Remember Your Future?

Remember your future? According to Chase Hughes, that’s sort of what you do. In this short video, he explains, “When researchers study imagination, they see something pretty weird. The brain uses identical neural networks to imagine the future that it uses to remember the past…Neurologically speaking, your future is treated like a memory that you haven’t lived yet…The brain's not seeing the future. It's predicting it. And then it shapes your behavior to match that prediction.” 

Master Coach Steve Chandler says something similar in a different way. He uses the metaphor of pulling from the wrong filing cabinet. In this image, there is a past drawer into which past memories are filed, and there is a future drawer in which a future is created. Because the past drawer is familiar to us, we often pull a file from it and limit our future. We might say, “I’ve always been bad at public speaking,” but just because it’s been that way in the past doesn’t mean it has to be that way in the future. 

In fact, the future is not knowable with certainty. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle recognized this, saying that when we speak about the future we are speaking about things that exist potentially, not actually. Predictions about the future may be more or less probable but cannot be true or false. 

With all this in mind, I invite you to examine: 

Where in my life am I assuming that my future will be like my past? If I temporarily ignore my past and focus on possibility, what new vision for my future emerges? What actions would I take today to create this future?

God bless,
Dan

P.S. These are the types of questions I ask my coaching clients. If you’d like to go deeper, schedule a free 1-hr Coaching Call with me here.