It has been about three months since I read Future Self. I applied to Thinkubation for the new year of 2024, was lucky enough to get in, and already feel happy starting the year in a group like that.
Thinkubation reads one book every two weeks, four books in total, with reviews and discussion. The first book is Future Self.
When I opened the book again, I was surprised by how many underlines I had made. Three months later I do not remember that much, and yet I had marked and folded so many pages. Reading it again, I want to notice how similar or different those feelings are this time.
From what I remember, these were the thoughts I had the first time:
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I can imagine the future self I want, and I can become that person.
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I should ask whether what I am doing now pushes my future self away (debt) or pulls my future self closer (investment).
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I keep changing, so the future self I imagine from today and the present self my future self will look back on are completely different.
This time, my main questions are:
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What does my future self look like, more exactly and more specifically?
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How do I apply the seven steps toward that future self more specifically in my life?
While rereading, another thought came up.
When I turned thirty, the thirty I had imagined and the thirty I was living were so different that it was hard. The thirty I had vaguely pictured was recognized at work, dreaming about the future with someone I loved, with a car and a house on the way. The reality was a small salary, rent, living costs, and a tight life in Seoul. I was disappointed. I promised myself then that forty would be the life I wanted. Recently I turned forty and found myself struggling in the same way. What went wrong? I had worked hard.
Experiment 1 Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics took participants into a dense forest and gave a simple instruction: "Walk in a straight line." Some were sure they had. The result: "Without a reliable cue for the direction they are walking, people actually walk in circles."
Ah. I did not have a clear goal, so even though I worked hard, the forty I wanted never became real. Like the experiment, I may have been walking in a circle without a direction.
What Future Self made clearer is that I can decide my future. Until then I thought the causes of my life also sat outside me. I learned that my present life was made by all of my past choices. I had heard that before, but it had not been knowing. If I stretch that thought into the future, today's choices gather and make the person I become. In the end I understood this very clearly: imagine the future self you want, work today to meet that person, and you can become your future self. Once I realized I could imagine a future and make it real, I wanted to meet that person sooner. I became very curious about myself in 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years.
So how do you meet that person sooner? The book gives seven things. I am going to reduce them to three and try them.
- Draw your future self clearly.
- Pick only three priorities and do them.
- For every choice, ask whether it is an investment in your future self or a debt.
I am going to live with this for a year. Understanding something and applying it to life are different challenges. Even when you know something good, doing it is hard. Still, Future Self changed a lot of my thinking. I realized that the answer to every problem, and the successful future self, are already inside me.
If you are considering the book, I recommend it strongly. It is easy to read, and while I read it my heart beat as if I were hearing secrets about living.
#Future Self, #forty, #self-development, #Benjamin Hardy