The beginning of our lives are all future-focused. Going to school, high school, college, getting married, finding a career, making a family…., and then what? Retiring? Going on vacation?

When most people hit their thirties they loose the built-in cultural norm of being future-focused.

When we lose our vision of the future we often lose our drive, our direction, our dreams, our goals, and our connection to a bigger life.

One of my favorite excercies with clients is to reinvigorate the visioning of the future.

If you think about who you want to become and what life you want to create, then it is far easier to be present in your life.

But then the how comes up.

This is an easy place to get stuck, and often people back down, because the primal brain says that the unknown charted territory is scary and is better to be avoided.

“Go back to comfort and familiarity, where it is safe and we know we will for sure survive.” Primal Brain.

If we know that this is normal, that our primal brain is doing its job and we decide to openly explore the how-to get to the dream anyway, then life begins to open.

A large part of figuring out the how-tos is giving our primal brain some air time.

Let it come up with all the ways the big dream is impossible, all the challenges and all the road blocks.

This is valuable info.

You can turn these obstacles into strategies which become the road map of how to get there.

In every obstacle is a strategy: learn-how, figure-out, skill gap, over-come, hire, and be-come.

The person who accomplishes their big dreams is a different version, a different person.

The trick is tapping into that person now, and becoming them in order to reach the future dream.

Our prefrontal brain is able to think about the future, is able to plan and imagine.

Let’ play with future-focus:

Imagine your future self that you want to become.

Now imagine thinking like them, feeling like them and acting like them; this is the path to your future goal.

That newer version of you is the one who has accomplished and reached your bigger dream.

You are only trapped in your current life if you neglect to utilize your ability to be future-focused.

One common place my Food and Mood clients get stuck is in imagining their future self; they tell me that they cannot imagine their life without the foods they love (that harm them).

It is so easy to see how life is now, as the way it will always be.

It is so easy to focus on, ‘this is just who I am.’

It is comfortable and familiar to rinse and repeat.

To change your life means deciding how to live more of your life from your prefrontal brain and less from your primal brain.

This is the skill and the superpower of being future-focused.