What you will learn from reading Be Your Future Self Now:
– Why we are pulled towards the future rather then drive by the past.
– The science of your Future Self and how to connect with and create your desired Future Self.
– How to expand your Future Self far, far beyond what you currently imagine.
Be Your Future Self Now Book Summary
In this highly practical book, you’ll learn everything about creating an ideal future self. Including all the pitfalls and threats you may face as well as the steps needed to create the identity you want. A must read for anyone aspiring to be better.
The Structure of Be Your Future Self Now:
Part 1 of this book breaks down the seven biggest threats to your Future Self.
Part 2 of this book teaches you the seven most powerful truths about your Future Self.
Part 3 of this book gives you the seven specific steps to imagine, define, and be your Future Self now
Introduction:
Creatures of the Past:
“Much of the history of psychology has been dominated by a framework in which people and animals are driven by the past.” But what if humans are not driven by the past? What if we’re pulled forward by the future that we are the most committed to?
Science suggested that human beings are the direct byproduct of their own past. This view is known as determinism-the idea that human behaviour is simply one domino toppled by the dominos that came before. The dominos of past events dictate who you are and what you’re doing now. There is no human agency or freedom-simply stimulus and response.
Research now shows that a person’s past does not drive or dictate their actions and behaviours. Rather, we are pulled forward by our future.
Psychologists call this unique human ability prospection; as people, everything we do is driven by our prospects of the future. Prospection is based on a teleological view of the world, which views all human action and behaviour as driven by goals-whether short term or long term.
From this view, every human action has a purpose. Another word for purpose is goal. All human-action is goal-driven, even if the goal of the behaviour isn’t consciously considered by the individual.
Analysing your actions:
Some questions you could ask yourself are:
What is the reason or goal for this activity?
What benefit am I getting from this?
Where is this activity taking me?
There are three levels to understanding a particular event or action:
1. The what
2. The how
3. The why
All goals or motivations fit within two categories:approach or avoid. The reason for doing anything is either to approach something you want to happen, or to avoid something you don’t want to happen.
In all instances, humans act as we do based on the future we see for ourselves. That may be a future we’re trying to avoid, or a future we’re trying to create. That future may be decades or seconds away.
Why we should care about our Future Self:
The quality of connection you have with your own Future Self determines the quality of your life and behaviours now. Research shows that the more connected you are to your own Future Self, the wiser decisions you make here and now. Contemplating your Future Self, you’re more likely to invest in and set yourself up for an abundant retirement, exercise and eat healthier, and you’re less likely to engage in delinquent or self-defeating acts.
The clearer you are on where you want to go, the less distracted you’ll be by endless options.
When you’re disconnected with your Future Self, you get caught up in urgent goals that often result in low-quality behaviour in the present.
This brings up a counterintuitive but important truth the more connected you are to your Future Self, the better you live in the present.
It is not the past, but the future, that drives a person’s actions and behaviours.
All goals can be placed in two categories: approach or avoidance.
Connected to your Future Self, you can appreciate, embrace, and love the present.
Connection to your Future Self creates purpose and meaning in the present.
The more connected you are to your longer term Future Self, the better and wiser your decisions today
From your future self’s perspective you’re sitting on a goldmine.
Commit to your future self:
As leadership experts Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp state:
Commitment is a statement of what “is.” You can know what you’re committed to by your results, not by what you say your commitments are. We are all committed. We are all producing results. The result is proof of a commitment.
When you commit 100 percent to what you want and know the end result is already yours, there will be a growing body of evidence about the future you’re creating.
You’ll stop associating pain with the work and changes required for your goals. Instead, you’ll associate pain with not making progress toward your dreams. You’ll associate pain with the short-term dopamine hits that were once your escape. You’ll be far more courageous
The Seven biggest threats to your Future Self.
