Get as specific as you possibly can. Where do you go on vacation? What’s your favorite restaurant to eat at now that your life is different? What kind of food do you consume? What does it feel like to go throughout your day? Are you optimistic? Are you encouraging to others? After a decade of working on yourself and growing as a woman, how much joy is there in your life? Who’s in your life? What’s your week like? How do you treat people? How do they treat you?
Just let your dreams run absolutely wild. Are you happy? Are you energetic? Are you driven? Do you feel ambitious? What’s your relationship like with your family members? Do you own a home, and what does it look like? Do you have kids, do you have a family, are you married? What’s the best of the best?
Now go bigger. What’s a bigger version of the best version of you? Living every day in the best state that you know how to be. What do you do for work? What is the highest value that your future self holds? Is it family, is it loyalty, is it growth? Be as specific as you can be.
Now, without a second of judgment or overthinking it, I want you to write down everything that you just thought of as fast as you can. I don’t want you to forget any of it; I want that future version of you to be seared inside your brain.
The best version of me is . . .
When I’m at my best, I . . .
Don’t hold back. This is not the time to think it through or tell yourself to slow down. This is not the time for realistic; this is the time to think as big as you can possibly go.
Hopefully, this exercise helped you paint a clear picture in your mind of a lot of different awesome things your future self can take part in. Personally, I like to do this once or twice a year and create a vision board (like in fifth grade when you glue a bunch of magazine clippings to poster paper) so I’ve got a visual to go along with my mental imagery.
That is the first step; that’s you in ten years.
Now here is how you narrow it down.
TEN DREAMS
Turn your ten years into ten dreams. If those ten dreams came true, they would make your vision a reality. So, if you saw a future that was completely financially free, maybe your dreams would be things like making a six-figure salary, being completely debt-free, etc. But maybe your future dream self is also healthy and happy and energetic. Add becoming a marathon runner and vegetarian to the mix. The important thing is, again, to be specific. The list of dreams is how that future vision manifests for you.
Often, when we do this, we come up with more than ten, but it’s essential to narrow it down. Focus matters, remember? Choose ten dreams that, if they were to come true, would make your future self real.
Now here’s the key: write down those ten dreams in a notebook every single day. And write them as if they’ve already happened.
I do this every day of my life because I want the repetition to instill in my head and my heart where my focus should be. I want to remind myself who I should be. I write them as if they’ve already happened, because I read somewhere once that your subconscious focuses on what you give it. If you tell yourself (and your sub conscious), “I’m going to make a million dollars,” you don’t end up focusing on the goal but on the words going to. It becomes like a to-do list for your brain. You didn’t give it direction. You didn’t ask your mind to help you figure out how. You only told it that you were going to do something, which isn’t especially powerful no matter how big a goal you set for yourself, because you create to-do lists all the time. What makes this something your brain should take notice of?
What if instead you told yourself, “I have a million dollars in the bank”? That’s specific. That’s an outcome. That’s a direction to head. Going to is something in the future. Have is present tense, which means your subconscious starts focusing on how to make that real right now. I don’t actually have a million dollars in the bank . . . yet. But I’m working on it.
Some items on my list are things that I want to achieve; other items are things I can accomplish every day.
“I am an exceptional wife.”
That one is on my list. I write it down every day as a reminder of who I am and who I want to be. When I imagine my future best self, she’s still drunk in love with Dave Hollis. In the future he’s still my best friend, and we still can’t keep our hands off each other. Only now we look so much fresher because all our kids are older and we don’t have to change diapers or wake up with a teething baby.
I’m careful with the words I write down too. I don’t use the word good. I don’t use the word great. I use the word exceptional. When I write that sentence about being an exceptional wife every day, I have to ask myself what I did today that made me exceptional. It’s a simple prompt to move me into action. It reminds me to text my husband and tell him how hot he looked in those pants or how much I love him and appreciate him. That wouldn’t happen if I didn’t have the prompt reminding me who I want to be.
Another item on my daily list is kind of obnoxious but, hey, it’s my dream list, not yours. I write down, “I only fly first class.”
If you follow me on social media, you may have some idea of how often I travel for work. It’s a lot, you guys. A lot. I don’t mind the travel, because 90 percent of the time I’m on the road to give a keynote speech or motivate a bunch of conference attendees with my unique lyrical stylings and the energy of a springer spaniel. Public speaking is one of my favorite parts of my job, but it also requires focus and energy. It’s hard to have either when you’re shuffling back and forth across the country on planes. And it’s hard to keep up with my current workload so that I can make all those speaking engagements when I’m sitting in coach.
Also, my current workload always involves writing. I’m either writing a book or editing a book or working on an article or a post, and because it’s me and I don’t know the meaning of the word private, almost everything I write tends to be sensitive in nature. Do you know how weird it is to write a chapter on your sex life while a rando guy sits next to you sharing the armrest? I do! I’ve written on planes for years; there’s no other way for me to turn these suckers in on time. And I hate not writing simply because I’m worried about what my neighbor thinks of chapter 5. That’s where this dream comes into play.
In my mind, first class is good for one single thing: seat size. I don’t care about their weird entrées. I don’t care about the free wine. I don’t even care about the ability to get on the plane before everyone else. All I care about is that, in first class, I can sit crisscross applesauce with this computer in my lap. It’s so comfortable. It’s so far away from the next nearest person. It’s the best!
I know this because one time, years ago, Dave used his miles to upgrade me on a flight. Once I got a taste of the promised land, I couldn’t stop dreaming about it. So I wrote the words, “I only fly first class.” Every day. For months and months. Which means that every day my brain accepted that as truth and helped to make that dream a reality for me.