Gifts to My Future Self

The things that feel boring today can become the gifts you are most grateful for.

There are things in my life now that I want to thank my past self for. She lost the weight. She stopped drinking. She built a business, saved money, developed relationships, and took care of her children.

I get to live with what she created.

That makes me ask a different question about what I am doing today: what do I want to give to my future self?

The answer is often something that does not feel exciting in this moment. It may be planning my week, hiring carefully, or allowing an urge instead of immediately satisfying it. But I can do those things because I love the person who will receive the result.

Your future self is not a strange concept

Your future self is you five minutes from now, tomorrow, five years from now, or thirty years from now.

Whenever you think about your future, you are already thinking about yourself in it. If you plan to save money or pay off your house, you are imagining a future that does not yet exist outside your mind.

You do not have to consider yourself an imaginative person to do this work. Planning is already an act of imagining.

What I want you to practice is making that relationship more conscious. Think about your future self as someone you can get to know and care about.

Your relationship with yourself extends through time

Your thoughts about yourself determine how you feel about yourself. Those feelings drive what you do. That is the Model.

We spend a lot of time working on those thoughts in the present: recognizing your worthiness, your capability, and the possibility of loving yourself as you are.

You can expand that work to include your past and future selves. Instead of criticizing the person you were or doubting the person you could become, you can build a relationship with both.

Your future self can be someone who has practiced more, learned more, and developed more wisdom. You can imagine what she knows and ask what she would tell you now.

Start by writing to your past self

If writing to a future version of yourself feels difficult, begin with your past.

Write a letter to yourself at seventeen. Most people can imagine what they would say. You might tell yourself not to worry so much about a test or a person whose opinion seemed terribly important. You can see things now that you could not see then.

Imagine your seventeen-year-old self receiving that letter. Imagine what it would be like to hear from the person you are now.

Then imagine that younger version of you writing back. This gives you a way to practice the relationship before moving it forward in time.

You already have the experience of knowing more than your past self knew. Use that to imagine a future self who knows more than you know now.

Write from the future

Choose a point in your future and imagine yourself there. Look around. Where do you live? Where are your children? What has changed in your business? What is your life like?

From that place, write a letter to yourself today. What would you want yourself to understand? What advice would you give?

On a different day, write from your present self to your future self. See what you learn from each direction.

I spent time doing this years before I had the business and life I later created. I asked my future self what it was like to make millions of dollars and have a large school.

Then I became that person. It was extraordinary to realize that I was the future self I had already been building a relationship with.

Notice the gifts you have already received

Before you make a list of what you want to give, look at what your past self has given you.

What do you want to thank yourself for?

Maybe you exercised, studied, became a coach, nourished friendships, or paid attention to your children's needs. Maybe you chose not to drink the night before, and you are receiving the benefit this morning.

I am grateful for the books I read, the classes I took, the people I met, and the business I built. Those choices were not all about instant gratification. They gave me something to live with later.

You can let yourself feel gratitude instead of using every look backward as an opportunity to criticize.

Delayed gratification can be an act of love

When I teach the urge jar, I teach allowing urges without giving in to them. A full jar represents practice in delaying gratification and developing emotional maturity.

Think about that as a gift. You are willing to feel an urge now because you care about the person who will live with your decision.

Compare that with drinking without considering the next morning, or going into debt and leaving your future self to deal with it. In those moments, you are focused on immediate gratification rather than the person who receives the consequences.

You can make a different decision from love. You can be willing to experience discomfort now rather than continually passing the effects of your urges forward.

The best gifts may be boring

For me, many of the most valuable personal gifts are ordinary responsibilities. Exercising, doing yoga, taking care of my teeth, getting checkups, following my food protocol, and saving money are not always thrilling today.

I do them with the person I will be in mind.

The same applies to business. Constraining my products and offers can feel less exciting than adding something new, but it makes the business simpler and more scalable. Taking time to hire the right team is harder than quickly filling a position.

I think about relationships with customers as a long-term asset. Helping them and giving value ahead of time matters more to me than pressuring them for an immediate sale.

I also plan my time every week and honor the plan. I do not want procrastination today to become a burden for my future self.

Give yourself the care you would give someone you love

Some of the things we do to our future selves are things we would never do to a close friend. We would not repeatedly promise to show up and then ignore them. We would not casually leave every responsibility for them to handle.

Think about yourself with that same care.

Make a list of gifts you want to give the you of tomorrow, next year, five years from now, and ten years from now. What will that person be grateful you started?

You can also write the biography you would want someone to read when introducing you in the future. What would it say? Are you doing the work now that creates that life?

Ten years gives you time to do things that would feel overwhelming if you waited nine years and tried to accomplish them all in one.

You are the bridge

You are receiving what your past self created and creating what your future self will receive. You can be grateful in one direction and excited in the other.

Working on this relationship is not self-indulgent. It asks you to look at uncomfortable thoughts, allow difficult feelings, and take responsibility for your choices.

When you practice giving to yourself from love and discipline, you develop the capacity to give to others from that place, too.

What does your future self want you to know? What do you want to give her? Get to know that person, and begin creating the gifts.