00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale, and this is episode number 54, "Finding Faith in Our Future." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Well, hey, hey, hey, happy day to you. This is Tanya, so glad to be with you today. First of all, for those of you who have started leaving me some reviews, thank you so much. I appreciate that. That is nice to get some good feedback, and it will help to share this podcast with other people. Remember that if you're enjoying this podcast, somebody you know would also be enjoying this podcast. Be sure to share it with them so that we can share the love and get this fun, awesome information out there. And also, to whoever in New York has started listening to me, welcome, shout out to you. I see you. I see you out there, and thank you for listening. And that's just kind of a new thing that's kind of popped up lately, so I appreciate that. 

01:06 

Alright, so we are going to start today. Our topic is finding faith in our future. So last time we finished the podcast called "Finding Peace with Your Past," and we finished by saying that that was the key to being able to find faith in your future. So let's start there. I want to start off by asking you three questions. First of all, who are you? Second question, how do you know who you are? And third question, how do you know what you're capable of? Okay, so here's the thing. The vast majority of you went to the past to find answers to those questions. Our brain naturally wants to go to the past to find evidence of who we are and what we're capable of. We know who we are because of what we've done in the past. We know what we're capable of because of what we've been capable of in the past. 

02:10 

But here's the clincher. If I'm only looking to the past for these answers, how much growth is really available to me? What does my brain see when it looks in my past? My brain really only sees the progress that I've made up to this point in my life and that severely limits my view of myself. Looking to the past limits us because we just keep reliving our past rather than moving into a different future. But our past is the only pattern our brain has to create a future. And because of this we most often define our future selves with our past selves. So your world and my world are going to stay small if we only look to the past for answers to those questions. What are your past thoughts and are they the thoughts you really want to define your future? Our past thoughts are really only a tool to help us see what's going on in our present. They're not something to help us see what we can do in our future. And when we flush out these thoughts and we see how they're creating our current thoughts and feelings, this is what we call the unintentional thought model because this happens unintentionally, right? So if we really want to grow forward into our future potential, we need to stop focusing on our past thoughts and start focusing on future thoughts because this is how we will create the future that we really want. 

03:42 

And this is what we call the intentional thought model. This is where we decide what we want to think to create the future results we want to create and we start thinking those thoughts. Okay, so let me ask you those three questions again, but this time I want you to answer them as though it is your future self 15 years from now. So 15 years from now, how would you answer this question? Who are you? How do you know who you are? How do you know what you're capable of? 15 years from now, you will want to answer those questions with what will then be your past, but what is now currently your future. So in 15 years, what do you want your past to be? Well, that's what you're creating right now in your present. You're creating your future's past. You are creating, you're currently creating the past that your future brain, your future self, will look to for direction and patterns for how to resolve problems on how to create what will then be your future. 

04:54 

So that's kind of cool to think about, right? Did I lose a few of you though? Okay, so if we want our future self to have a more powerful pattern to draw experiences from, we need to be creating those more powerful patterns right now, because what  I'm doing right now is my future's past. Say, so how do we do that? We do that by creating and implementing the thoughts that our future self will need to be able to look back on and to use for then creating a new future. So when I'm working with a client, we will first isolate the thoughts that you are having about any current or past situation and see how they are creating your current feelings and actions. We'll spend some time getting really clear on how your thoughts are creating your current life, your current feelings, and your current actions, okay? Then we're going to decide what you want your future to be. What are the results you want to have in the future? 

05:54 

Okay, so those are going to go in the result line of the model, then we're going to work the model backwards Okay, and what actions will you need to be taking in order to create the results you just identified the results that you want in your future Then what feelings will you need to have in order to create those actions? And then what thoughts will you need to be having in order to create those feelings? So what we've done here is just create a thought from your future This is a thought that you can begin implementing now in your present to create the future that you want to create. So that's pretty brilliant, right? I love how we can reach into the future to create thoughts now that will create the future we just reached into for those thoughts. 

06:41 

Hey, so how does this create faith in our future? It's because when we start doing this we begin to realize that we can have some control over our futures because faith is a principle of action. When we have faith in something, our actions align with that faith. So if we have faith that a certain something will happen in our future, we can reach into our future for the thoughts that we will be having that will be creating that future and we can implement those thoughts into our present models in order to create that future. So can we have faith in our futures? Absolutely. If I have struggled my whole life with a lack of self-worth, but I have faith that in my future I will have a strong sense of self-worth, then what I will need to do is look into the future at that confident self, trace that confident result back to the thoughts that created that result, and implement that thought into my life today. So I'll find the future thought of "I'm an amazing person who is strong and capable of anything that comes my way," and I'm going to start implementing that thought now, replacing thoughts like "I'm not good enough" or "what is wrong with me that I can't figure this out." So when I find myself having those thoughts "I'm not good enough," I'm automatically gonna go "whoa whoa whoa stop," and I'm gonna say "actually, I'm an amazing person who's strong and capable of anything that comes my way," and over time that's gonna happen. Implementing that future thought of "I'm an amazing person" will then create the future confident self that I see in my future. 

