Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that most people have a false perception of their future. When people think of how they would end up in 15 years, their eyes get bigger and brighter. They imagine their future self as the ideal friend full of funny jokes, the perfect partner who is always lovely and understanding, and the excellent work colleague with a constant, flawless performance.

orrect me if I’m wrong, but I think that most people have a false perception of their future. When people think of how they would end up in 15 years, their eyes get bigger and brighter. They imagine their future self as the ideal friend full of funny jokes, the perfect partner who is always lovely and understanding, and the excellent work colleague with a constant, flawless performance.

Where’s the reality in all of these? Where are the mistakes, failures, hardships or frustrations? So what happens next is that your subconscious adds this ideal self to all the other perfect role models promoted by media. That’s how that overwhelming feeling of pressure builds up in your chest. How can a lifetime be enough for you to reach these role models?

The answer is not having more time at your disposal to read and learn everything. And you will not find the secret to your improvement as a person from another person. There’s actually no secret recipe at all, and the truth has always been in front of you.

Take a break from all the noise you’ve filled your life with and listen to yourself. You know what others want from you, but what do you really want? I know for certain that your future self is already inside you. I just want to help you discover yourself more quickly through some life hacks.

5 Great Pieces of Advice Your Future Self Will Thank You For

Here are 5 great pieces of advice your Future Self will thank you for:

1. Don’t Rely On Motivation – Listen to Your Mind

Think about the reasons behind every habit you quit. Most of them are based on lack of motivation. You don’t feel like doing physical exercises or practice your hobby today. However, there’s a way to bypass this lack of energy.

The solution is deeper than you think. You have to go past your subconscious and ponder on brain waves a bit. The human brain has a complex system, and scientists discovered that it is influenced by four brainwave frequencies:

• Beta: these waves induce your alertness, worries, but they also stimulate your creativity. Beta waves are present when you are in an overactive state.
• Alpha: these waves nourish a relaxed and disconnected mood that is the state we go through when we are day dreaming.
• Theta: stimulates our unconscious mind while activating the long-term memory. By focusing on these waves, you also activate your intuition.
• Delta: these waves take you beyond intuition and instinct. They take the control when you sleep.

Each frequency is in charge of one of your types of mood, and when one of them is active, your mood will change accordingly. So, basically, your state of mind is not just a random phenomenon, but the only way your brain communicates with you at a subconscious level.

Your goal here is to raise these frequencies to greater capacity. Meditation and alpha music are means to achieve this high volume of brainwaves. However, these are not the only means.

A study of human brainwaves performed by Anna Wise shows that successful businessmen and great yogis share the same frequencies at their emotional peaks. That means that performing mindfulness activities has the same benefits as a full session of meditation.

In conclusion, forget about motivation. This feeling occurs only when you are going through a fulfilled period of time. However, human nature will never settle no matter how many goals are achieved in a lifetime. This feature has helped us develop ourselves as a superior species, and it stands at the foundation of any great historical discoveries.

Instead, try performing as many tasks seemingly meaningless tasks as you can. Take brisk walks, do the dishes, draw doodles on your agenda, write random impressions, anything but the stagnation triggered by watching TV or resting. This constant activity will increase the power of your brain waves and will raise you at the same level as a yogist.

2. Activate Autopilot When Inspiration Is Hiding from You

You are standing in front of your job application. Even though you are the only person who knows you best, you can’t find any idea to fill it in. Staring at the blank file will get you nowhere.

The trick is starting mindless activities. Start writing without a clear focus on anything. Nobody will see what you write, so there’s no shame if you complete the hobbies chapter with eating good food or getting a good night’s sleep. Let go of your fingers and write whatever crosses your mind at the moment. After a while, read what you have written and you will be able to extract good and on-topic points for your application.

Managers use a related trick during a brainstorm. They ask their employees to write 40 ideas on how to solve a problem. The first 20 ideas will be rational and weak ideas. The following 20, however, will be the solutions the problem needed. How is this possible? When you are rational, you are limited to the parts that the problem presents you. However, when you are mindless, you get outside of the box and approach solutions that seem unrelated to the problem.

