When you think about your future, do you see your life getting better, worse or remaining the same?
The way we think about our future has a more sizeable impact on it, than you might think. Just like when you were a kid playing the ‘yellow car’ game, once you started playing, the more you would notice yellow cars.
By thinking in a certain way about our future, the more likely the outcome will be aligned with our thoughts.
I believe people have an inherent tendency to be either positive or negative, but also believe that with effort this natural stance can be changed over time. I consider myself to be a positive person, I’m good at seeing the best outcome in situations whilst also being a realist who considers the most likely outcome.
The word ‘manifest’ gets a bad wrap for being a bit of a wishy-washy term when in reality we all manifest in someway or another.
Reframe The Future
As a young boy, I thought I would be the exception to the rule and that I would live forever. At some point though, I came to appreciate the finality of life and that nothing lasts. This sobering thought did two things. Firstly it scared the shit out of me (and still does on occasion – sitting with the thought of forever is terrifying), then it lit a fire in me.
I can’t say my life has turned out the way I expected in my younger years. My path has seriously deviated from what society calls the ‘traditional life’, but I’m happy and in someway, it’s become part of my identity.
A major part of my happiness and contentment is due to my healthy thoughts on the future. I believe heavily in consistent and continuous growth. A Growth Mindset is where we strive to improve specific areas of ourselves, whether through learning, improving our physical health, adjusting our diet, or overcoming mental constraints.
By seeking out small areas of improvement, over time these changes will have a significant impact.
Earlier this year I learnt about ‘The Time Perception Paradox’ where the older we get the quicker time seems to move due to the amount of time we have already lived.
For a 10-year-old, one year is 10% of their life. But for a 50-year-old, a year is only 2% of their life. Because each new year becomes a smaller fraction of their total life experience, it feels shorter in comparison. This subjective acceleration of time makes it seem like time speeds up as we get older.
This time perception has helped me to better ponder my existence and how long I may have left on this earth. I found the easiest way to track your life is to think of events that occur every year, for example Christmas or your birthday. Thinking back through each Christmas allows me to contemplate the time I’ve already lived.
Major events that stick in your mind can also be used to frame the length of your life. For example I use my 30th birthday as a milestone – I was thrown a surprise party and that memory sticks out in my mind.
An accident or illness aside, as a conservative best guess, I’m coming up to 50% of the way through my life. There may come a time soon where I hit a precipice from which I may reframe my existence differently, as I will have less time left than I’ve already lived – another sobering thought. But at that time, I hope to have pondered my own mortality enough to have satisfied any ill thoughts of death.
What are the chances?
Another immeasurable thought I’ve been mulling over recently is chance. The events that have had to come to pass for me to be writing this post, comfortable in bed on a gloomy Saturday morning in the year 2024!
Bill Bryson puts it brilliantly in ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’:
Bill Bryson
“Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely – make that miraculously – fortunate in your personal ancestry… every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.”
With that thought in mind it makes some of life’s smaller concerns seem rather trivial. Which in-turn makes choosing to view the future in a positive light the sensible stance to take. Everything up until this point has gone our way, for literally millennia.
Manifest it into Existence
Since a young adult, I’ve noticed a pattern of what could be called ‘luck’, where on a few occasions when I’ve found myself in far from ideal circumstances, I’ve managed to find my way out. I’m leaving that sentence deliberately vague as the exact details are not important.
What is important is that throughout I consciously made an effort to remain positive and continued to remember that the situation was only temporary. I truly believe that envisioning this positive future, in part, led to my success in overcoming these difficult times.
Manifesting is not magic, but rather the process of your most frequent thoughts becoming the most likely outcome. Similar to noticing more yellow cars, by thinking positively, you can perceive more positive outcomes in your life, which can help you reframe the negative.
I’ll leave you with this famous line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
Shakespeare
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
