FutureYou or right to left thinking!
Do you make decisions on what you know from your past or the potential that is your future?
When I started using FutureYou or right to left thinking everything got better.
Let me give you a simple example to illustrate what this means - you can then think about the implications as part of your next Mozart time session.
You are an Area Manager in your company, with aspirations to become a Regional Manager and then a State, Senior or Territory Manager (use words that apply to your world).
Left to right thinking means you draw from your past to think about how you can move in the direction you want to go.
Often however, this goes against us. Let’s say your last two bosses undermined you, criticised you, overlooked you and didn’t treat you with respect. It led to some of your peers replicating these negative behaviours.
This ongoing treatment led to you losing self-belief and confidence, so much so that when you applied for a promotion you were timid in the interview and did not do yourself justice. This increases your frustration and further damages your self-worth.
Now you are worried about applying again……in fact you don’t.
Hence the traditional left to right thinking means you get stuck in your own head, your past experiences restricting and undermining your future.
How did I and how do I recommend you break out of this limiting and destructive pattern or loop?
When I was building my corporate career, I used right-to-left thinking (which is what I now call FutureYou thinking - I wish I had then!).
I would think not just one but 2 roles ahead - in our example, I would imagine I was already a State/Senior Manager and I would visualise how I would behave in that role. I would think about what I would do, how I would lead and communicate. Crucially I would work through what I needed to learn to be brilliant at that level.
I would list the people I admired who were already at that level.
What were they doing that I was yet to do? How were they doing it? Why? What made them successful? What did they NOT do?
I would seek them out and ask for their insights.
As Royston Guest says: I was thinking FROM my goals as if I had already achieved them. Hence I put myself in a #futureyou state.
I would then start to operate in that way (as much as my role would allow), thus building a leadership capability well beyond my years.
When a Regional Manager role came up, I would apply with confidence as I believed I was operating largely with State/Senior Manager behaviours. I was never complacent, just confident due to this right-to-left thinking.
This is a practical example to illustrate the point.
Imagine doing it with any goal or your life vision! See the world as if you are already there - you are at the finish line, you have published the book, you have finished the charity project and raised the money, launched your side hustle, landed your biggest deal, got the qualification and/or you are living the life of your dreams.
The more time you spend working right to left from FutureYou back to ‘PresentYou’ , the more natural it becomes, the more self-limiting beliefs (& negative people) drop away and more your current actions and behaviours are dictated by the future you want to create and not by the past.
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