3. Create New and Positive Habits

You made that gym membership and even went to your first fitness class. You feel content with your decision, and you also feel that this time, you will stick to a daily fitness schedule.

Unfortunately, it’s never that easy. The much dreaded days with 0 motivation and productivity will get to outnumber your happy days. Why’s that? Motivation and productivity don’t exist. What we refer to when we say these two words is “positive habits.”

When we quit a good habit, it is not because of a conscious decision. All our failures originate from our bad habits. When we come home after a bad day at work, the feeling of not being in the mood to do house chores is not created at the moment. It is a result of a bad habit. When we don’t feel like reading a good book, but we prefer to re-watch our favorite movie is once again an outcome of our bad habits.

Start your first small step. You don’t have to do 1,000 squats a day. You will get fatigued and ditch a good habit again. Start with one squat a day instead. It’s efficient because you will be able to find the most suitable time of your day for your exercises. Your expectations will not be impossibly high, and you won’t feel down due to them. Moreover, you will educate yourself to start exercising immediately and won’t postpone them anymore.

Why not apply what we learn within the professional environment to our personal life? Imagine that you get a new job. Your new boss comes up to you from day one and asks you to make a full report on the last year progress of his company, 100 ideas on how to better manage his team plus putting them into practice the same day. That’s impossible, inhumane and it is never going to happen. But although we know all these, we are still much harsher with ourselves than the most demanding managers.

So, what happens when you start a new job? You get to meet your colleagues, go through training, stay on probation for three months to practice your newly acquired information, and be present every single weekday. Apply all these to your goals and be as understanding and indulgent towards yourself as a good manager should be.

4. Make Yourself Heard

Talk about your goals with your family, your friends, even strangers! Make yourself heard and lots of benefits will follow. You will constantly remind yourself of your goals. Putting your goals into words will make them seem powerful. Confessing your goals to a person will make you more prone to stick to your word.

Moreover, who knows what opportunities you create by expressing yourself. Sharing your ideas can find you a good partner for your business plan, a great place for your first apartment or that best friend you always wanted to find. Better yet, someone out there might help you discover your next best job, provided that they hear what your ideal career sounds like. So, avoid that urge to keep things to yourself by all means.

5. Never Forget To Reward Yourself

We are our best judges. Unfortunately, these judges sound more like some creepy Halloween characters most of the time. Focus more on your qualities and let go of your frustration caused by your mistakes.

When I achieved something important in my life, I used to skip the ”rewarding myself” part and head directly to the next step of my plan. You neglect your future self this way. Every time you make something wonderful in your life, pause the journey to your goal and reward yourself. Go out with your friends and tell them the good news, take that trip you have always dreamed about, buy something meaningful to you to mark the day.

Let’s take a look at happiness. If you watched the Pixar movie “Inside Out”, you’ve already met Happiness. She knows one thing and one thing only: making her human happy. That’s it! But what is impressive is that when bad things happen, she is still happy. Even though she is in charge of restoring things to their natural order, even though the world crumbles around her, she is enjoying every moment that life offers her.

We have plenty to learn from her. Most of the people nowadays are confronted with an accelerated pace at work, and they are highly likely to focus more on the negative side of their work outcomes than their good results. However, you will always see the bad parts in everything if you are focused on them. So, what will happen if we adopt a positive mindset? We will notice the good things that surround us more easily.

I’d like to think that this piece of writing rounds up every inspirational article that the Internet is drowning in. It’s high time you finished your self-improvement research and started actually working on yourself. You now know how to reach that ideal image of yourself in your mind. All you have to do is make your first step, and the rest will follow.

I imagine the process of self-improvement to be very much based on the words of Michelangelo Buonarroti: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” So, get rid of your bad habits, adopt a positive mindset, and you’ll already be halfway to meeting your future, improved self.

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