Threat 1 – Without hope in your future, your present loses meaning
Threat 2 – A reactive narrative about your past stunts your future
Threat 3 – Being unaware of your environment creates a random evolution
Threat 4 – Being disconnected from your Future Self leads to myopic decisions
Threat 5 – Urgent battles and small goals keep you stuck
Threat 6 – Not being in the arena is failing by default
Threat 7 – Success is often the catalyst for failure
Threat 1 – Without hope in your future, your present loses meaning
“Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it’s difficult to score.” -Paul Arden
Logotherapy and Victor Frankl
Frankl published an article that explored the frontier between psychotherapy and philosophy, focusing on the importance of meaning and values. These topics became the central subject of his life’s work.
While Freud and Adler emphasised a person’s past as the central aspect of their development, Frankl focused on a person’s future as the central aspect of their psychology. Frankl’s developing theory, which he called logotherapy based on the Greek word logos for “meaning,” believed a person’s development and quality of their mental health, stemmed from having meanings to fulfill in their own future.
This became the core tenet of Frankl’s logotherapy: human beings are driven by their views of their own future.
Having developed his theory prior to his imprisonment, Frankl’s experiences in the concentration camps only magnified and clarified this perspective. While a lack of purpose shortens life, having purpose can prolong and sustain life far beyond seemingly natural life expectancy.
According to Dr. Roy Baumeister and Dr. Kathleen Vohs, preeminent psychologists on the psychology of meaning, “Present events draw meaning from their connection to future outcomes.” Any human action or experience loses meaning when disconnected to future outcomes or consequences. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
Don’t lose hope:
As the Proverb states, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” This perishing is an internal disintegration where personality and physical health abruptly reduce to nothing.
Without something specific to look and build toward, the present becomes utterly painful.
In this frenetic nightmare, you feel there is no control or escape from a downward spiral. Without hope, motivation is impossible. You can’t be motivated toward action or outcome with zero hope in its possibility.
Without hope, grit is impossible. According to Dr. Angela Duckworth, grit is passion and perseverance toward longterm goals. From her standpoint, hope is the powerpack that sustains you through the ups and downs of whatever you’re pursuing.
Hope is the way because to have hope, you either see a way to realise your goal, or are flexible enough to create a way. When hope exists, there is always a way. Hope does not consider the odds.
High-hopers commit 100 percent to a specific result.
While their goal is unwavering, they remain highly flexible in the process or path to achieve their pursuit.
High-hope person, like Frankl himself, remains committed 100 percent to a pursuit, and 100 percent flexible around the path to achieve their goal
Threat 2 – A reactive narrative about your past stunts your future
The past is a meaning, nothing more.
Everyone has a plan until life punches them in the face. Whatever punches life gives to you, your past is just a story. Whatever story you choose for your past enormously impacts your present and your future.
Your past is fundamentally a meaning. The story you create about past events dictates what your past means to your present and to your Future Self.
The Gap and the Gain:
Strategic Coach co-founder Dan Sullivan and I wrote an entire book on this subject called The Gap and the Gain. The gap is when you measure yourself or your experiences against what you ideally thought they should be.
When you go through something terrible, and you frame the experience in the gap, then life is happening to you, and you’re the byproduct of your experiences. You’re the powerless victim of what happened. The gap leads to unhealthy comparisons and a lack of learning from your experiences.
The gain happens when you transform every experience into personal growth. No matter what occurs, frame the experience as a gain. Proactively and consciously learn from your experiences, and become better, not bitter, as a result.
When you go through something terrible, and you frame the experience in the gain, then life is happening for you.
Rather than being the byproduct of your experiences, your experiences are the byproduct of your conscious choosing. You determine what your experiences mean.
Threat 3 – Being unaware of your environment creates a random evolution
We don’t like to admit this, but our performance and results are often based on the expectations of those around us. Psychologists call this the Pygmalion effect. If you’re around people who have low expectations for you, you’ll fall to those standards. If you’re around people with high expectations, you’ll rise to those standards.
Become more mindful of your environment:
Mindfulness is the skill of becoming aware of your context, and how that context influences you.
What is the context you’re in?
How is that context influencing you?
What goals are you currently pursuing?
What is the life you’re presently living?
How did you choose your life?
Expand your environment:
Expose yourself to new and better ways of acting, being, seeing, and thinking. In every situation, regardless of what you’ve done in the past, there is always the possibility to do otherwise. There is always potential for conscious choosing.
