Prepare the Way for Your Future Self
Posted on January 17, 2024 by Lucy Adams BSEd MS PCC, One of Thousands of ADD ADHD Coaches on Noomii.
Are you stuck? Do you believe that your current state of affairs is permanent? How are you preparing to grow into your future self?
The headline for a news story on my weather app read, “Coast to Coast Feeling Arctic Blast; Will it End?” I laughed. It struck me as humorous and, at the same time, existentially philosophical in its phrasing: this negative event is happening to us humans who fear daring to hope that the event is finite and that our discomfort will not last forever. Oh the dread and angst of our existence these few words capture, while also revealing the human tendency to believe that our current state of being is our only and our perpetual state of being. We struggle to see past it to our future selves.
When our immediate state of affairs is positive, we are tricked into not planning for the future. We either believe that we are highly effective and our abilities have not only led us to this optimal performance, but they will also maintain us here, or we fear that making any movement will disrupt the balance of things and cast us into a pit of doom. Sometimes these two oppositional forces exist within us at the same time.
At any rate, we avoid personal growth because we want nothing to change. We are as we want to be and we expect this to remain so from now until the end of time. Complaceny sets in. When things inevitably shift, we panic because we are not prepared.
When our immediate state of affairs is negative, it causes us to feel helpless to exert any meaningful action to change our environment, our situation, or ourselves. We either believe that some force of the universe has selected our life to lay waste to, or we blame ourselves and our impotency for our misfortune. Sometimes we hold both of these thoughts at the same time.
Our faulty memory tells us that things have always been this way and will always be this way and that we have always failed in our effort to make them any different. Feeling powerless to move the needle toward what we really want, we do nothing.When things inevitably shift, we are not prepared.
There’s always room for personal growth, even when our lives are at their best. In fact, this is the perfect time – when experiencing heightened optimism and satisfaction – to develop skills and strategies that will prepare us for change and move us toward the next goal.
Likewise, we always have more power and control than we believe we do, even when things are as bad as they can get. This is the ideal time to take a step to prove our own strength to ourselves. That small step will be the thing that turns the tide and pulls us out of our slump.
If you find yourself asking the question, “Will it end?”, you may be at a turning point between who you are right now and your future self. Take care that your erroneous thoughts, beliefs, and feelings don’t ice you out.
If you believe you need support and accountability to minimize frictional resistance to moving in your right direction, toward a future self who is competent and confident, a coach, whether for a sinc=gle session or multiple sessions, is the right professional to invite into your corner.
