Week 3: Meeting Your Future Self & The 20-Year Vision
Before moving on to this Guidebook, take 2 minutes to post a celebration from the past week to our Facebook Group.
Click HERE to do so.
Click HERE to do so.
“For most people, the word planning means prediction. There’s another option called planning by creation, and using it can change your whole experience of creating the future. Much of the goal setting that’s done in business, government, and education is planning by prediction. In this type of planning, people carefully study what’s happened in the past and use that data to predict what will happen in the future. Planning by prediction is based on a few assumptions. One is that past events are the best predictors of what’s yet to come. Another is that the forces now shaping our lives will continue to be at work in the future. In a sense, prediction is the past masquerading as the future. Planning by creation involves a different set of working assumptions. With this type of planing, you start from a blank slate - from nothing. Without considering the past, you state what you want to happen in the future. Then you ask how to achieve those goals. The underlying idea is that the past does not have to determine or limit what you can experience in the future. I’m not saying that planning by creation is “better” than planning by prediction. Both types of planning have their uses. My suggestion is to know at any given moment what kind of planning you’re doing - and to choose the type that suits your purpose.” -Dave Ellis, Creating Your Future
“The biggest pitfall as you make your way through life is impatience. Remember that being impatient is simply a way of punishing yourself. It creates stress, dissatisfaction and fear. Whenever your Chatterbox is making you feel impatient, ask it, “What’s the rush? It’s all happening perfectly. Don’t worry. When I am ready to move forward I will. In the meantime, I am taking it all in and I am learning...The Path is much like the experience of climbing a mountain. The climb is tough. But each time you stop to look around, the view becomes more spectacular. You see a greater expanse, and the “flaws” of the world below disappear as you see more and more of the whole. As you climb higher, you are detached from the heaviness below. You feel lighter. You feel freer. And you are propelled higher by the increasing beauty you see.” -Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
Meeting Your Future Self in 20 Years
"Who will I be in 20 years?"
- How old will I be?
- What year will it be?
- How will I carry myself when you walk down the street?
- What will my voice sound like?
- What skills will I have mastered?
- What will the look in my eyes communicate?
- Who will I be in 20 years?
What's the Connection? Why Focus on Building a Relationship with My Future Self?
It is not enough to want my life to change. I must create an actual relationship with my Future Self, so I am actively engaged with the me that I will be in the future.
This an anchoring practice - Just like a boat floating in the ocean needs an anchor, so it won’t float off course, the relationship with my Future Self anchors me to my intended future so I won’t veer off course through the ups and downs of the waves along the way.
Giving Myself Permission to Meet My Future Self
When I give myself permission to dream, imagine, and actually get to know the person I will be in twenty years, I give myself permission to see the me that I long to be. And, I am able to let go of the resistance that comes from the stress of asking “how?”...How is it going to happen? How am I going to create this life? What am I going to do?
My Future Self brings me directly to the Source; to the essence of my being. And, it is who I am being that creates the reality of what I do and what I have in this life. Who I am being is rooted in the thoughts that flow through my mind.
SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE FOR WEEK THREE: FINDING THE ORIGIN OF THOUGHT
FINDING THE ORIGIN OF THOUGHT
We've talked about tracking the thread of guidance in your life, like a hunter tracks the footprints of an animal through the natural landscape. Where do your thoughts come from? What is their origin? Can you follow these tracks?
If "The World is What I Think It Is" and "I am here for a reason" then why might it be useful to find the origin of my thoughts?
"What really matters is not whether a particular system is true, but rather how well it works for you."
-Serge Khalili King PhD., from his book Urban Shaman
In other words, "The World is What You Think It is" and "I Am Here for A Reason" are not "true" statements. They are principles that you can use to make your life work better. As you become more and more curious about "Finding the Origin of Your Thoughts," you may find that these principles really work for you. Then you will begin to notice more ways to apply them in your life.
"Powwaw": The One Who Dreams It
The Native American word "powwow" refers to seasonal gatherings of shamans and medicine people who come together to discuss important issues and to create a collective vision for the future.
This word - "powwow" - comes from the word "powwaw," which is the name for shamans and medicine men in the Narragansett language. The word "shaman" is from an indigenous language of Siberia, and has become the generic term for medicine people of all cultures.
The meaning of the word "powwaw" is literally "someone who has visions" or simply "the one who dreams it into being."
"Shamans hold the exceptionally subtle idea that life is a dream; that, in fact, we dream our lives into being. This does not mean that life is an illusion. It means that dreams are real and reality is a dream. It means that the reality that you are experiencing right now is only one of many dreams...
Have you ever had a dream at night that seemed just as real or even more real than your daily experience?
...mystics, drunks, schizophrenics, people taking drugs, people who are sleep deprived, people experiencing illness, the elderly, children, or shamans...have what psychologists and psychiatrists like to call "hallucinations" that for them were every bit as real, or more real, than the dream we call ordinary experience (hallucination literally means "your dream doesn't match my dream.")
Think about the fact that the only test we use for the reality of such experiences is whether or not someone else experienced them. And even that isn't always enough. If you are angry about being left out or you don't like what others say they've experienced, you can always call it "mass hallucination." For the shaman, the experience we call ordinary everyday reality is a mass hallucination, or, to put it more politely, a shared dream. It is like we are all having our own individual dramas about life and the sharing occurs at points of agreement or consensus."
