Present and future 'you'

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Today I want to speak about looking after yourself.

I am not talking about face masks and Epsom salt baths (although those have their importance), I am speaking about your inherent awareness and understanding that your actions and thoughts in the present have a direct impact on your future.

If you were to split yourself into the present ‘you’ and the future ‘you’, you will notice something interesting.

You will begin acting in a way that benefits your future self. This is powerful.

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For example, you have a pile of clothes on the couch. You decide that you will take care of it now so that your future self does not have to take care of it. This is a considerably basic example and is constrained to a limited abbreviated period. If you were to extrapolate the resulting causes of your present actions to further down your timeline, imagine where you could be.

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Everything boils down to sacrificing your present comfort for ultimate comfort.

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There was a study in the 1960s conducted by a professor from Stanford University named Walter Mischel.

Researchers and scientists evaluated hundreds of children between the ages of four and five, and they discovered a crucial factor and a behavioural characteristic that if inculcated and vigilantly present, one is significantly more inclined to success than those who do not have this behaviour—the ability to delay gratification.

In this experiment, children were placed in a room with a marshmallow on the table in front of them. The scientists told them that if they could resist the urge to eat the marshmallow until they returned to the room, they will receive a second marshmallow; if they ate the first marshmallow, no second marshmallow.

So, the choice was simple, one ‘marshy’? Or two?

The researchers then continued to follow up with the children over 40 years. They found that the children who were able to delay gratification were significantly more successful than their ‘gratificationally’ inclined counterparts.

Scientists measured success along a plethora of criteria, obesity, substance abuse, social skills, better responses to stresses, the list goes on. This ‘Marshmallow Experiment’ conclusively proved that those who can delay gratification would be successful.

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So, let us say you have poor control over your will power for your desires.

How do you remedy this? Simple (In theory).

You must begin to inculcate the implementation of incremental micro-habits in your life.

This is significantly easier than making massive changes in your life because the changes are so small that they do not require too much effort to perform.

Incremental improvements mean that you increase the difficulty of the micro-habit only once you are satisfied with your current discipline towards the current micro-habit.

Do not move on to the next stage until you are happy with your progress.

For example, do not make the intention to run every day. You will stick to this proclamation for the first two weeks (if that) and lose motivation (because of its transience).

Instead, tell yourself you will go for a 10-minute walk every second day.

Start small, start slow, but you must start.

Eventually, you will reach the stage where you will develop the inherent awareness of your future self. This is life-changing, you will delay your gratification every chance you get.

You will go to sleep earlier so that your future self has an easier time waking up in the morning, you will forego that snack now so that you can engorge yourself on your cheat meal.

You get the idea.

Split yourself into two timelines so that you learn to delay gratification and attain your success.