When will we change?

If you picture yourself in the future and you have different habits and values, are you striving for those values today? If not, why not?

There are only two useful responses to seeing yourself as someone else in the future: Let it go, or do it now.

I often imagine myself in an ideal future scenario and I’m basically being a different person than I am now. I’m not caught up in things. I’m not checking social media. (I don’t even have social media by then.) I’m not playing video games. In my opinion, the version of me I see is a Better Me.

While seeing this future me is nice because it feels like I have something to strive for, and it makes me feel like “someday it will be better,” it’s actually not helpful. I either need to change my behavior now, today, to match the version of myself I see in the future–in other words, quit playing video games, meditate more often, do yoga, etc.–or just stop imagining that I’m going to actually ever be that version of myself.

There’s nothing wrong with the latter option, either. If I had some idea that I was going to be, say, an astronaut at some vague future time, that’s not a very realistic goal at this point in my life. I’m nearing 40, I’m pretty out of shape, I’m not an astrophysicist. There are a lot of reasons it’s just not gonna happen.

So it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say, “I should probably just let that notion go,” especially if thinking about it creates some negative feelings about myself right now. Comparing myself today to this Better Me in the future is no more useful than comparing myself to anyone else. That person in my vision might as well be someone entirely different. By ceasing to compare myself with him, I can actually begin to accept myself the way I am today. Instead of feeling like a loser if I sit and play video games for an hour, I can smile and say, “Yeah, this is who you are. Love it.” And I can start adjusting my expectations to better match my reality. The future version of me, wherever he ends up, very well might also love playing video games some times and hate doing yoga.

However, that’s not the only option, and it’s not even the one I’d prefer. I don’t want to give up on that future, apparently-happier version of myself. But comparing myself to him is unhelpful, as we’ve already established. So what to do, then? Become him.

Instead of waiting for that person to come into being, I can make the choices today that create him. If that version of me is happy saying no to video games, for instance, then I need to say no to video games today. (And if it’s impossible for me to say no to video games today, then it’s going to be just as impossible for that version of me in the future, and I need to accept that truth and account for it in my expectations of myself.)

Rather than continuing to perpetuate the struggle between the Current Me and the Better Me, I need to bring the two of them together and realize that the Better Me isn’t someone who exists in a few years, or even in a few days. He exists on the other side of the next choice I make.

The Five Year Plan

I mentioned previously that I have developed a five year plan for myself. Since the point of this blog is to share my processes, I figured it would make sense to share the things that I have on my five year plan, and a little bit about how I intend to achieve them.

I’ve listed these in no real particular order, and I’ve decided that instead of phrasing them like things I’m going to do over the next five years, I will phrase them as goals I want to have accomplished in five years.

1. Be in better shape.

I don’t expect to be built like Vin Diesel, but I want to be fit, toned, and healthy. I want to look good at the beach. If a candid picture of me in a swimsuit were to appear on the cover of a tabloid, I’d want mine to be the picture on the right, not the left.

2. Have a Masters degree.

I’m already working on this one. I’ve applied to an MA program, but I’m not ready to talk about it just yet. It will be quite exciting if I get into it, although I’m sure it will involve a lot of hard work and sometimes it won’t feel like it’s worth the effort. Such is life. I’m trying to remain Stoic about the whole thing right now, so I’m not allowing myself to attach to feelings of excitement about the prospect of getting accepted. When there’s good news to share, I’ll share it.

My primary reasons for wanting a Masters are, mainly, for my own education. Secondarily, though, it will help me get better jobs, especially if I continue teaching English in Asia for a while. And this will help with the next item on the list:

3. Be financially independent and stable.

My father, bless him, has been helping me out financially for a very long time. The way he puts, it though, is that he is able to do it, and he would rather give me (and my sister) money while he’s around and able to watch us enjoy it, than to leave it all to us in some grim future after he passes. It has always made sense to me, and it’s how I plan to spend my own wealth on my child(ren?) someday.

But first, I need to accumulate that wealth. It’s not that I want to be rich, but I want to be well-enough-off that I can afford to help out people who need my help anytime they need it.

So in five years, I want to be earning enough money on my own to live the kind of life I want to live: free and easy. I want to be traveling with my family, and not worrying about whether we’re going to have enough money left over at the end of the month for food.

