A Chat with Future You
Manifesting your reality - while holding that vision lightly.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the five- and ten-year plans I used to make, obsessively, in my twenties. This degree by this date, this number of new countries visited, this many musical instruments mastered. There’s an alternate universe me out there somewhere who finished her MA in folklore at 22, just like she planned, and then steamrolled straight through a tenure track before 30. There’s another one where I became a California State Park Law Enforcement Ranger. In still another life, I hopped aboard a leadership program and rode it to a Senior Executive Service job. I hope those “me”s are having a good time, because none of that sounds very fun to this-universe me!
I’ve wondered, occasionally, how to square the popularity of ideas like Law of Attraction and manifestation with the yogic yama, or ethical restraint, of aparigraha – non-grasping or non-attachment. Is it possible to believe in our power to shape our reality - while also accepting that things might not work out exactly the way we envisioned, letting go easily of what we do not need, what is not ours to have?
I posed this question to the teacher Hari-Kirtana das in a workshop one weekend and he was, predictably, precise and unsparing in his answer. “The prosperity gospel is bullshit,” he said. “If we’re living in alignment with our dharma, we will be provided exactly as much as is good for us – no more, no less.” In an era where it often feels like all of us - even in mindfulness circles - are continuously expected to want more, I appreciated the clarity and simplicity of this response.
And yet – it is also demonstrably true that we find what we seek. This isn’t woo-woo stuff: this is what is known in psychology as the selective attention mechanism, often explained as “Red Car Theory.” When we spend time thinking about something, we tell our brain to pay attention to that thing, and we start to find instances of it in the world. Then confirmation bias takes over and we find even more of that same thing.
And yet. In the words of the Yiddish proverb - Der Mensch tracht, un Gott lacht. Man plans, and God laughs.
While some elements of my current life could probably have been predicted by a close observer – my husband and I spent the better part of our first decade together ping-ponging back and forth between DC and Arizona, for example, seeking out the elusive balance between “career” and “quality of life” and spending every possible weekend in remote AirBnBs, making a shift to the country all but inevitable – it took the chaos-driven reality of paying Big City rent during a global pandemic to finally make the tipping point, and ultimate decision to move to West Virginia, clear.
When I went back to grad school for Natural Resources Policy and Administration in 2019, I still had a back-of-mind vision of working somewhere in public land management. Instead, I find myself applying conservation principles on our little homestead, giddily shopping for seeds to do double-duty as cover crops and pollinator forage, moving sheep manure into the garden, dipping water out of the goldfish pond for the greenhouse plants.
When I signed up for yoga teacher training, I had a vision of sneaking some light stretching breaks into big corporate retreats, never dreaming for a second that my path would lead me far away from discussions about Continuous Process Improvement and KPIs and into more esoteric waters.
Despite all these big and little differences, taking steps that I believed led me toward a desired outcome led me, in every case, toward an even more desirable outcome. It doesn’t really matter that the exact contours of the final destination look a little different than I’d expected – in each case, looking toward an imagined future, and then taking steps, led tangibly to a real future I am delighted to inhabit.
It is in this spirit that I offer you the “Talking to My Future Self” meditation below. I’ve encountered versions of this practice in leadership retreats, coaching programs, and yoga workshops, and find it to be a useful opportunity for both self-reflection and creative thinking. Know that it’s possible to visualize, in stunning detail, the life you imagine for yourself, and that this imagining makes this future more likely. And: If the future turns out to look a little different? You’re allowed to share in the cosmic amusement for a moment before reaching a foot forward and taking your next step.
Below: audio version of this post + 6-minute guided meditation
Post audio:
Meditation: