Your future self is your boss. Stop treating her like an employee

I read somewhere that the younger you are, the less connection your have with the idea of yourself in the distant future.  That's why most young people aren't thinking about saving for retirement.  It seems so far away and not based in the current reality.  We then neglect to create or follow through with any obligations to our future selves.

But the future does arrive.  Not in the form of you, at 70 years old, but as you, six months or a year from now.  That's when we say things like "wow, the year went by so fast."  What we really mean is "I feel like I didn't get anything accomplished in the past year."  We arrive at this place because, for most of the 365 days, we were honoring our present self.

Our present self, is the one who's in charge and makes crucial decisions in the moment.  It's our present self who directs the course of our day. But, there's only one problem, our present self is often too undisciplined to take on such a heavy responsibility. Present self relies too heavily on what she feels like doing at the time.    Yet day after day we fully trust in our present self to have our best interest in mind. She's the boss.  Whatever she feels like doing, she does and eventually, our future self suffers the consequences.

I'm here to create a paradigm shift in how we identify with our future and current self.  Your future self isn't just a vague shadow with no real identity.

She is us. 

But we treat her like she works for us.  We delegate all of the real work we don't want to do now to sometime in the future.  We think & act like we're the boss. She'll be the one to get us back into shape, she'll make sure we're financially stable. She's going to help us grow our career. She's going to save the entire world.  Anything we want, she'll pull through for us.

Yet that isn't what really happens.  That's because we've got the roles mixed up.  Future self is boss-lady.  She's the one who creates the vision for our lives and decides the course of our destiny.  We, in the current reality are the ones who must work to ensure this vision is actualized.  

Our current responsibility is to work with single minded focus on achieving the outcomes we've set for ourselves.  That is the true job description of our present self.

You are not the boss.  

If you are operating as the boss, then you soon find yourselves as one of those, "this year went by so fast" people.  That's because you didn't accomplish anything while waiting for your future self to come thru.  Once the vision is created by your future self, you are the person responsible for executing the day-to-day work to make it happen.  But instead of doing that, we sit back and expect it to magically be waiting us in the future.  Things don't work that way.

We must develop a new strategy.

Once, while on a leisurely walk, I went over a list of things I'd like to experience in the very near future. I described how I wanted my body to look and feel, how much income I wanted to earn, what experiences I wanted to have.  Once the outcomes were identified, I quickly went into "work mode." I  identified the daily and weekly activities that would create the outcomes by the established time.  It was as if my supervisor provided a list of objectives that I was responsible for meeting by a certain deadline.  We can all relate to that.

The key to ensuring that your present self is a high performing part of the team is to constantly make certain the actions you choose to do today are directly linked to the outcomes you've set for yourself.

You've got a job to do, and it's an important one.  You are on the clock and it's time to get to work. Make your future self proud and reap the wonderful rewards of doing so.