Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Fulfilled Leader Podcast, the podcast to strengthen your emotional resilience and find fulfillment at work. I'm your host, jean Balfour, master Certified Coach, with over 5,000 hours one-to-one and tens of thousands of hours in groups. I've coached incredible leaders like you to overcome their biggest work challenges and go on to lead resiliently, finding the type of fulfillment they never knew possible. They are leaders people want to work for and organizations want to hire. In this podcast, we have conversations about the psychological and emotional struggles of leadership. You're going to hear neuroscience, psychology, leadership models and evidence-based approaches that all have an impact in helping you be a resilient and fulfilled leader. Every week, you learn ideas and tools that will shift the way you lead and live your life, making change possible. Let's start the show. Hi and welcome to the Fulfilled Leader.

Speaker 1: 1:09

How often are you dreaming about your goals, your dreams, your ambitions, maybe the role you want next or the type of working life you would like? Maybe it's just about your next holiday or time off with your family. This has been a really big feature of my own life, both personally and in my work. I'm big on goals. I'm big on plans, vision boards. I do annual planning, monthly planning, I do long range, where do I want to be in one year, three years, et cetera. So I may sound a little obsessive. Three years, etc. So I may sound a little obsessive With my clients. I also encourage them to do some long-term planning and thinking about the working lives that they are creating, and I'm always curious about how we can get better at bringing about what we want, how we can get better at creating this future, and today in the podcast, I'd like to share some of my thinking around this and a few new insights and practical tips for creating our future selves, particularly in our work. This is a refreshed version of an earlier podcast that I know people have found really helpful, and I thought it was worth coming back to it again to rethink our future lives.

Speaker 1: 2:27

There are two things that got me thinking differently about this idea of future self. The first of these is reading a book called your Future Self by Hal Hirschfeld, and the second relates to a quote that keeps appearing in my life, and both of these led me to thinking a little differently about this idea of planning and preparing for the future and, as I've said in the podcast, today I'd like to share some insights from this learning. So let me start with the book. It's called, as I said, your Future Self by Hal Hirschfeld. His book is looking at research relating to why it's so hard for us to create the future selves that we so often dream of.

Speaker 1: 3:11

The research cited in the book shows how we are often in very short-term thinking, and even though we might think we're planning ahead maybe preparing to be a senior leader or an entrepreneur in the future, or maybe even that we want to be 10kg lighter or have saved enough for retirement it appears that we're not really programmed that way to be. So future thinking as much as we would like to think that we're good at planning ahead, we really aren't so skilled at it. It starts with how we think about ourselves today in comparison to the future. When we're thinking about ourselves today, the research says that we tend to think about ourselves in the first person, so we say I, I am, I do about ourselves today, but when we think about ourselves in the future, we think about ourselves in the third person. We think about ourselves as they. That person over there it's like our future self is a stranger to us, and one reason this is a challenge is that we don't treat strangers in the same way we treat ourselves, we treat strangers differently, like it or not. Research repeatedly shows that we generally don't show as much empathy or compassion to people we don't know and whilst in society. From a societal perspective, this is not a great right and good thing. Research on bias keeps pointing to it. So if we take this about ourselves and if we're thinking about our future self as being a stranger, then we may be finding it hard to empathize with ourselves in the future and therefore we may not do the things today that will help our future self tomorrow, because it seems like they're another person, they're over there.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Let me give you an example that many people can relate to. So I might say that Jean today is committed to losing 5kg by December. I'll be 5kg lighter, except that I find it incredibly hard to imagine Jean in December. It's August when I'm recording this, so I kind of see her as somebody over there, and of course that means I'm not identifying with Jean in December as much as I could be. So I don't quite believe that I'll be 5kg lighter, and so the goal feels a bit unrealistic. So I might as well have that extra pastry that's sitting there waiting for me today and you know it's even sometimes tomorrow, if you think about how many times you've had an extra glass of wine that looks tempting and then woke up the following morning thinking why did I do that? Or eaten that extra cake, or not exercised when you thought you should, and then you've woken up the next morning regretting it.