-Serge Khalili King PhD., from his book Urban Shaman
DO THIS NOW: Take 3 minutes to write your reflections on the spiritual principle for this week (Finding the Origin of Thought) in your Sacred Business Journal, then, write another flash card with both principles and post it somewhere that you'll be able to see it all week:
i.e. FINDING THE ORIGIN OF THOUGHT | THE WORLD IS WHAT I THINK IT IS | I AM HERE FOR A REASON
REMINDER: The Core Exercise for this week - Meeting Your Future Self - is part of a 4-Week Visioning Process. If you feel yourself, "getting behind," take a deep breath, and tell yourself:
"I trust this process,and I allow myself to enjoy this process of growing into my vision naturally and organically over the course of these 4 weeks."
ENJOY THIS VISIONING PROCESS
Step One: Your Legacy Vision
Step Two: Meeting Your Future Self in 20 Years
Step Three: Your Practical Vision for 3 to 5 Years
Step Four: Your Actionable Vision for the next 12 Months
It takes courage to fully engage in this visioning process. Its helpful to be aware of the larger context. The larger context of this 4 week visioning process is to give yourself the time and space to immerse yourself in the "what" of your vision, so much so that you know it like you know where the light switch is in your bedroom. After this 4-week process, you will gradually begin to engage teachings, practices, skills, and techniques that help you to answer the "how" of your vision. For now, enjoy the "what." Immerse yourself in it.
Exercise: Meeting Your Future Self
STEP ONE: Create Sacred Space
Tidy your room, light a candle and/or some incense, and invite the spiritual guidance that you already have a relationship with to be with you and support you in this exercise.
STEP TWO: Connect with Your Body and Breath
Do the breathing exercise that we have practiced on the medicine circle calls:
Take 3 minutes to hum, as you learned on our medicine circle calls.
STEP THREE: Through the Heart, connect with the Thread of Guidance
Feel the center point in your heart, and feel the thread of guidance moving back through you life all the way to being in the womb, and then even before that. Ask yourself, what was the reason that I chose to be born into the world? Why did I choose to incarnate at this time? Take a moment to see what emerges, and share with your partner, or write down your reflections.
Now, begin to move forward from birth through to your life in the present moment, noticing the significant experiences thus far, until you arrive back at the center point in your heart.
STEP FOUR: Walk on the Heart Chord Path to Meet Your Future Self
Now, see and feel the thread of guidance extending from your chest into the future. And now, begin to see the thread - this heart-chord connected to the center point in your heart, as a pathway that you can walk on. And begin to walk on it.
As you continue to walk, you see that the path is leading to a quiet place in nature, where you feel safe, protected, and loved. Its a place that feels like an enclosed outdoor room.
When you arrive you see that someone is waiting for you - your Future Self. Take a moment to say greet your Future Self, and then settle in and sit opposite your Future Self.
STEP FIVE: Communication - Connect with Your Future Self through Your HeartChord
Feel your heartchord extending towards your Future Self, and connect your heart chord to that of your Future Self.
Now, do the same with your energetic umbilical chord that extends from your belly button.
And, lastly, extend a chord from your "third eye", in the center of your eyebrows, to connect with that of your Future Self.
In this connected state, take a few minutes to ask questions and listen to your Future Self for guidance.
STEP SIX: Come to Completion and Return to the Present Moment
When you are complete in your communication, feel yourself disconnecting you heart, belly, and third eye chords, say "thank you and goodbye-for-now" and return to the path that you traveled on to get here until you arrive back at to this present moment, your heart, and your breath. Rub your palms together and wipe your face as if you had a warm wash cloth. Slowly open your eyes.
STEP SEVEN: Translate Your Visioning Experiences into Writing
Write down your reflections on meeting your Future Self.
- What guidance and insight did you receive?
- How does this experience support your ability to engage more skillfully in your current life and work?
- What practical next steps emerge out of what you've written?
STEP EIGHT: Continue to Refine Your Life Purpose Statement
The word purpose is defined as
1. “The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or goal...
2. A result or an effect that is intended or desired; an intention...
3. Determination; resolution.
Based on your writing and your experience with this workbook, write your life purpose statement. Click HERE to post them to the Facebook Group.
STEP NINE: Affirm Goals & Commitments from the Last Two Weeks, and Articulate Any New Goals
Read through these last two writing exercises and reflect on what you wrote.
How did it feel to write what you did? How are you feeling now, as you read through your writing? What will you do to bring your daily actions more in line with your eulogy, your Letter to the 7th Generation, and now to your meeting with your future self? And, what are you willing to commit to, based on what you have now written and learned through your experiences, thus far, with the visioning exercise?
How can you turn your commitments into concrete calendar-able action steps?
How can you turn a "commitment to more quiet time" into actual quiet time? How can you turn a "commitment to slowing down" into an actual action step that makes you feel that you are moving more slowly through your life and work? Can you schedule time each day - and/or throughout your day for "slow down" activities? What would some of those activities be?
Write down your new commitments & specific action steps. Then, share them with someone. Click HERE to post to the Facebook Group and/or find at least one person to tell about your experience meeting your future self. He or she does not have to be someone in the program. Share this writing with at least one person!