What role are you playing? Depends on what your goal is.

Success means different things to each of us. My father considers himself successful, because he was able to get his kids the best education available, acquire some property and have a decent amount of money saved for retirement. All he had, when his dad (my grandpa) passed away suddenly due to Leukemia was a college degree, a little amount of savings left by his dad, and 3 younger siblings that he had to support along with the help of his older brother.

On the other hand, one of my uncle considers himself successful as he was able to get his son through engineering college because he was only a diploma holder. He is very satisfied knowing that his son has achieved that.

Each of them is preparing for the next step in their careers and life feeling very happy about how things worked out. Both have drawn the proverbial finish line and are happy, knowing that they will cross it as the next few years go by. Feeling happy and content that they accomplished the goal they set for themselves.

Similarly we all draw the finish line to our life’s “races”, sometime they even shift based on our ambitions, resources, circumstances and needs. We all know what it is that we want and what will make us feel successful as the days go by. Here I am not going to talk about how to figure out what we want, or how to go about getting it in an organized manner. I did write about a simple way of creating a road map to your destination in this article.

If knowing what you want is step 1 and figuring out how to get there is step 2, putting in the efforts to follow the plan is the last and final step 3.

But life is not easy and there are hurdles, challenges, setbacks, disappointments and distractions. The biggest of these is distractions. When ever I am unsure of what I need to do next, or if I feel that there is no progress taking place in the direction I want things to, I follow one exercise to help me get back on track.

Resetting my Point of View

The exercise is this –

I imagine myself being the person I want to be. Basically, how would I be when I have achieved the goals I have set for myself, acquired the wealth I want to amass, the properties I want to own, the books I want to read and supported the people I want to help? How would I be in that moment?

I close my eyes, breathe deeply and just let the thoughts flow. I try to see, in my minds eye, the clothes I would be wearing, the way I would carry myself and the way I would interact with the people around me. How my office space or home would look. How I will hold the pen as I sign and how I will respond to a question when asked by a business associate or a mentee.

Basically I create a mental model of the person I would be if I did all the tasks according to my plan and reached my goals. This immediately clears the fog in my head of what I want to do and aligns me to what I need to do right now to get there.

Usually a smile spreads on my face as I imagine these things. I realize the little things that I still need to work on to be the the person I intend to be. I notice the gaps between who I am and who I am in the Mental Model I have for myself –  The character flaws, physical attributes, the knowledge gap, the networks, the connections etc.

Then I shift my focus in the mental image to the minute details that need to be worked on today. The little tweaks that I can make right now, to be closer to my Future self. Acquiring any of the traits that are already there in my future self would mean progress. And as I open my eyes, not only have I reminded myself, who I need to be, but also have some things that I can start working on to take me closer to my finish line.

I later figured that this exercise that I have been doing was similar to the chapter about cognitive tunneling and mental models by Charles Duhigg in the book, [insert link here for affiliate marketing]

This technique can also be used when facing choices on a day to day basis. What would my future self do? or Which choice would take me closer to my future self?

I have already written many articles about how important choices are in our lives, how every choice is like a brick on the stairway of success and how choice is the last of human freedom that no one can take away from you.

When ever I am faced with a choice, how ever big or small, the driving factor to my decision (unless it is an emergency, or my wife’s plans – which then is not a choice any more 😉 ) is the understanding of what my future self would have done if faced with this choice.

How would my future successful self react if he had this choice?
What would my successful future self do?

For example, I am working on a presentation to show how under utilized the labor workforce in a department is. This falls under the “Important” but “Not Urgent” quadrant of the Eisenhower’s Matrix [Article link] that I drew for my work related activities. So I have the choice of putting it off for another day. It’s already 5pm and I have been at work since 6 am. What do I do? Do I finish the work or leave it for now and look at it later? No one particularly asked me to create the presentation and analyze labor utilization.

In such a situation, I just think of what my future self would do? Being a successful business owner and entrepreneur ( my future self people! ), I would definitely be working to streamline the labor and other improvements for my business. Whether it was 5 a.m., 5 p.m. or 12 a.m.

Thus the answer to what choice I need to make becomes very clear instantly.

If I truly want to be the person I imagine, there is no other way out. There is no putting off the presentation for tomorrow.

There are multiple benefits to this approach.

Asking myself the fundamental question of what my successful future self would do eliminates a lot of cognitive overload as it tricks your brain into thinking someone else (the future self) made the decision for you. You don’t tax the brain as much as motivating yourself to work.

You also don’t have to get the work done through sheer will power, you get the work done because that’s who you are (or aspire to become). The work becomes enjoyable rather than becoming a chore.

Finally, you are subconsciously implanting the image of your future self and making a habit for your mind so that it naturally has a tendency to work towards that image.

Thus not only knowing your role, but owning it totally today, this very moment, even though you might be years away from it is a quick and easy way to re-align your mind’s compass in the direction of your success.