Who is the person you want to become? Your answer to this question will, obviously, be influenced by your current context. However, your answer should also extend beyond your current context.
Once you’ve proactively begun imagining a Future Self beyond your current context, shape your environment to pull you in that direction. Instinctively, your brain will already and immediately begin doing this. As the Eastern mystic Rumi said, “What you seek is seeking you.”
Threat 4 – Being disconnected from your Future Self leads to myopic decisions
The 4th Threat to your Future Self is not being connected to them. You will not be able to proactively create the life you want if you’re not connected to your Future Self.
You won’t be able to think and strategise long term.
You’ll be caught up by endless distractions throughout your day.
Your decisions will be myopic.
You’ll cost your Future Self greatly, putting them deeper in debt in all ways.
According to Dr. Hal Hershfield, a UCLA psychologist who has invested 15 years studying the Future Self concept, the first step to farsighted decision-making is being connected to your Future Self. Connection starts with having empathy for your Future Self, just as you’d have empathy for another person. To have empathy, you consider the other person’s perspectives.
You try to understand where they are coming from, and what matters to them.
Importantly, building a connection to your Future Self requires seeing your Future Self as a different person from who you are today.
Another step of empathy is appreciating how your actions, or inactions, impact the other person. In this case, how are your current behaviours impacting your Future Self?
The more conscious you become of how everything you do right now impacts the person you are in the future, the better and more thoughtful your actions will be.
Threat 5 – Urgent battles and small goals keep you stuck
To exit the rat race of day-to-day mindset requires a shift in your focus. Connect to a bigger future. If you get serious, and started investing and learning, where could you be in five years?
The only way off the day-to-day hamster wheel is to prioritise the important. You give yourself space to think beyond your current context, and really start investing in yourself. Put the important before the urgent.
Lift your gaze and begin connecting with your longer term Future Self.
Develop goals that are five years out, and prioritise those big goals before the urgent daily battles.
Different questions spark innovative thinking and new angles. Psychologist and spiritual teacher Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.” When you change what you’re looking for, you change what you see.
A massive threat to your Future Self is simply that you’re thinking way too small. Multiply your vision 10-times or 100-times larger. You’ll be forced to understand the principles, rules, and strategies of living at a higher level. Instead of working harder, elevate what you think you can do.
As the late advertising legend Paul Arden said:
You need to aim beyond what you are capable of.
You need to develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. If you think you’re unable to work for the best company in its sphere, make that your aim. If you think you’re unable to be on the cover of Time magazine, make it your business to be there.
Make your vision of where you want to be a reality. Nothing is impossible.
Threat 6 – Not being in the arena is failing by default
‘I’m in the arena. I’m learning.’
In an episode of Tom’s recent ESPN documentary, Man in the Arena, Tom talked about how the doubters and skeptics throughout his career aren’t actually in the arena. Nothing they say or do has any impact on what occurs on the field.
Bo Eason, the former NFL player, said that when he watches sports on TV, he mutes the sound unless the commentator was an actual player. “Sports on TV are made for fans, not for pros. Pros don’t watch that stuff. It’s not made for them. It’s made for spectators.”
Being outside the arena means you’re overthinking, caught in paralysis by analysis. You’re letting fear win. Take for example, the countless people who want to start a business, or write a book, or learn a language, or [fill in the blank] of any dream someone might have.
The philosopher Cato said, “He who hesitates is lost.”
The longer you hesitate to enter the playing field, the longer you delay the essential learning curve. You cannot deliberately practice on the sidelines. When you’re not in the arena, you’re failing by default
It takes courage to get into the game because once in the arena, you will fail. You’ll immediately get hit in the face with the consequences of your actions and your ignorance. And although painful in the moment, this is exactly how you learn and adapt.
When you were outside the arena, you may not have felt like you were failing. But every day you sit on the sidelines, you fail by default.
You could read hundreds of books on a subject, but those books pale to the tangible experience of doing. Information becomes useful when you’re in the arena because you need real solutions, and you need them right now. — when will I need this information?
Threat 7 – Success is often the catalyst for failure
Becoming successful in whatever arena you choose requires a great deal of clarity, focus, and a longer-term commitment to your Future Self. By continually investing and deliberately practicing toward your Future Self, you can become highly successful. You can create dreams far beyond your initial conception.
