Future-based language transforms how situations occur to us

Photo by Moose Photos on Pexels.com

The idea behind future-based language is that the words we use to describe a situation can either limit or expand our perspective on what is possible. If we use language that is negative or focused on the past, we can become stuck in a limited view of the situation and miss out on opportunities for growth and positive change.

On the other hand, if we use language that is future-focused and positive, we can open up our perspective to new possibilities and create a more positive outcome. For example, if we are facing a challenging situation, we could use language that focuses on the negative aspects and limitations of the situation, such as “I can’t do this” or “This is impossible.”

However, if we use future-based language, we can transform our perspective and create a more positive outlook. This might include language that focuses on what is possible and what we can do to create a positive outcome, such as “I will find a solution” or “I am capable of overcoming this challenge.”

Here are some examples of how this would play out:

1. Let’s say you have an important presentation at work and you’re feeling nervous about it. If you tell yourself “I’m going to mess up and embarrass myself in front of everyone,” you’re likely to feel even more anxious and may not perform as well. However, if you use future-based language and say “I am going to prepare well and give a great presentation,” you’re more likely to feel confident and perform better.
2. Another example could be when facing a difficult challenge in your personal life, such as overcoming an addiction. If you tell yourself “I can never beat this, I’m always going to struggle,” you may feel hopeless and give up trying to change. But if you use future-based language and say “I am working towards a healthier future and I will overcome this addiction,” you’re more likely to stay motivated and make progress towards recovery.

By using future-based language, we can shift our mindset from one of limitations and fear to one of growth and possibility. This can help us to approach challenges with a more positive and proactive attitude, and to create outcomes that are aligned with our goals and values.

Two types of self-help approaches

Photo by Keira Burton on Pexels.com

Stephen Covey, author, educator, and leadership consultant — did an exhaustive study of American “success literature”, beginning with the founding of the country in the 18th century.

Looking at books, articles, and essays on self-help, self-improvement, and popular psychology, Covey found that, beginning around the 1920s, the literature drifted toward what he calls the Personality Ethic:. Covey likened these techniques to “Band-Aids”, “aspirins” and “quick fixes”.

By contrast, the literature of the first 150 years expounded principles like integrity, humility, fidelity, courage, justice, patience, modesty, and “the Golden Rule”. These comprise what Covey called the Character Ethic. 

Where the Personality Ethic calls for surface-level changes — often ones that help you “get more” out of something or someone — the Character Ethic is an “inside-out” approach.

Rather than ask, “How can I get more from my environment?”, the Character Ethic asks, “How can I change?”.

Implementation Intentions

Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

Implementation intentions have been used to combat four potential problems for goal pursuit: failing to get started, getting derailed, becoming rigid, and overextending oneself.

The punch line is clear: people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. Too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out. We tell ourselves, “I’m going to change my behavior of …..”, but we never say when and where these habits are going to happen. We leave it up to chance and hope that we will “just remember to do it” or feel motivated at the right time. An implementation intention sweeps away foggy notions and transforms them into a concrete plan of action.

Once an implementation intention has been set, you don’t have to wait for inspiration to strike. When the moment of action occurs, there is no need to make a decision. Simply follow your predetermined plan.

The goal is to make the time and location so obvious that, with enough repetition, you get an urge to do the right thing at the right time, even if you can’t say why.

Share this:

The comfort zone

One’s “comfort zone” refers to the things a person sticks to that are safe and familiar. People remain in their comfort zone in order to avoid pain, but it eventually keeps them from fully living. Rational thinking is too weak to override one’s preference for their comfort zone.

We avoid these things because, in one way or another, they all involve different types of pain.

It wouldn’t matter if we avoided these things once or twice a year. But for most of us, avoidance becomes a way of life. We barricade ourselves behind an invisible barrier and don’t venture out because beyond the wall is pain. This safe space is the “Comfort Zone.”

Whatever your Comfort Zone consists of, you pay a huge price for it. Life provides incredible possibilities, but you can’t take advantage of them without facing pain. If you can’t tolerate pain, you can’t be fully alive. There are many examples of this. By staying in the Comfort Zone you end up relinquishing your most cherished dreams and aspirations.

Do you know your comfort zones? Are you trying to break away from them or pushing the bounderies.

Share this:

Positive stressors

So many of our modern-day activities are neutered of any real challenge; diluted, softened, reduced to a lowest common denominator. The cause of that process is, ultimately, fear – on a societal level. Fear of failure, fear of injury, fear of liability, but always fear. The irony, of course, is that by reducing risk and protecting ourselves from the associated fear, we produce a less capable and more fearful population. Our perception of risk is all wrong. The reality is that by engaging with risk on a regular basis and learning to engage with it and manage it, we massively reduce the less obvious but much greater risks that inevitably do end up causing all the damage: obesity, heart disease, postural problems, stress and all the related ailments of the modern industrialised world.

Positive stressors is about reminding yourself that your body and mind are evolved to adapt to, overcome and manage an enormous variety of challenges and testing scenarios, and that in fact the process of doing so is therefore the best way to maintain your health and natural function. Positive stressors, they’re called. Adversity with enormous reward. Risk with benefits.

When you engage with that stressor to find out who you were, there is improvement, there is transformation. You would know now that the person who landed was different – subtly, but significantly – from the person who took off. You had gained something, understood something about yourself on an experiential level.

