“All of us can think of moments in our life where we picked up that phone, we had the courageous conversation, we went out the door against all logic, and we transformed our life. And you look back, and you say if I hadn’t done that in that moment, my life would be irredeemably impoverished. So the interesting question is, what could I do now where I could be the ancestor of my future happiness?”
David Whyte
Is there something you could do today that your future self would thank you for?
There are plenty of those moments in our lives where we could make changes, but we don’t. We have endless desires and lists of the things we want to do, but we never seem to do them.
What is getting in the way?
Sometimes, against all odds, we make a change at a moment that triggers a monumental shift, we walk out of a job, or we end the relationship that was wearing us down.
We move to a better place in time and look back and think, “How the hell did I put up with that misery for so long?”.
It’s astonishing to think that if we didn’t make that one small triggering change, that we could still be stuck back in that dark place.
It’s a worthwhile thought exercise to think about what we could do today that our future self might appreciate.
It might be something small. Imagine if we acted upon this each day or week. How much better could our lives become over a year?
We can become the ancestor of our future happiness.
Reflection
- What is one small thing I could do today that my future self would thank me for?