However, with growing success comes growing complexity. In the beginning, you were just focused on your passion or craft. But then, so many other opportunities far beyond the life of your former self enter the equation such as managing money, time, and key relationships. Each decision must be filtered quickly to avoid paralysis by analysis
As author Greg McKeown explains:
Why don’t successful people and organisations automatically become very successful? One important explanation is due to what I call “the clarity paradox,” which can be summed up in four predictable phases:
Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.
Seven Truths about your Future Self
Truth 1 – Your future drives your present
Truth 2 – Your Future Self is different than you expect
Truth 3 – Your Future Self is the Pied Piper
Truth 4 – The more vivid and detailed your Future Self, the faster you’ll progress
Truth 5 – Failing as your Future Self is better than succeeding as your current self
Truth 6 – Success is achieved by being true to your Future Self, nothing else
Truth 7 – Your view of God impacts your Future Self
Truth 1 – Your future drives your present
We all have a future ahead of us. In 10 years, 20 years, and more, we will become our Future Selves.
The question is: Who will your Future Self be?
What life will you live?
What will you commit yourself to?
Every human creation you see is the byproduct of intelligent design. Someone had an idea for creating something, and turned their idea into a physical form. This process is trial and error, but driven by a goal.
Creativity occurs by giving form or organisation to disorganised raw materials. For example, a table isn’t built out of nothing but organised from raw materials that were previously disorganised or undesigned.
James Clear later wrote that “If you genuinely care about the goal, you’ll focus on the system.” Behavior becomes more intelligent as it is intentionally designed for ends.
Flow requires goals:
Without specified goals, flow is extremely difficult because goals create constraints within which a person can focus. If you have absolutely no objectives for your day, how could you possibly know where to focus?
Specific goals are a vital flow trigger. As Steven Kotler, one of the leading experts on flow, stated, “What’s critical is we know what we’re doing now and we know what we’re doing next, so attention can stay focused in the present.”
Truth 2 – Your Future Self is different than you expect
“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.” -Dr. Daniel Gilbert
Psychologists call this the end-of-history illusion, It’s the belief that you’ve substantially changed in the past, but likely won’t change much in the future. It is common to assume that your Future Self will mostly be the same person as you are today.
Your Future Self is a totally different person than you are today.
They see the world differently.
They have different goals and concerns than you now have.
They have a different situation.
They have different habits.
They even have a different way of looking at the world.
They’ve been through experiences and learned things you simply can’t comprehend.
You will change and evolve. This is freeing and exciting.
Knowing you can and will change enables you to love your current self. You’re less rigid about how you see yourself.
You don’t need all the answers right now. You don’t need to prove your current capability or worth.
The promise of change empowers you to give grace to your current self. You can make mistakes. It’s okay that you don’t have all the answers. It’s okay if you’re a bit disorganised and camped in the messy middle. Things will change.
If you’re committed to a certain change or outcome, then you will figure it out.
Truth 3 – Your Future Self is the Pied Piper
“Time will be your friend or your enemy; it will promote you or expose you.” –Jeff Olson
Your Future Self is the exaggerated result of your current decisions.
Everything you do can be categorised as either a cost to or an investment in your Future Self.
In the 1990s, the chip company Pringles had a catchline referencing their pop-off lids, “Once you pop, the fun don’t stop!”
Costs are heavily addictive. Have you ever tried just eating one chip? It’s essentially torture. Most people, once they pop open the cannister and eat one chip, can’t stop.
The same is true of all mindless and costly behavior.
Once you pop, you can’t stop. For example, if you open your phone to reactively or randomly check some input, you’re going to addictively continue that behavior repeatedly throughout the day.
Pop, pop, pop.
Cost, cost, cost.
Reactively opening your smartphone at the beginning of the day is akin to grabbing that first chip. You’ve just put yourself into consumption mode and there will never be enough to consume, because the rewards are so shortlived.
An investment toward your Future Self is any conscious action you’re making toward chosen goals. Every time you consciously invest in something specific, whether learning, health, relationships, or experiences, your Future Self grows more capable, free, and mature.
