Step

5

Don’t spend any of your timein the future

You’d never dream of jumping into a taxi and when the driver asked you, “Where would you like to go?” saying, “I don’t know, just take me anywhere.” Yet this is a perfect metaphor for how most people lead their lives. I’ll prove it to you. If I was to ask: “Where will you be in five years’ time?” you probably don’t have a clue. That’s because only 10% of the population are future focused. This means 90% of us are stuck in the now or the past. When someone says: “Never mind five years from now, I don’t even know where I’ll be five minutes from now. I can’t think about the future,” it is literally true. They can’t think about the future because they don’t believe, deep down, they have any influence over it. Most folks accept, without question, that they are victims of circumstances not creators of circumstances. And so should you. I mean, what is the point of thinking about the future when it’s largely a matter of luck? Successful people, on the other hand, are visionaries. They don’t believe in luck. They are in the driving seat of their own life and aren’t content to be a passenger. They put themselves at cause, not effect.

As we said earlier, successful individuals and organisations know that everything is created twice. They know you must clearly see your future success in your mind’s eye before you can create itin reality. They vividly imagine the successful completion of their goal, over and over again, until it becomes so familiar to them that as far as their unconscious mind is concerned, they have already achieved it. These are the peak performers. Unfortunately, most people vividly imagine what they don’t want. There is a name for this: worry. Both the good and the bad news is that you become what you think about most of the time. So, to speed up the failure process, don’t be very careful what you think about! (More on this in steps 27 and 28.)

When people first come on board a workshop we run on a boat (yes, a boat), they often ask: “Where is the boat sailing to?” Just for a laugh, I reply, “I have absolutely no idea.” Actually, I know exactly our destination, but you see there are lots of people on boats, called their lives, who don’t know where they are sailing to. They don’t have a big engine on their boat called vision, values, purpose and goals. Which means they can’t celebrate success because they’ll never know when they’ve arrived. Plus, if they were to encounter a storm while at sea without an engine, they could end up anywhere. Now it could be a nice harbour. However, if you can’t see where you are going, there’s a greater chance you’re bound for the rocks or the bottom of the sea. Of course, if you don’t put an engine on your boat, you are unlikely even to set sail in the first place. This will guarantee that you, like so many other great failures, will stay where you are for most, if not all, of your life. Nice thought.

Once you’ve finished, here are some observations to consider:

When was the last time you did that then?

The usual answer is never. We are all perhaps used to traditional blue skies business planning where we look from now towards some date in the future and talk about what we might or might not do. What makes this exercise different, and more powerful, is that we are looking back. It brings an extra dimension that is usually absent when thinking about the future. And that’s your emotions. Because you were talking about what you’ve already done and achieved, your emotions become involved. If you don’t get excited talking about this stuff, when are you going to get excited?

Go do it with someone else

Two or more people with a shared vision are like an unstoppable train. Do this exercise with your team. Better still, do it with your significant other.

Did you quickly run out of things to say?

This might mean you aren’t future oriented enough. Remember 90% of the population spend all their time in the present and the past. Maybe you need to plan to spend more time thinking about the future.

How clear was your vision?

If I’d been listening to you and you were telling me about this fantastic new house you now live in (now it’s two years from today), I’d have asked: “What colour is the front door?” “How many rooms does it have?” “What plants do you have in the garden?” You can only realise your vision to the extent that you can clearly see, hear and feel it. Athletes at the Olympics didn’t sort of, vaguely, kind of see themselves winning the race. When they mentally rehearsed the event, they saw everything in absolute, specific, clear detail. My mate Leon, a silver Olympic medallist, even used to imagine the smell of the chlorine coming from the pool.

Discover what not to do

This exercise is also good for giving you ideas about what not to do. Maybe you found yourself telling your partner about some long-held goal, dream or ambition. For example, maybe you talked about that book you said you were always going to write and have now written. Maybe you said it’s even now on sale in all good bookshops. But if, as you talked about it, you didn’t get really excited, are you really going to make it happen? Sometimes what we thought we really wanted turns out to be something we don’t really care enough about. We simply don’t have enough enthusiasm and energy to make it happen. Forget it.

So don’t practise back-from-the-future thinking. Don’t think about what success will look, feel and sound like five years from now (yes, it’s even more effective to think five years from now rather than just a piddling two).

“So don’t practise back-from-the- future thinking.”

While you are at it, don’t think about letting go of the past either. Don’t stop trying to fix or solve past mistakes. Don’t merely make peace with what’s happened and move on. Just continue to wallow in things you can’t change. Knowing you tried, and letting it go, may be exactly what you need to make the current situation acceptable again. Doing this would also release the extra energy you might need to design your future life rather than let it unfold by accident.

Oh, and to complete your misery, don’t be in the now or enjoy the moment. Be mindful. Enjoy just doing the washing up. Many people squander the present yearning for a better future. You might like to join them. Finally, I should point out that you will find it is impossible to reach a future goal anyway if your present is not set up to support it.