Speaker 1: 6:05

It's because somehow, even tomorrow's future self we find it very hard to empathize with. Here's another example If I know that I'd like to move towards being a senior leader on the executive team, so maybe I say that in five years I'd like to be CFO chief financial officer. In five years I'd like to be CFO Chief Financial Officer we would most likely look at the CFOs we know and see them as other, see them as different, somehow, see them as over there, maybe special, maybe looking at them through rose-colored glasses. We may find it hard to imagine ourselves fully in that role and therefore, whilst we really aspire to it, we can't even feel it. We find it really hard in the reality of today to see how even making small changes can help create our future selves, and so we put them off, thinking that they can wait.

Speaker 1: 6:58

So I invite you to think about this for yourself and, to be honest, are you really able to imagine yourself in your future goals in the first person, as I? And if not, what can we do about it? So before I go on to that piece, the what can we do about it I want to say a little bit of an aside about the book. I will put a link to the book in the show notes For me. It was very good at helping me think about this topic, but it's very heavy on citing research and examples, and nearly all of those are based in the US, and I was hoping for a few more practical ideas on how to create your future self, and so what I've done here is I've pulled together some examples that I think will help us, some of those practical ideas based on other things I've read and other research I've seen.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But before we even go into that, I want to share a little bit about the second thing that keeps popping up for me, and this is the quote from Joseph Campbell about the idea of follow your bliss. Joseph Campbell, in an interview, said this Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. And Joseph Campbell and his work and this quote keeps following me, keeps showing up in my lives Several times recently. Somebody's mentioned this quote to me in relation to my own work, and a coach I'm working with shared it with me. So this idea of follow your bliss kept coming up. And then, as I was reading a Deepak Chopra book, there was this quote again the same quote and I was a bit surprised. This was a book I've been reading half-heartedly on and off, and here it was again this idea of follow your bliss. So I decided to sit up and to take a bit more notice, because I'm thinking about this idea of future self.

Speaker 1: 9:06

I was preparing for this podcast today and I believe that following our bliss also helps us to create our future self. As I was thinking about this, I had a bit of an aha moment that this idea of following your bliss sounds like something we do with ease and there sounds like there's no discipline involved. It's like we just jump into a river and off we float. But actually, if we look at both Campbell's lives and Chopra's lives, for example, they both live in a way where they follow their bliss, but they're also incredibly active. So I've heard Joseph Campbell, for example, talk about his passion for his work, which was about exploring myth and legend across culture, and that he would work all the time, often weekends, and he was doing that because it was his bliss.

Speaker 1: 10:00

And if you look at Deepak Chopra's life, it's also very similar. He's modeling his life on spirituality and he puts all the work in. He doesn't just talk about it, he does the work, the meditation, the self-reflection, the sitting down to write. So the connection that I made for this was this idea that if we want to follow our bliss and create our future life, we actually have to do something about it. We need to be thinking about how am I going to bring about the life I want to be achieving? We need to think about it. We need to be thinking about how am I going to bring about the life I want to be achieving. We need to think about it in the present moment, in the first person, and we need to act.

Speaker 1: 10:35

I was talking about a part of my own life where I feel I want to achieve something with a coach I'm working with, and she reflected back to me that I appear to be going round and round and round in circles, and it's true, it's like I'm waiting for some magic to suddenly happen, for my future self to be here, rather than creating it and making it happen. And the area that I'm working on with her is the idea of finally writing and publishing some more of my writing, and particularly my book writing and publishing some more of my writing, and particularly my book. And I've got a lot of writing I want to do. It's something I feel very pulled towards. It's like it's drawing me. It's a very strange feeling. I don't understand the pull really, because I wouldn't put any identity on myself with being a writer, but it's there.

