Get intimate with your future self.

INSIGHT (what we need)

We struggle to do the things we want to do, less because we’re lazy, but because the future isn’t urgent and unknowable.

Back in 2017 Harvard University psychology professor Dr. Dan Gilbert was looking at the different parts of the brain that are activated when you’re thinking about yourself vs. another person. He discovered something alarming: we think of ourselves in the future as an entirely different person - such that the parts of our brain that light up when we think of a stranger are similar to those when we think of future versions of ourselves. Meaning the brain distinguishes our future selves as a wholly different entity, separate from who we are; stranger in fact.

What are the repercussions of that? We are not emotionally invested in our possible future selves and therefore, we’re prone to live more for today than tomorrow. Hence the common dilemma of our goals and plans going out the window. Turns out, it’s not just our lazy tendencies, unmotivated procrastination or post-traumatic paralyses.

If you’re thinking about Future You as an acquaintance, then you wouldn’t know that much about them, nor be interested in their plights. Imagine them asking you to help them move next week — you’d probably come up with a bunch of excuses right?  Or if they held us up at the grocery store with a long-winded sob story, you might be thinking ‘what’s my exit strategy’ right?

But let’s consider the opportunity: if there’s a sense of “closeness” to Future You, then you’re more likely to support that person or care about their situation. Perhaps easier to empathize with their plight. Ever notice how you are some times more supportive, generous, or filled with solutions when it comes to helping a loved one than yourself in times of strife? That’s because we’re just not as invested in our Future Selves as we would be our best friends or partners. If we cared more, we might even sign up to the age-old dilemma of making sacrifices for our future selves today for an uncertain gain tomorrow. This would require building a stronger relationship and desiring to invest in who we see in the future. We would need to develop empathy (not awe) towards whom we may become. 

INSPIRATION (what we want)

Wondershare: bring your vision to life with intuitive video and photo editing software powered by AI.

There are countless age-filters out there now as the trend to feel our mortality through a visual shock has become a favorite party trick. I’ll never forget the age filter technology that was brilliantly used for the first time by a bank’s life insurance product over a decade ago. It definitely collapsed time and put perspective on things! That visual confrontation with our own mortality can be very jarring. What’s missing is a sense of embracing (not fearing) the time in between that future image and today.

Age filters have only gotten more sophisticated and we’ll likely be able to have VR conversations with our future predictive selves very soon. For now, be kind to an older (or younger) you and try this free age-1-to-100-filter from this famed creator studio.

INNOVATION (what we wish for)

FutureOS: application for mirror devices where you get acquainted with your desired Future Self through coaching exercises and video journals. 

• The beloved smart fitness mirror becomes a smart coaching device that focuses purely on envisioning your future self and guiding filmed conversations to develop a relationship with ‘them’ over time.

• As a creator studio application, you of today get to create you of tomorrow through prompts and descriptions.

• Get intimately familiar with who they are, faults and all, so as to not glorify this ‘other’ version of you, but integrate them into your present to increase the possibility of expanding into that person today. 

• As a “live video” diary, work though a series of exercises (ie. writing your obituary or possibilities scenarios) and working backwards from various expanded possibilities of self. 

• Your videos are tagged into a library of various possibilities as you work to gain clarity on the most resonant qualities of your Future Self and bringing them to life from the inside out through traits and behaviors first (as opposed to starting outside in through status or wealth). 

• Receive weekly or monthly encouraging prompts and reminders from your Future Self to keep you on your path.

• By the end of the first series, each participant takes their expanding milestone maps to their Future Self and creates three videos (ie. 6 months, 2 years, 5 years) as themselves in that space and time.

• Most importantly: reframe how we often refer to our “higher selves” — putting them on a pedestal and giving them a divine-like status which is too removed from our existing version; and challenging for the brain to integrate! By reframing our ‘higher selves’ into who we are in continual expansion (energetic width, not height) from this present moment, we wire our systems to ‘open’ rather than project vertically through space outside ourselves. This grounded self-perception creates a closer connection to ‘self’ so as to wire our future selves to our present ones.

   

“Trade unintentional blindness for selective awareness.”
~ Dr. Benjamin Hardy, Behavioral Scientist

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