Who Are You Becoming?
When I was 45, I had a life-altering experience during a powerful shamanic healing session: I met my 90-year-old self.
I can still feel her profound equanimity. I didn’t sense any urgency or fear in my 90-year-old self. She emanated deep calm, peace, and steadiness—qualities that were unfamiliar to me sixteen years ago, when I was living in a perpetual frenzy. Her level of composure and tranquility felt miraculous.
In that potent vision, I somehow knew that I’d just reached the exact halfway point of my life. For my first 45 years, I’d been facing the past, my back to the future, living in habitual reaction to the conditioning and patterns I had inherited. Now it was time to turn 180 degrees—to face forward so I could consciously create what was yet to come.
I’ve been thinking about this experience frequently lately, because all of a sudden, many of the wise teachers I follow have been talking about the power of tuning into our “future selves” for comfort and guidance.
My vision of my future self came as a timely gift, arriving at the precise moment I needed to recalibrate. The 90-year-old woman I met at the end of her life embodied a serenity so tangible, it gave me something new to aim toward—peace instead of panic.
In her book, When You're Ready, This Is How You Heal, Brianna Wiest wrote:
When you close your eyes and imagine your future self or your future life, the one that feels so good, so right, so inspiring, and so hopeful—what you need to know is that it already exists.
That person is you. That life is yours.
The journey is bridging the gap between visualizing it and seeing it in reality. That journey contains releasing attachments, changing behaviors, shifting your belief system, and slowly taking action every day until you reach the other side.
Brianna reminds us that becoming our best selves is a conscious journey built on intention, commitment, and inner work. Time alone does not make us wise. As the years pass, they inevitably bring more hardships and losses. These experiences can either teach us how to move through life with more equanimity and grace, or they can make us bitter and further entrench patterns that undermine our joy, resilience, and overall wellbeing.
The Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu
It turns out that “future self work”—the practice of envisioning, connecting with, and aligning our current mindset and actions with the person we want to become—is a popular technique employed by many psychologists, life coaches and spiritual teachers because it helps people get clarity on their long-term goals so they can live in greater alignment with them.
Reminiscing about the encounter with my 90-year-old self has been inspiring me to tune into her for wisdom and guidance. Seeing myself from her end-of-life, equanimous vantage point makes it easier to release my grip on the passionate beliefs and waves of intense emotions that feel so urgent in the moment.
When I connect with her, I can see how totally unruffled she is by who just said what to me, or by the fact that my washing machine suddenly stopped working. She helps me widen my perspective so I can calm down and grasp how inconsequential these events will seem in the long run.
Communing with our future self through an imaginary conversation like I’ve been doing is one primary practice of future self work. Here are four others that I’ve collected from reading numerous articles on the subject that I find especially intriguing:
Write a letter from your future self. Write a letter to your current self from your future self who has successfully cultivated patience, compassion, and wisdom. Let them speak directly to you, sharing their insights, encouragement, and reminders of your gifts, skills, and strengths.
Have a two-way Q&A session with your future self. Write a dialogue between your current self and future self, letting each ask questions and respond. For example, your future self might ask, “What’s weighing you down?” or “What could you release to lighten your load?” Your current self might ask your wise future self questions like, “Why does this situation feel so overwhelming?” or “How can I find peace with this?”
Future self visualizations for neural-reprogramming. When we vividly imagine our future self—seeing, hearing, and feeling what it’s like to already be living that version of ourselves—we activate many of the same neural pathways as if it were happening now. When repeated regularly, this mental rehearsal helps our brains encode new patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, while simultaneously teaching our nervous systems to feel safe and familiar in this new state, which reduces resistance to change. Over time, our habits, perceptions, and self-talk can become more and more aligned with this positive vision.
Future self-directed micro-actions. Every morning before you get out of bed (or at any time of the day or night), ask yourself what small step you could take to align yourself more closely with your vision of your future self. It could be an action—such as speaking the truth or taking more breaks—or it could be altering an attitude or habit, such as switching to kind words of compassion every time you notice negative self-talk.
What I love about future self work is that it empowers us to look within ourselves for the wisdom we seek, while also helping us stay on track to become the best version of ourselves—the person who’s always already within us.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