Speaker 1: 11:24

I do write a lot. I write in my journal every day, I'm writing podcasts and somehow I'm struggling, particularly with my book. I have a book that's in draft, nearly finished, but I spend long periods of not doing anything with it, not getting it published, not getting it finished. And, yeah, sure, writing a book is a really big project and I think it's because of this. I feel the size of the project. I become overwhelmed and so I don't do things about it today. That will help future.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Jean, hold the book in my hand, yeah, when I sit down to write, it feels great, I enjoy it, I feel in my flow and I guess I feel a bit in my bliss actually still a bit of a surprise to me, but there are always a hundred other things looking at me that seem more urgent, seem more important, and so I don't give the future, I don't give that time and the effort that's needed, because I find it so hard to imagine myself holding a book published in the future. I put off doing today what I could Now. Of course, there's lots of other things stopping me fear, imposter syndrome and so on but actually there's something about my distant future self that makes it easy to put it off. So it struck me that in order to follow our bliss and create the future life that we want, it appears we actually need to put some work in. We need to make the time, create the space and have some discipline to do the part of our lives, to find that part of our lives that helps us to follow our bliss, that helps us to create the future, and we need to do it in a way that makes it feel real today, not something in the distant future. We need to put effort into imagining and planning our future selves today, in the first person, so that we're much more likely to achieve it. So how can we go about this?

Speaker 1: 13:20

I've pulled together a few ideas on how I think we can get better at creating our future self and following our bliss and making it more likely that we will achieve them. Let me start with this idea of our future self. Our future self might be tomorrow or six months or 10 years from now. It doesn't have to be a long way in the future, but it can be any area of our life that we're wanting to improve, we're wanting to make changes in. Maybe it's a career move that we want to make. It might be about having more deep work or focus during the day, and it might be that we want to be the CEO in 10 years.

Speaker 1: 13:58

As you think about that, notice the areas of your own working life or your life in general related to your goal that you want to change and that you need to create opportunities in, and then notice how you see them over there as, like someone else, will make these happen. If I think about myself and my writing, it's like it's gonna happen tomorrow, and I never then seem to make it a thing today. So what we need to do is we need to try it on today for size. So I might say that today I'm going to first of all imagine myself. I I am holding my book in my hand. I might feel the excitement of that, the fear as well, and then I might be more inclined to do it today, but I'll also be more inclined to think, oh, if I'm going to hold the book in my hand, I need to book an hour in my calendar every day to make sure that I'm writing.

Speaker 1: 14:51

Whatever your goal is to be a senior leader, to be proud of how your kids have turned out you can see if you feel into that experience today. Visualization is a great tool for this. Visualize yourself now as a senior leader, talking to a large group of employees and having a shared feeling that you've all done good work together. Feel into that experience now and then notice what shifts inside you and then think what might I need to do today in order to be that person, both now and in the future? How can I be the I today? One starting point for this is to create a very clear and granular picture of your future self. Create a picture that pulls you into that first person and says I am this person. Create a picture that pulls you into that first person and says I am this person, starting to use the first person in the present moment, even down to imagining what you'll be wearing, how you're behaving. And the skill here is not to imagine it in the future but to imagine it today, because if we're going to make that connection to today, we're more likely to make it a reality.

Speaker 1: 16:02

So let's play with this CFO, this chief financial officer example I was sharing earlier. The question becomes who do I need to be today in order to make the CFO I want to be in five years time more likely? How can I create a first person in the moment, cfo here rather than over there? What inputs or even sacrifices might I need to make in order to be that person in that role in the future? And we can ask ourselves questions like when I am the CFO, how will I feel? Maybe I'll feel confident or proud or humble. How can I feel that today? How will I be acting? How can I embody that today? How will others respond to me? What kind of leader will I be? How will I coach others coming up behind me, how will I dress, what will my working day look like, and so on. And then we can begin to feel those emotions and embody those behaviors today.

Speaker 1: 17:01

Now, you can't be the CFO today, but you can begin to, for example, observe leaders you admire and consider how you would go through the day embracing their behaviors Maybe. For example, you see that they're very good at helping others, they solve problems quickly and well, and so you think about well, how can I get better at doing that? Today you start to feel into your confidence and power as a senior leader and you start doing the study and the learning and the stretch assignments, everything that's going to help you have that exposure to feel that you're moving in the direction of your goal and that you're ready, that you're getting there today. And, of course, one of the keys here is about using the first person language, and so you want to say I'm moving into that. I want to see myself in this first person not a stranger over there, but as a new person here and thinking about how will I talk about myself in that?

