A simple practice to help you become your future self that’s quick, easy and painless.

This episode is for you if you want to change your beliefs and become your future self, you will probably need some help to step outside your current paradigms.

If you listened to episode 59 of this podcast you will probably understand what I’m talking about. 

To recap briefly, most of us have entrenched habits – both thinking and doing habits – that happen automatically, unconsciously. And as you can imagine, those entrenched, automatic habits can be very hard to see, let alone to change.

When you achieve this clarity and awareness, there is one more thing to navigate – the fact that your brain is naturally wired to find evidence to support your current beliefs rather than your future beliefs.

In other words, if you want to become your future self, you need to uncover the hidden beliefs and then, convince yourself that behaving differently is a good idea.

As you can see there’s a little bit to navigate in order to become a better and more powerful version of you! 

To summarise, becoming your future self involves three things:

1. Uncovering your unconscious beliefs about yourself that shape who you are
2. Challenging and changing those beliefs and
3. Being consistent with this until you start thinking and acting differently.

Most of us don’t have the time or space to do this in our lives.

You’re busy with your kids, making lunches, getting them to school and then yourself off to work.

Most of us are lucky to snatch 5 minutes to ourselves, so it can be really difficult to cut out all the noise and stress of modern life and to start changing our thinking and doing patterns.

That’s why I want to walk you through a simple process to help you move more quickly toward your future self. 

I call it MIND SEEDING.

I highly recommend listening to episode first 59 FIRST so this all makes more sense.

Mind Seeding

I find it so fascinating that we are able to run so much of our lives on autopilot – around 90% of what we do, in fact.

So if you think about it, our thoughts and beliefs are the instruction manual that we automatically follow each day to get things done.

It leverages off the fact that we run on autopilot and that our brains are highly suggestible.

I propose that we can use this to our advantage, and ‘seed’ our minds with the thoughts of our future self.

Want to give it a go?

Mind Seeding 101

There are so many things in life I struggle to remember, but for some reason I can easily sing the jingle from the 1981 Swatch watch commercial.

Can you relate?

This is a great illustration of the first part of mind seeding – telling yourself something short and simple, repeatedly, will cause it to stick in your head.

And as you know, if you listen to my podcast regularly, the things that you say to yourself repeatedly become your beliefs.

Here are two simple examples from my own life.

When plastic debit banking cards arrived in Australia in the 80’s (yes, I’m that old!), I realised how easy it was to start spending money. And like any normal teenager, I had started spending with my new card!

Yet I wanted my future self to be a proactive saver and accumulating wealth, rather than debt. I needed to find a way to do this.

As a measure to curb spending, I started to tell myself that I if I didn’t have cash in my purse, then I didn’t have any money.

It’s amazing how this halted my spending. I would withdraw $20 each week and this was my spending money and once it was gone, it was gone.

By the time I was 15, I had saved $1,000 and had put it into a term deposit. This one simple mind seed got me closer to my goal and up to Level 3 in my Four Levels of Money.

A year later, I was struggling with anxiety and insomnia as exams and the question of my future became more pressing.

I had started working a casual job in an aquarium shop, and they had a coffee machine there. It was a machine that turned instant coffee into a hot milky drink, not like the fancy barista models we get today. 

I had never really been a coffee drinker, but that machine was a lure and I found myself drinking 2 – 3 coffees on my Saturday shift. I realised that coffee had a grip on me. I found myself looking forward to the shift so I could drink coffee, and then feeling wired and jittery after it. But it felt SOO good to drink coffee.

Within a few weeks I realised that coffee was bad for me at that stage of life and I decided I wanted to stop drinking it. It was making my anxiety worse and disrupting my sleep on the day or days that I drank it.

So I seeded my mind with the concept that “I don’t want coffee to control me!”

Thinking that way about coffee was really assertive and positive for me because it spoke to me about what I wanted, not what I was missing out on. This really helped me to be disciplined with a simple habit and it made a huge difference to my state of mind.

Notice that in both examples, I was seeding my mind with thoughts that felt strong and powerful, rather than judgemental or fearful. 

This is the key to getting your new seed thoughts right.

So right now, think about ONE activity that your future self is doing or not doing, for example, not drinking coffee, or not drinking alcohol, or exercising regularly, or speaking in front of people – and create a powerful, positive statement about it.

This is one of your mind seeds that will grow into a habit that aligns with your values.

Here are some ways of doing that.

1. Read a book on a topic you’re interested in, whether it’s related to your business, industry or a personal goal. 
2. Take a free online course into an area of interest and learn something new.
3. Take up a hobby that engages you and gives you a sense of flow.
4. Block out a whole weekend with no responsibilities or commitments, to just meander and do what you want and need.
5. Do something that will give you a quick win and is easy to do without any brain strain – like an exercise session, or cleaning out a drawer.

Any of these can be enough to give you a brain break and switch things around to get your ideas flowing again.

I find that when I am feeling low, flat or defeated, I am instantly revived and excited again by listening to something inspirational or something that creates awe, curiosity or a sense of achievement.

This is positive psychology in action.