08:25 

Okay so I know I've been a little bit redundant with this idea but I know it can be a little bit confusing at first so I've wanted to try sharing it with you in several ways to help it fit together for you. So here's the amazing thing about all this. You really can create any kind of future that you want. You get to decide who you want to be, what you want to be, what you want to create, what you want to believe. All of that is yours for the taking. You get to completely define yourself in your future by what you choose to think today. But it's important to realize that creating our future lives from our future is much more difficult than creating them from our past. And here's why. This is not going to be new information, but hopefully in this context it'll make sense. When we're creating our future from our past, all our brain has to do is go into its memory banks and draw from past experiences. 

09:23 

And this is actually pretty easy for our brain to do. It just recycles old thoughts and feelings. Our brain comes up with things to think automatically. That's what it's best at, right? This is what the primitive brain does. It just takes the easiest path. What are the habits? What are the things I've already been thinking? But when we want to create our future from our future, it requires a lot more energy, a lot more focus, and a lot more awareness. We have to be really intentional about what we're choosing to think. Our mind has to take over our brain and start telling our brain what to think, which is difficult. Meaning our frontal cortex has to take charge of our primitive brain. Primitive brain, remember, just is on autopilot. It wants everything to be on autopilot. So that's why it just says, "oh, we've done this before. I got this. Don't worry about it. I can do this." But our prefrontal cortex has to say, "wait, wait, wait. Nope, nope. Thanks for your help, primitive brain. But actually, that's not what I want." 

10:28 

Remember this analogy: it's like moving from the well-worn path in the forest, which is what our primitive brain does, to creating a new path. And that's where our prefrontal cortex comes in. And this is work. And this is why so many people live their lives with their brains on autopilot, just drawing from the past rather than on the future, because it's It's hard. It's work.  It's more work for our mind to create and implement a new thought, to walk a new path through that forest, than it is to just let our brain pull something from the memory bank. But if we're living from thoughts in the past, we're going to create more of the past. If we learn to live thoughts from the future, we will create something new. And living from the future is a lot more energizing because it's a place of imagination and possibility. It's a place of creativity and learning and growth. It's a place of change and improvement. 

11:30 

So here's a little something you can do to start to get in touch with your future self more, so those can flow a little bit easier. Have your future self write your present self a letter. Are you struggling with something right now? Walk down the road 10, 15, or 20 years and have that self write your current self a letter. What will that future self counsel your present self to do? What will her perspective be? What does your future see about this situation that your present self doesn't? Here's what can be so cool about this...think about a future goal you have, maybe to have a stronger, happier marriage. Maybe to have a better relationship with your children. Maybe to finish a university degree or to be making a certain amount of money. Imagine yourself 5, 10, 20 years down the road and that goal is accomplished. You have that amazing marriage relationship or stronger relationships with your kids. You finish your degree or you're making the 200K a year you want to be making. What advice would this person from the future tell your present self? What would she tell you to do when you get discouraged? How would she feel about your current struggles? How will this future self encourage you? Generally, they're just going to say, "whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, just take one step at a time. Take a breath. It's okay. It will happen. Just be consistent," right? This is the kind of advice that our future selves will be giving us. 

13:05 

So if this exercise is really difficult for you to wrap your head around, let me have you start a different way. Think of a tough challenge or experience you went through several years ago. Now, write a letter to that person, to your past self going through that challenge. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your struggling self from 10 years ago? How much compassion do you have for that past self that was just trying to get through the situation? What would you say to encourage your past self? At this stage, you know that you've gotten through that situation. You've seen the lessons that you've learned from those tough challenges and you now see what a better place you're in. You have seen that you not only didn't give up, but that you moved forward into a place that holds a lot of promise. 

13:56 

So now that you've done a letter from your current self to your past self, it's time to take the step into the future and do the same for your current self from your future self. You'll actually be quite amazed at how much wisdom your future self has for your present self. When we can learn to really lives our lives from a future perspective, we can genuinely have faith in our future because we've seen it and we've spoken from it. We know it exists so now we can get to work to create it. Kind of cool, right? I love this idea. I love the idea that I can have and that I can know where I want to go, isolate the thoughts that will that I will be thinking in the future to create what I'm creating, and start implementing those thoughts now. Very awesome! Very cool. Growing up is amazing. Getting to this place where it's making more sense is a great place to be. 

14:58 

Okay, if you would like some personal help from me with figuring out your unintentional models, what you're thinking right now, and also figuring out your intentional model, what you want to be thinking to create that future that you're looking at, okay, get in touch with me. I've got a website, tanyahale.com. You can go on there. You can do a couple of things. One, you can sign up for a free 20 minute coaching session or you can go to the "Contact Me" page and you can write me a question or set something up with me there. Okay? I would love to help you live more from your future to create the future that you're really interested in. Okay? So don't forget to subscribe if you have not yet. That way you will never miss an awesome episode. And leave me a review. I'm still working on getting a hundred reviews. So if you haven't left a review yet and you are a consistent listener, or even if this is your first time and you're like, "wow, I like this kind of stuff," leave me a review and let's work together on this. Okay? Have a really, really terrific day and I will talk to you next time. 

16:08 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.