Speaker 1: 18:04

In that James Clear in Atomic Habits also talks about this and he talks about how we can use intrinsic motivation to help us with this. He puts a slightly different slant on it, but he talks about the idea of identity and how we see ourselves, and he suggests that we move from a goal to who we are. So, rather than from what we want to achieve to who we're going to be. So if I think my goal is to publish a book, actually he would suggest my goal is to say I am a writer. The goal for our CFO might be not to say I am a CFO, but to say I am a leader in finance, and then we reflect that, we embody that in that statement and then, with all of this, we can start to make small changes today to embody the person we want to be. So for me, of course, that means just writing every day 15 minutes. Sometimes it becomes 20 minutes. For you, that might mean embodying being the leader in the weekly team meetings, thinking about how you show up, how are you going to be leaderful in those situations. You can also think about leaders that you see people, you work with leaders particularly that you respect, observe them. How are they approaching situations today that they're facing and that they're walking into, and how could you embody some of that in the way you're working, in the way you're being.

Speaker 1: 19:27

There's a couple of other lovely things that you can do related to the future self. One is that you can write your own retirement letter. Imagine that people are sharing insights about you at the end of your career and you write down what you hope they will be saying about you as you look back at your career. There's another lovely thing that you can do is go to the website futuremeorg and I will puta link in the show notes to this and send a letter to yourself which will be sent back to you in the future. It's a free online platform and you write this letter to your future self, you set the date for which you want them to send it back to you and they email it back. And when you're doing that, write that letter in the first person. So, say I, and keep it in that first person, so you're reminding yourself of that future.

Speaker 1: 20:20

And what about this idea of following our bliss? I think we can use all of the same principles. If your bliss is to be a senior exec, you feel really strongly ambitious about it. Then you can embody that person. And even if you aren't there yet, you can take every opportunity to learn to stretch, to step up, to lead, because our bliss often has a pull to it. We can feel that inner drawing, that sense of being pulled to it, and we can take that pull and embody it, helping us move towards our future self. One thing I've noticed about myself is that I often like to write on Sunday mornings. It's my time, the other urgent work stuff isn't pulling me and so then it never feels like work. I'm sitting down, I feel very drawn to it and I'm enjoying that in that moment, and so you can think about this in your own life.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Following your bliss, if it's outside of your current job, doesn't mean you have to leave your day job, but it can be about finding moments. We can also see how other bits of our life are our bliss and lean into those and embody them. So if you're looking at yourself and you think, okay, I really am wanting to demonstrate more leadership, but you're not yet a leader, you know you feel drawn to it. You can look for ways in your personal life where you're leading. Or, you know, maybe you're not yet a leader. You know you feel drawn to it. You can look for ways in your personal life where you're leading, or maybe you're involved in something with your kids or a voluntary group that you're involved with, and when you have that still small voice leading you in a direction, telling you some bliss, is over there. Make time for it, even on a Sunday morning. Over there, make time for it, even on a Sunday morning. Find time and make time for those projects, because your future self will be really grateful that you did it.

Speaker 1: 22:08

This journey to our destinations can sometimes feel really long and it's a long way in the distance, and in order for us to sustain these goals and ambitions we have and to make them happen, we really need to think about today and the present moment, to look at what's possible today. 10 years is a long time away, but every tiny step I take today counts. So I really encourage you to focus on doing something every day that brings you closer to your future self, no matter how small, and I know from my own experience by doing this that we begin to embody that person. Today. I wish you happy dreaming. Thanks for listening to the Fulfilled Leader. If this episode resonated, share it with another leader or friend, and don't forget to follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. You can even rate and review. You can find more support and resources at jeanbalfourcom, or come and say hello on linkedin. Take care and keep leading with heart.