become like God, in all ways. Just as a baby chick doesn’t grow up to become a cow, if we are the children of God, then our natural evolution is to become as God is.

We can grow to be god like

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which you would be strongly tempted to worship . . . There are no ordinary people.

Thereare no ordinary people. They may under act but we can all be great.

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Simple clean thinking is a lot of work. But is an accelerant.