People don’t climb mountains and rocks because they are there, they climb them because something isn’t there: something inside them they seek to find, to know.

And you don’t need to climb a mountain or a rock for it, when it can be found right here on the streets of our own lives.

Share this:

Personal Copernican shift

Prior to Copernicus we thought the earth was the center of the solar system. Then Copernicus came along and showed that the sun is at the center. So while nothing physically changed, our entire conception and perception of the world was transformed.

This happens to us all the time. Transformation is akin to a “personal Copernican shift”. 

It’s only through this “shift” of persepctive, we open doors for a transformation that we can transition to higher stages of development.

Share this:

Implementation intentions

What to do when plans fall apart?

The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.
—Robert Burns

Sometimes you won’t be able to implement a new behavior — no matter how perfect your plan. In situations like these, it’s great to use the “if–then” version of this strategy.

You’re still stating your intention to perform a particular behavior, so the basic idea is the same. This time, however, you simply plan for unexpected situations by using the phrase, “If , then .”

The “if–then” strategy gives you a clear plan for overcoming the unexpected stuff, which means it’s less likely that you’ll be swept away by the urgencies of life. You can’t control when little emergencies happen to you, but you can control how you want to respond to them.

Planning out when and where you will perform a specific behavior turns your environment into a trigger for action. The time and place triggers your behavior, not your level of motivation.

Motivation is short lived and doesn’t lead to consistent action. If you want to achieve your goals, then you need a plan for exactly when and how you’re going to execute on them; including stating “what .. if ..” scenarios.

Where you at?

Becoming an ‘adult’

For most of us, adulthood just happens. We don’t have a framework for adult development that can help us understand where we are and where we want to be.

This is where Dr. Robert Kegan’s Theory of Adult Development comes in.

Kegan (a former Harvard psychologist) shows that adults go through 5 distinct developmental stages. Becoming an ‘adult’ means transitioning to higher stages of development. It means developing an independent sense of self and gaining the traits associated with wisdom and social maturity. It means becoming more self-aware and in control of our behavior, as well as increasingly aware of, and better able to manage our relationships and the social factors affecting us.

However, most of us — about 65% of the general population — never become high functioning ‘adults’, i.e. we never make it past Stage 3 (out of 5 Stages!). We still lack an independent sense of self because so much of what we think, believe, and feel is dependent on how we think others experience us.

• Stage 1 — Impulsive mind (early childhood)
• Stage 2 — Imperial mind (adolescence, 6% of adult population)
• Stage 3 — Socialized mind (58% of the adult population)
• Stage 4 — Self-Authoring mind (35% of the adult population)
• Stage 5 — Self-Transforming mind (1% of the adult population)

Most of the time we’re in transition between stages and/or behave at different stages with different people.

The ‘goal’ is to pay attention to which stage we are at, when and with who. Only then can we deliberately work to change our perspective, thoughts, feelings and actions.

Share this:

The art of showing up

In the book, Atomic Habits, James Clear wisely shares a principle he calls “the art of showing up.”

He tells the story of a man who wanted to establish a habit of going to the gym every day. So he spent the first six weeks limiting himself to only five minutes in the gym.

He’d go to the gym every day for five minutes, and then force himself to leave!

Why wouldn’t he just stay if he was already there?

Because he wanted to establish the habit of just showing up.

As Clear states, “You cannot optimize what you don’t have.”

People focus too much on the end-game, rather than starting. Most of the friction to success is getting yourself going.

Share this:

I am perfectly incomplete

So much pressure, why so loud?
If you don’t like my sound, you can turn it down
I gotta roll
And I walk it alone

Uphill battle, I look good when I climb
I’m ferocious precocious
I get braggadocios, I’m not gonna stop
I like the view from the top

You talk that
Blah blah that la la, that rah rah sh
And I’m so done, I’m so over it
Sometimes I mess up, I eff up, I hit and miss
But I’m okay, I’m cool with it

I still fall on my face sometimes and I
Can’t color inside the lines ’cause
I’m perfectly incomplete
I’m still working on my masterpiece and I
I wanna hang with the greatest gotta
Way to go, but it’s worth the wait, no
You haven’t seen the best of me
I’m still working on my masterpiece and I

Those who mind, don’t matter
Those who matter, don’t mind
If you don’t catch what I’m throwing then I leave you behind
Don’t need a flash
And I am leaving like that

They talk that
Blah blah that la la, that rah rah sh
Go with the punches, and take the hits
Sometimes I mess up, I eff up, I swing and miss
But it’s okay, I’m cool with this

I still fall on my face sometimes and I
Can’t color inside the lines ’cause
I’m perfectly incomplete
I’m still working on my masterpiece and I
I wanna hang with the greatest gotta
Way to go, but it’s worth the wait, no
You haven’t seen the best of me
I’m still working on my masterpiece and I

I still fall on my face sometimes and I
Can’t color inside the lines ’cause
I’m perfectly incomplete
I’m still working on my masterpiece
Masterpiece, masterpieceI still fall on my face sometimes and I
Can’t color inside the lines ’cause
I’m perfectly incomplete
I’m still working on my masterpiece and I
I wanna hang with the greatest gotta
Way to go, but it’s worth the wait, no
You haven’t seen the best of me
I’m still working on my masterpiece and I

Still workin’ on my masterpiece

Source: LyricFind

If you want to listen to the lyrics, go straight to play the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94T1OS5HzU