You know that feeling when you are super motivated and you can picture yourself exercising daily, waking up early to meditate, cleaning and organizing daily, or batch cook for the week? You can feel the amazingly powerful feeling of being this on-top-of-things version of yourself. You want to be that version of yourself so badly in the moment as you see it in the future, but then when the alarm goes off, or when it’s time to do one of those desired healthy things, you just—well—don’t. Why is this? Why are we so prone towards self-sabotage, to staying stuck, to not living in the way we can envision for our future selves? Why don’t we follow through with what we claim to want, but just don’t? While there might be a number of reasons why, no matter the reason it doesn’t have to mean this is how it has to be for you forever. You actually CAN become your future self now.

You do have the capacity to become your vision of your higher self, future self, up-leveled self in the now. You deserve to live in a space where you feel whole, healthy, confident, peaceful, and joyful. Why you aren’t always living in a way that supports becoming your best future self is often rooted in a lack of self-trust, low self-worth, and an out of balance nervous system.

The pain of staying stuck is often perceived by your nervous system as less uncomfortable now than when imagining the fear of failure in the future. Your memory networks in your brain are essentially a recording of everything that has happened up until this very point, and so it will plan accordingly, sink you into default mode, and keep you in that stuck place unless you create a lot of opportunities to show it another way to be. This is the first key to how you begin to become your future self—now.

The ability to become your future self in this moment requires having a calm nervous system. If you are living in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and struggling to feel safe and secure from moment to moment, it makes change very difficult to create. If you have past trauma, this will become the default, living in a state of a constantly over activated nervous system. However, even without past trauma this can become the default when living with overwhelming pressures, stressors, lack of fulfillment, and any other mental health struggles. 

Learning to regulate and calm your nervous system is step one. It’s a powerful key to creating the possibility for progress. If you find that you are often stuck in fight-mode, you most likely feel on edge, like you can’t relax, frustrated, angry, irritable, easily reactive, and tight and uncomfortable in your body. If you find you are often stuck in flight mode you may feel a lot of worry, a desire to escape or self-isolate, like you need to overwork, or stuck in cycle of anxiety inducing perfectionism. If you find you are often stuck in freeze mode, you may feel shut down, blocked, numb, exhausted, stuck, in a cycle of constant anxiety inducing procrastination, and generally burned out. If you find you are stuck in fawn mode you may be overly concerned with the needs of others, feel overly responsible for everyone else, struggle with speaking up for yourself, dismissing your own needs and feelings, and always in people pleasing mode.

When you are stuck in any of these nervous system responses connected to being over-stressed or in response to past trauma, you will not feel capable of becoming your future self as your brain will always sink you into default mode as an effort to keep you in a perceived state of reaction to present or future harm. Self-awareness is another key part of this process as well, and is super empowering as it allows you to develop a plan to help yourself regulate, ground, and find your way back to rest and digest mode. When you are in rest and digest mode, (where your body is designed to live when not in a state of emergency) you are present, clear minded, connected to your self, and you feel capable of anything that you will to do.

Creating a consistent, intentional relaxation practice is yet another key to becoming your future self now. Intentional relaxation is all about offering balance to your nervous system while being fully aware of what is presently occurring in your mind, your body, and your overall energy. Intentional relaxation practices provide the opportunity to shift feeling states from any of the over-reactive states back to rest and digest mode. Intentional relaxation practices include things such as breath work, meditation, guided imagery, guided relaxation, journaling, self-massages, baths, walks in nature, gentle stretching etc… General relaxation is different than intentional relaxation, both are important to help support your nervous system function.

General relaxation is when you can check out a bit and turn off your brain. General relaxation practices include reading, watching TV, exercising, listening to a podcast or book, anything where you are in a relaxed state but not self-focused. Ideally we can engage in both intentional and general relaxation experiences daily to help create a stable, balanced, and grounded nervous system. When you are relaxed and present, you can be more open to becoming your future self now.

Once you are in a regulated, present, and relaxed state, you can do the work of living as your future self now. This is where you begin creating opportunities to show your brain new ways of being, living, and experiencing your life through imagery. This is where having a clear vision for your future self is so important and powerful. You start to show your brain other ways of being and imagining actually doing them when your body is calm and relaxed. In a therapy setting we do this with cognitive rehearsal, and in EMDR therapy, with future templates. In EMDR you practice rehearsing how you want your future self to be in certain circumstances using positive cognitions, affirmations, or positive adaptive statements, to help build the belief in yourself that you are indeed capable, while feeling that capability as truth in your body as well as in your mind.

When this future desired outcome is practiced and rehearsed consistently with the resource of a positive cognition in a calm and present state of mind, you create the opportunity for this new outcome to arise in the future. When you do this consistently, you will find that there is less resistance, fear, push back, and self-sabotage—Yay! For it to truly stick, you need to practice consistently and calmly until you just notice that you are one day living as your future self in the here and now.

Clarity is the final key to becoming your future self now. You need to get very clear on what you want, why you want it, how it will feel when you have it. Then practice getting into this feeling state regularly, creating opportunities to feel how you want to feel as your future self—now. Empower yourself to visualize this daily, practice rehearsing it in your mind and experiencing how it will feel in your body. When you do this consistently from a space of feeling calm, grounded, and deeply connected to the present moment, you create the life you want, you create the capacity within your nervous system to feel secure, and to live as your future self now!