Transcript of Do What Your Future Self Needs

So let's jump into it. There's a psychologist named Hal Hershfeld, and years ago at Stanford, he and his colleagues put people into a brain scanner, and they had them think about themselves right now, and then they had them think about themselves in ten years, and then they had them think about somebody who they've never met before, like Nelson Mandela. And here's what they found. When people thought about their future self, their brain didn't light up like they were thinking about themselves. It looked more like they were thinking about somebody else, like they were thinking about a stranger, which means your brain treats your future self like a stranger.

And the people whose brains saw the biggest gap between me now and me later were the ones that were least willing to wait and delay gratification. And they took immediate gratification every single time. Because why would you sacrifice for a stranger that you don't know, which in this case is basically your future self, when you can do something for someone that you know really, really well, which is your current self? And what that means is that every time that you hit a snooze button or you skip the workout or you blow through your money, your brain doesn't feel like it's hurting you.

It feels like it's handing the bill to some guy that you'll never actually meet. Now, let me pause real quick, because this is really, really important to understand. The reason why you don't do what you need to do to build the life that you want is because you see your future self as somebody else, a stranger. And I'm going to talk about how to change that in just a minute. But then Hershfeld did something really cool. He showed people digitally aged pictures of their own face, and the people who saw their older self digitally age put more effort into delaying gratification instead of taking immediate gratification.

And one way that that they judged this in this study was how much money that they spent versus how much money that they saved. And people who saw their future self aged started saving twice as much money towards retirement. These are the same people as before, the same money as before. The only thing that changed is that that stranger actually got a face. That stranger didn't feel like a stranger anymore. It felt like them. So the problem isn't that you don't care about your future.

I want you to understand that it's that you don't feel like you know your future self. And it's hard, to be honest, to love and care for somebody that you just don't even know. And the most life-changing personal decision that I made when I was in my early twenties was to stop working and acting for myself and to start actually doing it for my future self, to learn to delay gratification versus always going for instant gratification. Because here's how most people make their decisions.

They make almost every decision based off of what their current self wants. And you have to understand something about your current self. It only knows how to act for yourself currently. So it does what is easy. It does what it currently does. It does what it knows, not getting out of your comfort zone and pushing yourself and doing something that doesn't really benefit you now, but will benefit you in the long term. You have to understand we are basically animals at our core, and all animals want instant gratification.

So if you keep making decisions for the person that you are, you will keep getting the life that you've got. And so if you choose instant gratification, life will be comfortable now, but you will be stuck later. Or if you choose to make the hard decisions, it will be uncomfortable now, but you will be free later. Or as I always say, life is either hard now and easy later, or easy now and hard later. And I know something. If you're listening to this podcast, you don't want the life that you currently have.

It might be okay, but you want more. Like you want to be better. You want to do the uncommon things that common people will not do. You are wired differently than most of the population. And so we need a new filter. Instead of asking, like, what do I want right now? We need to start asking ourselves, what does my future self need from me right now? And so how do you actually do that? When you put this into practice, how do you take a stranger and turn them into somebody that you would do anything for? So let me give you a four-step process.

Okay. Number one is to meet them. Most people's future self is like a blur. People say, I want to be healthier, I want to be more successful, I want to be happier, I want to make more money. That's not a person. That is a wish. And remember, the moment that that stranger got a face, people started saving twice as much for retirement. And so I want you to give your future self a face. So pick a date ten years in the future from today, and I want you to write out what is a normal Tuesday look in their life.

And the beautiful thing is, with AI now, you can see your older self. So take a picture of yourself today and upload it into Claude or ChatGPT and say, hey, age this picture of me ten years in the future. And now you can actually see this person that you're working hard for. And you could put them in your phone background and try to use them as somebody that you're trying to take care of. So that's the first thing. The second thing is to love them like you love your kids. If you have kids, think about three o'clock in the morning when your babies would wake up.

Like, nobody needs to motivate you to wake up at three o'clock in the morning to take care of a crying baby, right? Like, you don't lie there negotiating with yourself. Is it a struggle? Yeah. But guess what? You get up. You get up. Why is that? Because you love for them. You care for them. You know that it is your job and it is your responsibility as a parent to be there for them. You will do anything for that baby. Love removes the debate. It removes the negotiation.

What do you do? You just do it, right? And so now flip that. Would you rather your children make bad decisions, or would you want your children to be $20,000 in debt, or do you want your children to be 40 pounds overweight? Do you want them to work a job that they hate? Of course you don't. But you do it to yourself constantly, don't you? You get into debt, you get overweight. You might work a job that you don't enjoy or doesn't fill your soul. You do it to yourself constantly. You settle.

You settle for normal, for average, for just getting by, right? So that one stings a little bit when you really start to think about it, doesn't it? So I want you to start seeing your future self as somebody that is in your care, like your children, somebody who's counting on you, someone that you will do anything for because they are counting on you. So I want you to treat yourself like someone that you are responsible for taking care of and for loving, because nobody else is coming to take care of that person. You're the person who has to do it.

