What does it mean to redesign your future?
The default future is a concept proposed by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan in their book: The Three Laws of Performance. This is the future that each of us privately fear or hope for. It is not a fantasy we don’t believe in, but it’s something that seems like the truth about us and our future. For example, in a down economy, the default future for most of us is “spend less, work harder, grab for straws, panic that you’re likely to get laid-off or fired, be paranoid that others question your performance, dread the company won’t tell you how bad things really are – and hope or pretend that none of this is really happening, cross your fingers, pray for a miracle and wait for it to get better.”
Photo by Pablo Alfieri
Then there are the mindsets, which one can shortly describe this way: “Whether you think you can change things or not, you are right.” Have you ever heard this before? In her book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck discusses two fundamental mindsets that people tend to adopt, the “fixed” mindset and the “growth” mindset. According to her, people who adopt the fixed mindset believe that “we live lives mainly determined by heredity and that most of our attributes are, if not carved in stone, largely resistant to efforts to modify them”. Those with a growth mindset “see themselves and their lives as amenable to choices and effort. They are not wishful thinkers who think that simply believing something is possible is enough to make it happen. Growth mindset individuals are willing to make the effort required to bring about their goals and to realize their dreams.”
These concepts are some interesting tools one can use in order to redesign our futures. How so?
Photo by Virginia Kraljevic
First of all, in order to change a thing you have to be aware about the fact that that thing exists. So start by acknowledging the existence of the default future. Then, based on what your daily actions, thoughts, fears, doubts are, envisage your default future. What does it look like? Is it something you want to keep or rather cut and start fresh?
Then, play a little bit with your mindset. What’s the category you fall in? Make sure you are sure that the change is possible.
On the third step erase everything: remorse, feelings of guilt, of pride, prejudices. Imagine you have a piece of paper with a drawing on it. Then, imagine you draw something another over that initial drawing. What would your masterpiece look like? In order to have a beautiful, accurate drawing you should have a clean piece of paper, right? Think of the masterpiece as your life. Make a cleaning first, then start designing your future.
Now you have the positive mindset of a powerful person. You have a clean space on which you can build. Fill it up wisely. Dream big and beautifully. Dream your most desirable future. Action ambitiously upon your dreams!
First of all, in order to change a thing you have to be aware about the fact that that thing exists. – very true
On the third step erase everything: remorse, feelings of guilt, of pride, prejudices. – here you talk about a technique that can do you more harm than good.
Please be aware that you have to be in posession of a scientifically tested technique. Plain imagination of erasure process is just nothing more than a limp action.
THere are ways, tested ways, through which you can achieve such results. But it takes a lot more than what it is here.
Anyway, good article, just put a little more the reshaping of your mind process under test and analyse it properly. Need info, just ask.
Good luck!
Thank you for your feedback, Iulian!
It’s true the article should be followed by some other articles that should explain more detailed certain aspects in it.
I visited your website. I liked what you propose, so I would like on my turn to make a proposal to you. Would you like to write a guest post on our blog about how one can make the “cleaning” of the past properly in order to avoid any possible harm?
Catalina thank you for your offer.
Reshaping our future is an important step in everyone’s personal development field. But, as I said the faith of our future is strongly linked with the present, but more firmly with the past. So, erasing the past in a safe and measurable way will definetly help you build the future you wish for.
Because it is a large subject, for proper understanding it would require a couple of steps:
- presentation of 3 major currents, which became mainstream for their region of the world or even worldwide;
- next step talks about the techniques that I recommend and measurable, safe results that you can obtain
So, yes I am interested.