6    

Create Future-Pull

So, you’ve heard the learning call. Assuming you want to respond to it, now what? You may intend to act, but your motivation may not be strong enough to go to the next step. And you may not know enough about what you need to learn or what resources will be the best for your needs.

So, instead of jumping into learning activities at this point, do something to get your motivation juices going. Imagine a future that is so compelling it makes your learning success inevitable. Create a multisensory version of your future self—you in a virtual reality future. When you do this, you create a powerful psychological pull into the future you desire because you now have something tangible to guide your conscious learning decisions. This also helps to program the automatic functions in your brain to recognize learning opportunities when they appear in your day-to-day life.

There are two steps involved in creating this future-pull: Imagine a multisensory future and GPS your now.

Imagine a Multisensory Future

“You can create your life in the same way an artist develops a work of art. When you begin to approach your life from that orientation, you transform your world.”¹

You have a natural ability to visualize lifelike movies inside you. You do this when you dream, daydream, and imagine. This ability to embody thought is an important part of being human, so much so that it is currently an important focus of artificial intelligence researchers. They recognize that human intelligence is not just an abstract process they can program with digital computers; instead, they are training robots by physically connecting them to humans and hoping they can pass on this capability to the machines!

Learning 4.0 encourages you to use your ability to imagine and dream to engage your body as well as your brain for learning success—before you actually learn. The secret is to create an immersive virtual reality that you step into and experience as though it is real.² This requires engaging your body, brain, mind, and emotions.

Here’s how it works. Think of something that you are called to learn right now. Then, go to a quiet and spacious place, close your eyes, and take a few slow, deep breaths. Now, imagine that you have acted on your learning call and are living in your future. Ask yourself:

• Where are you?

• What is happening that is different from today?

• What are you experiencing, seeing, hearing, and smelling?

• What are you doing?

• What are you creating or achieving?

• Who else is present?

• What does it feel like to be in this scenario?

Think about this as “trying on a future.” Go beyond just thinking about it—step into the skin of your future self. Experience this desirable future and see if it resonates with your important calls to learn. Bring your full physical, mental, and emotional self into your projection. If it helps, make a drawing of your experience and explore it with a friend. Keep in mind that you are mobilizing your inner resources—your self-image, motivation, brain chemicals, feelings, and the conscious thinking and imagining center in the front of your brain—to prime yourself for learning. Think about this as embodying your future—bringing it inside you.

Even if your virtual future is hazy at the start or you know it will change as you learn, put it out there to launch you on your learning path. Imagine that you have a big piece of clay in your hands and you want to make something special. You start by softening and shaping it, and eventually your process and the clay become partners in creating what emerges. (Michelangelo always had an idea about what he was sculpting, but he let the stone help determine what would ultimately emerge.)

Your future vision will help you connect the dots that create the path for your journey. What you learn on that path will then help shape and hone your future vision. Your learning journey and your future vision will influence each other, but your initial multisensory impression is an important starting point.

Don’t worry about projecting a perfect virtual future; the goal is simply to create some direction and motivation. However, you do want to imagine as much as you can about the future you aspire to. Feel yourself living inside it. This is one of the most powerful things you can do as a 4.0 learner. It sets up and motivates the conscious part of your brain to notice learning opportunities and use learning practices. And it sets up a kind of automatic magnetic attraction that will unconsciously draw you toward your desired future. This virtual future will also help you keep going when the learning is difficult.

GPS Your Now

Your learning journey will take you from the present into the future. But what is the “present” that you want to move beyond? It’s a good idea to know where your virtual reality projector sits—the location of the “you are here” icon on the map of your life. Think about:

• What situations are you in now that are ready for something new?

• What are you seeing, hearing, or feeling in these situations?

• What are you doing in these situations?

• What are you creating or achieving?

• Who are the key people in your current scenario?

Step outside yourself to answer these questions from an external perspective, in addition to looking from the inside. Try to rise above your own biases and experiences. Ask for feedback from others: How do they see you now? Their views will reflect their own biases, of course, but they’ll also shape how they react to you, and their feedback can give you another data point.

The difference between your virtual future and where you are now will create tension that your brain and self will want to resolve. The more real and visceral your experience of your future and your now are, the more energized you will be to resolve the tension between them. You will be drawn, consciously and unconsciously, toward your desired future.

Create Future-Pull, in Brief

When you want to respond to a call to learn, take some time to set yourself up for success. Bring the power of your imagination into your learning process. First, immerse yourself in the future you desire by creating a virtual reality future vision that energizes and motivates you to act. Then steep yourself in where you are today. This will program your automatic self to resolve the tension between the two visions, and it will energize your learning.

Here is how it might look if you were a first-time team leader who wants to successfully step into a team leadership role (Figure 6-1).

Figure 6-1. The Creative Tension Between Your Now and Your Future Vision

Even if you do nothing more than create this present-to-future view of yourself in your imagination, you will still increase your chances of learning success. Some people call this future-pull the law of attraction; others call it the path of least resistance.³ Stephen R. Covey calls it beginning with the end in mind.⁴ For spiritual leaders, prayer is a kind of future-pull. Others are more scientific, equating it with magnetism, where the goal is to create a psychological magnetic field. The power of positive thinking and the notion that thoughts become things also relate to this idea of a future-pull. Synchronicity—when you set up conditions where more coincidences occur in your life—is another by-product of creating future-pull. You might say, “Isn’t it fortunate that this opportunity related to my learning goal is arising now?” when in reality, you programmed yourself to notice the opportunity and even to put yourself in a situation where it would occur.⁵

Brain research supports all the ideas we’ve discussed in this chapter. You can program your automatic system to support your learning quest, while also setting up a framework for more conscious learning actions.⁶ Don’t miss out on the benefits of this simple but powerful practice.