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If you are not leading toward your desired life, then this article will guide you to understand the reason behind it. Your environment constantly affects your future self, whether you are aware of it or not.
“You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”—Jim Rohn
In a famous study, a group of researchers told 2nd and 3rd grade teachers they wanted to study the learning of their students over the course of the school year. At the beginning of the year, the teachers were privately told which students were gifted and which ones weren’t based on IQ tests the researchers had given them.
As expected, by the end of the school year, the gifted students showed extremely higher increases in learning and overall development than the non-gifted students.
However, the researchers hadn’t given the students IQ tests at the beginning of the year. Instead, they randomized which students were considered gifted and which ones weren’t simply to see if it would influence their results. Unconsciously, the teachers treated the gifted students differently than the non-gifted students. They expected more of those students, and those expectations became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pygmalion Effect
We don’t like to admit this, but our performance and results are often based on the expectations of those around us. Psychologists call this the Pygmalion effect. If you’re around people who have low expectations for you, you’ll fall to those standards. If you’re around people with high expectations, you’ll rise to those standards.
We are all driven by our goals. But how often are goals unconsciously fed to us by our environment? Is it any wonder that an individual, with six or seven dentists on his mother’s side, became a dentist? Can we fault the woman surrounded by drugs as a child, who turns to drugs for respite from her pain?
The more mature you become, the more proactive and conscious are the goals you choose for yourself. The less mature you remain, the more reactive and unconscious are the goals you pursue.
The threat is being unaware of the impact of your environment on your goals.
Mere-exposure Effect
As the Wharton marketing professor, Dr. Jonah Berger explains in his book Invisible Influence, “Just like atoms bouncing off each other, our social interactions are constantly shaping who we are and what we do.”
Interestingly, psychologists found that people prefer things, not because of internal reasons, but simply because they’ve been repeatedly exposed to them. This idea is known as the mere-exposure effect. Your desires are often the result of simply being exposed to something. For instance, research shows that people who were frequently exposed to cigarette commercials reported a more positive attitude toward smoking.
This is true of your peer group. The proximity effect predicts that you’re more likely to be friends with the person who sits next to you in class than the person who sits two rows ahead.
The public speaker and author Zig Ziglar said, “Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.” Better inputs lead to better thinking and ultimately better outputs. Garbage in, garbage out.
Do you want better and bigger goals? A better Future Self? Expose yourself to better perspectives and evolved people. Business strategist Charlie Jones stated, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” By proactively changing your inputs of information, experiences, and people, you become aware of what you previously didn’t know. You see what you previously didn’t notice. You seek what you previously didn’t want. And you act in ways you previously didn’t behave.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the skill of becoming aware of your context, and how that context influences you. What is the context you’re in?
How is that context influencing you?
What goals are you currently pursuing?
What is the life you’re presently living?
How did you choose your life?
Is your life the product of conscious choosing, or are you merely reacting to your environment? Are your surroundings governing you, or do you influence your environment? Performance psychologist Dr. Marshall Goldsmith explained in his book Triggers, “If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.”
We live in a social media world designed to subconsciously influence and direct people’s behaviors, desires, identities, and interests. Cultivating awareness of the impact of your external environment on your internal goals allows you to be mindful of when you’re triggered in a certain direction, and consciously choose to realign with your Future Self. As Viktor Frankl put it:
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
What You Seek is Seeking You
Freedom comes from not being the direct reaction of your environment. Instead, be aware of your environment, and scan externally for different perspectives and options. Expose yourself to new and better ways of acting, being, seeing, and thinking. In every situation, regardless of what you’ve done in the past, there is always the possibility to do otherwise. There is always the potential for conscious choosing.
Who is the person you want to become? Your answer to this question will, obviously, be influenced by your current context. However, your answer should also extend beyond your current context. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Who do you want to become, irrespective of your current situation and irrespective of your past? Rather than having goals that are reactive to your current context, it is far more powerful to mentally create the context you want, which is way beyond your current context, and use your future vision to drive your actions. As Harvard psychologist Dr. Ellen Langer said:
“Social psychologists argue that who we are at any one time depends mostly on the context in which we find ourselves. But who creates the context? The more mindful we are, the more we can create the contexts we are in. When we create the context, we are more likely to be authentic. Mindfulness lets us see things in a new light and believe in the possibility of change.”
Once you’ve proactively begun imagining a Future Self beyond your current context, shape your environment to pull you in that direction. Instinctively, your brain will already and immediately begin doing this. As the Eastern mystic Rumi said, “What you seek is seeking you.”
Once you decide upon something you want, your mind will become more aware of it in your environment. According to selective attention, you’ll see things that were already all around, which you were previously blind to. This awareness equips you to strategically find pathways and processes to get to where you want to go.
You’ll be able to design your environment to become who you want to be. For instance, if you want to become an entrepreneur, surround yourself with successful entrepreneurs, not aspiring ones. To become healthy, surround yourself with people who are fit. If you want to be wealthy, go where abundance is the norm. Become the average of the people you surround yourself with.
Your Desired Future Self
Becoming your desired Future Self involves aligning yourself with people who can help you get there. Humans adapt amazingly quickly. Who you align yourself with has massive repercussions. If you hang out with people who play video games and eat junk food, you’ll quickly grow to like and even love those behaviors. Conversely, spend time around active and productive people, and you quickly take on those traits. A true friend makes your Future Self bigger.
As you align yourself personally and professionally with others, those relationships take you down a certain path. While some relationships are lifelong, most relationships are contextual. For instance, you may have a mentor or business partner who helps you for a period of time. But at a certain point, you may outgrow the relationship, and need to find a new teacher or partner.
What got you here won’t get you there. It takes awareness, but also courage. It can be hard or scary to un-align with people you’ve been deeply connected with. But it can also be simple and respectful. Un-aligning doesn’t mean someone is wrong or bad. Frequently your vision has evolved, and that relationship is no longer taking you in a shared direction.
To align yourself with specific people, you’ll want to be transformational in your mindset. Rather than obsessing on “what’s in it for me?” you ask, “what’s in it for them?” You start the relationship by helping the other person better achieve their own goals. Transformational relationships can take you places you never expected to go. Your Future Self can become unpredictably better and bigger. Your Future Self is the byproduct of your environment. Being mindful enables your environment to be the result of your conscious choosing. Choose well! (Inspired from “Be Your Future Self Now” by Dr. Benjamin Hardy).