So that's number two. Number three, I want you to now run every decision through this filter. The practical part of this is to have every decision go through the filter of your future self, because every decision has two voices. Your current self asks you, hey, what do I feel like doing right now? Your future self asks you, what do I need to do right now? And most people only ever listen to their current self. And so when there's a fork in the road, I want you just to sit there for a second and close your eyes and take a deep breath and ask yourself, what does my future self need from me right now?

Right? So your alarm goes off at 5:30 in the morning. Your current self wants 30 more minutes, right? Your future self needs you to get up. It's time to go. So you ask yourself, what does my future self need for me right now? All right. My future self needs me to get up. That's it. So ask the question, what do they need for me? And make it really simple. And it's not I don't need you to make all of the decisions for today. I just need you to make that one decision right now. What do they need for me? What do they need for me right now?

And you'll notice the answer is almost never confusing. Like, it's very, very clear. You know what they need. To be frank, you've probably always known what they need. The question just takes away your ability to pretend like you don't know what it is that you need. Your current self picks what you want. Your future self picks what you need. And if you're going to change your life, you need to start listening to your future self, which then brings me to number four.

Let them coach you. This one sounds kind of weird. You're going to let somebody who doesn't exist yet, a future version of yourself ten years from today, coach you. But most people think like this relationship only goes one way. It's me looking into the future and seeing what my future self needs. But the relationship really does go both ways. Your future self that has everything that you've ever wanted, this life that you want ten years from today, has already been through what you're going through right now. They've already made the hard decisions.

They've already survived the failure. They already woke up early and hit the gym for years. They already know how this chapter that you're currently in is going to end if you make the right decisions. And so when you're scared or when you're stuck or not motivated or you're overthinking everything, like, just take a second and ask them, what should I know about this moment? Like, what should I know about this moment? And I promise you, your future self is never going to say, play it safe or stay in your comfort zone or don't grow.

I promise you that they're probably going to say, take the risk. They're probably going to say, do what's hard. They're probably going to say, take care of yourself better. They'll probably give you the advice that you need, and it will be very clear what the right action is to take to build the life that you want. And I want you to make this like a daily conversation. Try to develop a relationship. And I know this sounds weird, but try to develop a relationship with this future self that you have. Build the relationship with them.

I promise you, it sounds crazy, but it really, truly does work. Build a relationship with your future self. And then every night, right when you go to bed and you put your head down and your eyes are closing, just ask yourself one question. Did I give my future self what they needed today? If the answer is yes, then you are moving in the right direction. If the answer is no, which sometimes it will be, don't be an asshole to yourself. Don't shame yourself. Don't guilt yourself. Just make adjustments tomorrow.

You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be better. You just have to get the majority of the actions in the right direction. And so build this relationship through contact. You know, you don't get close to somebody by thinking about them once a year on New Year's Eve when you're setting your New Year's resolutions. That's not the way that you build a relationship with your future self. You get close to somebody by checking in with them every single day, by developing that back and forth relationship. And if you do this for a few months, something strange is going to happen to you.

That stranger actually starts to feel like you, like someone that you care for, like someone that you love, like someone that you're responsible for taking care of. And if you were to measure your brain before doing this and after doing this for a few months, that gap that your brain scanner picked up starts to actually close. And you're going to see this as someone that you're responsible for taking care of, and you're going to see this as yourself. And when that gap closes, the right decisions stop feeling like sacrifices that you're making for a stranger, and they start feeling like taking care of someone that you actually love.

And now I want to basically throw a warning out here, right? There's one way to really mess this up, and I don't want you to do this. Some of you are going to take this and turn your future self into, like, a drill sergeant. Like, my future self would be so disappointed in me. My future self hates that I didn't take the action that I was supposed to take today. No, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Your future self isn't disappointed in you. They're grateful for you because you're the one who started this. And remember, they need you to actually live, too. Like, they need you to enjoy your life. They're not going to be a drill sergeant and say, don't enjoy your life.

They need you to rest. They need you to have some laughs. They need you to have some fun. They need you to go on dinners with your family. Your future self wants you to build an amazing life. And so you don't you don't raise somebody by screaming at them. You do this from a place of love. I want you to do this from a place of love and developing a relationship and developing care. Don't do it from a place of fear and having a drill sergeant, because fear is, you know, going to get you to start, but love is what gets you to keep going and really finish this. And so I want you to write this down.

I really want you to think about this today. Ask yourself this question. What does my future self need from me that I keep refusing to give them? What's my future self need from me that I keep refusing to get them? Maybe it's to to work harder and to grow the business so you create an amazing life. Maybe it's to start taking care of your body more. Maybe it's to have deeper relationships with the people that you love. And like, answer that question honestly. And whatever that answer is, give it to them today, because whether you think about them or not, your future self is coming.

God willing, we will all be here in ten years. And that future self is going to live with every decision that you make today and for the next 3650 days. And so you have to understand you're the one that's writing their past right now. Just make the story that you're going into right now one that they will be proud of. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, you will absolutely love my event called Freedom Live in Austin, Texas. And if you've been stuck in the same place for the past few years, it's not because of talent or drive.