Truth 4 – The more vivid and detailed your Future Self, the faster you’ll progress
Truth #4 is that the more measurable and detailed your Future Self, the faster you’ll progress toward your goals.
Effective progress comes with a combination of measurable metrics, a vivid vision of your Future Self, and clear mile markers. Without these elements, people wander.
Truth 5 – Failing as your Future Self is better than succeeding as your current self
Rather than having 20 years of experience, they often have 1 year of experience repeated 20 times.
Deliberate practice is the opposite of “habits” or “automaticity.” Your habits are you on autopilot. Deliberate practice requires conscious effort and attention toward specific and challenging goals. Habits are your current self; deliberate practice is focused striving toward your desired Future Self. Reverting to habits or your comfort zone isn’t how you advance.
If you want to become your desired Future Self, play at their level as quickly as possible. Commit at the level of your Future Self. Adapt at the level of your Future Self. Your current self is clearly not there yet, and will therefore need serious training, humility, and feedback.
People naturally avoid investing in loss. It’s comfortable doing something you can already do. Winning feels good. But if you want to aggressively become your Future Self, then investing in loss is how you get there.
To requote Robert Brault,“We are kept from our goals not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”
Truth 6 – Success is achieved by being true to your Future Self, nothing else
The same can be said of the person living a quiet simple life, that doesn’t have fame, money, prestige, or any of the things we often consider as success. If that person is living the life they truly want to live, then they are absolutely successful.
External factors are absolutely not what determines if a person is successful or not. Only that a person lives in alignment with their own aims.
Truth 7 – Your view of God impacts your Future Self
I also love the words of Lewis, that, “There are no ordinary people.” This view of God enables me to look at every person with awe and amazement.
BE YOUR FUTURE SELF NOW Every person has the inherent capacity to become like God. This life is a small step in our evolution. Infinity extends behind us and infinity stretches before us. A person’s trajectory is far more powerful and real than their current self.
The 7 Future Self Steps:
- Clarify your contextual purpose
- Eliminate lesser goals
- Elevate from needing to wanting to knowing
- Ask for exactly what you want
- Automate and systemize your Future Self
- Schedule your Future Self
- Aggressively complete imperfect work
Step 1 – Clarify your contextual purpose
Rather than attempting to define your life’s purpose, follow Frankl’s wisdom. Define for yourself a contextual purpose that you believe to be the absolute most important thing you could do right now.
This purpose shouldn’t be beyond 10 years out
Given your current context, what is the absolute most important thing you could achieve or realize right now?
What is the next level that would be utterly amazing to achieve?
Step #1: Clarifying your contextual purpose involves three key items:
1. Connect with your long-term Future Self
2. Clarify your contextual purpose through your of three major priorities
3.Set massive 12-month targets based on your three priorities
Connecting with your long-term Future Self is essential to quality decisions in the present. The further out you imagine and connect, the more informed and strategic you can be. Of course, your Future Self will adapt and change, but that does not discount the importance of being connected
It’s key to ask:
What are you optimising for?
Who do you want your Future Self to be?
What few areas do you want to prioritise and invest big in so you can create 10X compounding results?
What seeds or investments do you want to plant that will yield the greatest return?
Step 2 – Eliminate lesser goals
About commitment, the late Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen said, “100 percent is easier than 98 percent.” It’s easier to commit to something 100 percent, because once you’ve committed, you’ve eliminated the internal conflict. You’ve silenced the decision fatigue.
You’ve banished the lesser goals.
Commitment requires vigilance. There’s never a time when lesser goals won’t present themselves to you.
Motivationally, our goal-conflicting behavior makes sense. To have motivation, you have a compelling outcome or reward, a path for attaining that outcome, and the confidence to execute that path.
Lesser goals are compelling because they’re easy. They offer a quick reward or dopamine hit. Probably, we commit to our lesser goals far more than we commit to our genuine wishes.
Lesser goals are weeds in the garden of life. Every time you engage in a lesser goal, it’s the equivalent of planting a weed in your garden. Whatever you plant will produce your results.
