“As for your future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.”

(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

This is the third piece in a series of pieces inspired by the festive story of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. If you missed the first one you can read it again here and the second one can be found here.

The third and final Ghost to put in an appearance in the story is the Ghost of Christmas future, who perhaps would be more accurately named the Ghost of Christmas future that may be – though I’ll admit it doesn’t have quite the same ring! As Scrooge found out the future that he was shown was one possible outcome if he carried on taking the same action.

The end of the year is nearly upon us and many people use the New Year as a time to set New Years Resolutions, set goals for their future and evaluate what they would love to create in the year ahead.

Unless you are a clairvoyant then our perception of the future is all best guesses about the chances we believe something will happen based upon experience and the action to be taken.

And sometimes this can be an incredibly useful way of behaving, for example the chances are very high that you will burn yourself if you stick you hand on a hot stove. For the record, it’s something I personally recommend that you don’t do J

You may have noticed that how we imagine the future can have an impact upon what we do in the present. If you played with last weeks piece you may also be aware that sometimes we also place restrictions upon ourselves by the stories we tell about our future.

I don’t know if you have ever listened to the way that some people describe what they want in the future but the language they use and how they describe it to themselves can make a big difference to how easy they find taking action to make what they are describing a reality in their future.

Have you ever heard someone say a variation of “what I want is to get back to …”?

For example I want to get back to a size 12

I want to get back to sleeping 8 hours a night.

I want to get back the confidence I had 10 years ago.

Maybe you have your own version of something you want to get back to …

What I’ve noticed is that when people include that “get back to” in the description of what they want, the focus is upon the fact that they have lost it rather than the outcome. This may be an accurate description of what they are feeling. However, I do know that it is often easier to get the result you want by just tweaking the language you are using so that you loose the “get back” bit without loosing the result that you want.

For example, I want to get back to a size 12 becomes I want to be a size 12,

Or

I want to get back to sleeping 8 hours a night becomes I want to sleep 8 hours a night.

In both examples the focus has shifted to totally being upon the outcome that you want.

Sometimes as you tweak, it may be appropriate to add more specifics of what you want in the future.

For example, I want to get back the confidence I had 12 years ago can become I want to be feeling confident as I return to work.

This week as I know the festive period is often a busy one I invite you just to notice the language that you use and to play with the description of anything you want to “get back to”.

Next week I will stick to the theme of how we predict the future and get more specific about New Years Resolutions, goal setting and creating the year that you want.

I hope that you have a fantastic Christmas week

Love

Jen

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com