4. Be living simply.

When I have pictured me in the future, it is always a happier, simpler version of myself. I’m not wrapped in whatever nonsense currently has my attention. I’m beyond that. I’m better than it. I don’t have Facebook, I don’t care about keeping up with the latest Marvel movies, I’m not obsessively thinking about random cool things I could buy.

In all honesty, in five years I want to…

5. Be living in a camper.*

This item I am a little hesitant to include on the list because it’s the most out of my own control, and I wouldn’t necessarily be disappointed if it didn’t happen. If, for instance, my wife and I found a really cool city somewhere to settle down in for a while, or we took to living on a boat instead, or we were still traveling around from school to school in Asia. There are a host of possible futures, and this is just one of them.

But when I picture my life five years from now, I do picture waking up in a campervan of some kind with my family. We open the door to nature–maybe a forest, or the beach, or a mountain view–and step outside for a good stretch. I start cooking up breakfast while my wife runs around with the kid(s?) for a while. After we eat, I clean everything up so it’s ready for lunch, and then we all go for a hike, or a swim, or to fly kites, or whatever the mood strikes us to do. I consider it a productive day if I spend some time reading a good book (or writing one).

So that’s where I want to be in five years. I didn’t list anything about what country I want to be living in, or what I want to be doing for work. Those things will change, and I want them to be able to change. Other than living in a camper, everything else is just something that will help me be a happier, healthier person no matter where I am.

So how do I plan to achieve these things?

1. Be in better shape: This includes working out (jumping rope) and eating healthy, avoiding processed sugars and sugary drinks, stuff like that. For the first year of the five year plan, I am just going to focus on jumping rope every day. Nothing more, nothing less. As I said in my previous post on the topic, I’m going to just focus on being a friend to myself and encouraging myself to jump every day no matter how much or how little. Just putting on my shoes, going outside, and jumping rope even once is what counts. I’ll build from there.
2. Have a Masters degree: This is probably the easiest the accomplish, insofar as it doesn’t require very many steps. I just have to apply and get accepted to a Masters program, and then complete the program. The one I have already applied to is a three year program, so I should be well ahead of schedule by the time I finish it. Still, I like having it on this list because in those dark times, when I’m feeling unmotivated or frustrated about the work, I can remember that it’s all part of creating that Future Me.
3. Be financially independent: This might be the hardest one to accomplish, because it’s not entirely under my control. My my plan is to continue to write and publish books, and eventually hire someone to take care of the marketing aspect (which is really proving to be the hardest part for me), and get into a regular habit of saving money so there is always plenty left over at the end of the month. For the first year, I’m going to publish one book every two months (hopefully more, but if I’m taking online classes at the same time it might be hard to find the time), and I’m going to save $1,000 every month.
4. Be living simply: The challenge here will be “creep,” as in letting things creep into my life that end up making things complicated. This is an area of my life where saying no is important. I am going to start by shutting down my social media accounts. The French poet Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian once said (in French), “If you want to live happy, live hidden.” Using social media is the opposite of living hidden. Even if you don’t post on social media, and only use it to keep up with what your friends are up to, it’s still insidious. You end up spending an inordinate amount of time focusing on other people and what they’re up to. It’s not that you shouldn’t care about your friends, but, let’s be honest. Is it really important to care about what your friends had for dinner last night, or what they thought of the latest episode of The Walking Dead? For me, the answer is no. I’m going to get off social media completely. The next step to living simply is going to be following my own advice and sticking to the Five Things. I want to read more books, so I need to continue to say “no” to watching YouTube videos instead, or playing video games instead.
5. Be living in a camper: This one is hard! The biggest way to ensure that I’m living in a camper in five years is to buy a camper. I can’t do that until I save enough money and have a solid income stream. But let’s just say a good used campervan will cost $50,000. (For that price we could get a nice Westfalia or even possibly a custom Sprinter. Or a decent pull-trailer and a vehicle to tow it.) Then the goal will be to save $10,000 a year over the next five years. At the end of that time, we can either use the money to buy a sweet thing to live in–or we can use it for whatever we’ve decided to do! (Travel the world, buy a house, etc.)

So, that’s it. That’s my five year plan, in a large nutshell.

One trick I’ve started, in order to make the stakes feel more real is to create an email address for Future Me. I’m going to send emails to my future self regularly, letting him know what I’m up to and what steps I’m taking to make sure that he’s as happy as he can be. We’ll see if it works!