There are a lot of things you do throughout your day that conflict with your contextual purpose.
What are those lesser goals?
What are the major things in your life that oppose your contextual purpose?
What in your life is outside your three priorities?
What are you still saying “yes” to that your desired Future Self would say “no” to?
What are you continuing to commit to and invest in that is taking you away from where you want to go?
This assessment requires brutal honesty.
Step 3 – Elevate from needing to wanting to knowing
When you think you need something, you have an unhealthy attachment to it. Needing implies you are in a deep state of lack and can’t be whole or happy until the need is filled.
Wanting is healthier than needing, but wanting is still a state of lack. To want assumes you don’t possess what you want.
Knowing is a higher level than wanting. Knowing is the acceptance that you already have what you want.
When you know something is yours, you act differently than if you don’t know. A salesperson who knows they are going to make a sale behaves differently than the salesperson who wants to make a sale.
Your actions come from your identity. When your identity is rooted in current commitments, rather than your Future Self, your actions are weak and unaligned with your goal. The only way to realise your Future Self is to be your Future Self now
As William Hutchinson Murray put it: Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.
Step 4 – Ask for exactly what you want
In Graham’s older videos, he wasn’t as direct and shameless about asking for likes and subscribes. Sometimes, he didn’t ask at all. Or, if he did, he sounded timid and guilty.
But over time, he committed to growing his channel. He stopped being afraid to succeed. He accepted his Future Self, and asked for exactly what he wanted. And because he asked directly for what he wanted, his channel is on fire and he makes millions of dollars.
You can know you’re committed to something when you ask for it. When you ask directly, boldly, and without apology.
Start asking, and you’ll start receiving. It’s startling how fast you’ll get what you want once you directly ask.
Once you’ve clarified and simplified your Future Self, free yourself of decision fatigue, distractions, and all lesser goals. Allow your time and attention to focus on the absolute best and most relevant uses of your time, your three priorities.
Being selectively or strategically ignorant is crucial. It’s crucial to become increasingly unaware of what’s going on in the outside world. As author John Maxwell said, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”
Step 5 – to being your Future Self is automating and systemising your Future Self.
How can you better systemise your desired Future Self?
What could you simplify and eliminate from your life, to free yourself from decision fatigue and lesser goals?
What barriers and filters could you create to protect your time and attention?
What could you automate, such as a weekly investing strategy?
Where could you find a who to handle some of the hows that are outside your zone of genius?
Step 6 – Schedule your Future Self
Your schedule reflects your priorities.
Your schedule reflects what you’re actually committed to.
Most schedules are dominated by urgent battles and lesser goals such as meetings and Zoom calls. Rarely does someone’s schedule reflect and prioritise their Future Self over their current self.
The more you take ownership of your time and attention, the simpler and easier to realise your Future Self. If, however, your time is continually overrun with lesser goals and other people’s agendas, then your desired Future Self will be frustrated.
Time freedom starts with a decision, and is a perpetual refinement.
Are you willing to put the important before the urgent?
Are you committed to your current self or your Future Self?
Are you driven by short-term and urgent battles, or lifting your gaze to be your Future Self now?
Without question, taking ownership of your time demands commitment and courage. Busy can be a comfort zone despite knowing you’re being ineffective.
Step 7 – Aggressively complete imperfect work
Godin, here’s what it means to ship:
The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world.
Shipping is about finishing. Done is better than perfect.
To quote Leonardo da Vinci, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”
To finish, you release your imperfect work. You send your art into the world. You market. And you ship more
As beautiful as you are, your current self is incredibly limited and ignorant. The best work you can produce now is pebbles to what your Future Self will create. Your Future Self gives you permission to produce.
Nothing you produce will be perfect. Everything you produce will be from the limited perspective of where you are in a given moment.
Confidence comes from completion.
Completion requires commitment.
Anyone can start, but few finish. The further you go, the less competition there will be. Most people succumbed to their lesser goals and gave up a long time ago.
Every step you take toward your Future Self puts you in rarer air.
Everything you complete teaches you something you’ll use for the next project.
Become a master of completing and shipping. If you don’t, then your Future Self will be an idea but not a fact.