What Would Future You Wish You Did?

If you’re not sure what decision to make a useful question to ask yourself is this: “what would future you wish you did?”

I’m not sure where I read this, but someone once said it’s easy to look back and wish you handled a situation differently in the past. But it’s actually more useful to look forward and ask yourself what future you wish you would do right now.

When I started IMPOSSIBLE, it was because I asked myself a question: If your life was a movie and you were the main character, would it be a movie you wanted to watch?

The answer was a resounding no.

My life story up to that point could have shattered records for the most boring movie of all time. No one wants to watch a movie of someone in their parent’s basement watching Netflix.

So I changed it.

Now, my life is not nearly as boring, but I do come up against difficult decisions often on what to do.

It’s hard to know what the right decision to make is every time, but a good question to ask yourself if you’re stuck is “if you were a character in a movie, what decision would you wish your character make?”

Or, put another way: How would future you wish you handled your current situation?

They probably wouldn’t wish that you backed down, took the easy road, or chose the boring story. They’d probably want you to be brave and pick the best story possible – regardless of how difficult it might be.

What would future you want you to do? Do that – no matter how hard, ridiculous or impossible it seems. Because the pain is temporary. The difficulty fades. The challenge doesn’t last forever. But the story will.

So do that. Do the thing future you wish you did. The thing that makes the better story. The hard thing.

No matter how how impossible it seems.

You’ll thank yourself in the future.

Joel

IMPOSSIBLE