I believe that we have many possibilities in the future and it totally depends on who we are right now.
What you envision in the future shows who you are right now. If you change yourself in the moment then your future also changes and thus your destiny changes.
Destiny is not in getting something but in becoming something that serves the higher purpose of the spirit.
I have developed four habits for a long time which hold the foundation for the success I have had and will be greatly responsible for the success my future self will have. I will call them my “keystone habits.”
One of the questions that I always try to keep in my mind is that whatever I do, I do it because of reason which is deep and can help me to become the person I wish to become rather than some kind of superficiality that surrounds the media and the world. But taking into consideration that my reasons are full of faults, I let my mind to explore and in the process I discover.
I have been doing these habits for more than 2 years now and they helped me in every way, they changed everything from how I view myself and the world. I think everyone should try and develop these habits in their life. In short, they helped me to change my “destiny.”
•Reading.
“My residence was more favorable, not only to thought,
but to serious reading, than a university; and though I
was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library,
I had more than ever come within the influence of those
books which circulate round the world, whose sentences
were first written on bark, and are now merely copied
from time to time on to linen paper.” — Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The first question that comes to anyone is why read? We humans are hardwired to feel progress, the most disappointing thing that can happen in a person’s life is not making progress, I think the purpose of every living being living on the earth is to evolve.
Reading is all about thinking, you think what you consume and what you consume directs your life.
So, you become what you read.
Progress is the greatest factor behind motivation.
Once we lose hope for a better life there is no sense in living, it is when waking up every single day full of excitement that creates hope for a better future.
Reading for information has its benefit but reading for understanding is by far the most effective in improving oneself. One thing to keep in mind while reading,
Reading without thinking will go in vain.
If you want to develop your understanding then you need to read books of different nature, books that are rare and not popular, and books that are hard to grasp. If you only read what is popular then you have the understanding only about what is circulating in the world.
“Our acts can be no wiser than our thoughts. Our thinking can be no wiser than our understanding.” — George S. Clason
Once we have a better understanding we can make the essential changes required to make tremendous progress and learning is surely a great part of it.
Most of the time when I read something great, I already find the lessons deeply embedded in my own life. Books do not teach you something new, they just make you aware of the well of wisdom you already hold inside yourself.
There are kind of superficiality that surrounds the media and the world. It is of no sense in development.
•Meditation.
Meditation helps me to be less reactive towards the environment I live in and therefore gives me a sense of control over my life which helps me further to focus on the essentials. The things of real importance rather than some kind of urgency. It helps me to have a wide perspective over things in a long range which my senses cannot detect.
“We choose to deny what our senses deny.”
Awareness is essential for success, without being aware of what you are doing, what you expect out of what you are doing and why you believe it’s going to work out is crucial otherwise you could be lost in the process itself, a process which has no ends.
Every consequence comes with many consequences, and considering emotions is important to make plans and strategies that can deliver successful results.
We overcomplicate simple things by mixing our emotions with them and therefore make simple things very hard to do.
Being emotionally resilient is a must to achieve tremendous growth, the art of not caring what others think of us while having compassion and empathy for them.
You can trust people but never their emotions.
Meditation helps me to be connected to my deeper self and I know one thing for sure and it is that the more connected I am with my deeper self the less I am going to doubt my growth potential.
Doubt and worry come from the lack of connection with yourself. Awareness is of critical importance when it comes to changing one’s life.
You cannot improve something if you are not aware of it. So, awareness comes before changing one’s behaviour.
Awareness removes the mental fog that has accumulated due to ignorance.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung
•Journaling.
95 percent of people rather choose to die than think, 3 percent think they think but they don’t think, it is only 2 percent who think and if you go even deeper few have the system for organized thinking to solve the problems.
Most of our problems have traces not in trying things differently but in doing them in the same way, we eventually lose ourselves in shallowness and forget about our true nature.
“The biggest reason behind not getting things done is not lack of motivation but the lack of clarity.”
Most of the time we don’t know exactly what we want for ourselves, we don’t know who we want to be, or what we want to stand for and when we do not have clarity, we look toward the model the world has created for us and therefore lose our authenticity.
This is the reason behind common people. They are not born common but unique but they choose to live a life based upon the common model which is created by the world and thus become commoner.
This is not just true as a whole but in parts too.
We only have a shallow understanding of who we are and what our deepest needs and desires are. In the gym, most people follow the trend. In books, most people read the best-selling books and the popular ones.
This is not to say you don’t need to read popular books or trends but this is all shallow and can not help you much in understanding yourself in depth. This type of goal is incomplete.
There is nothing bad in following the trend but following it comes with the consequences of its own. If you follow the trend mindlessly you lose your authenticity and thus become vulnerable because you lose your sense of purpose.
It is for clarity, I do journaling for only one purpose and that is to gain clarity about who I am and who I want to be, once I know this then making essential decisions and choices becomes very easy.
The clarity is not in knowing about what you want to do because that’s very superficial, everybody knows what they want to do like I want to be a doctor, a scientist or a politician but very few have the idea ‘of who they want to be’ which is very deep and can inspire you to make real progress.
Journaling helps you to think and know yourself better. It also makes you a better writer which makes you a better reader too.
All great writers are great readers too.
I don’t consider myself a writer because I never perceived myself that way, writing is a tool that I found very useful in making me less reactive and helps me to think critically.
Breaking the preconceived notion we hold inside our minds about everything is critical for success. This is the reason behind never trying to know something because when you already know everything about the things then there is no space for understanding.
Clarity is very important when you are dealing with a lot of setbacks, writing gives you the clarity you need if you use it properly.
All people who reach the heights of greatness use the power of writing. People like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, and Leonardo da Vinci, all used writing to generate ideas.
When dealing with tough times one needs ideas and insights to get ahead but most of the time they stay mindless forever in the mind and are never implemented.
Research shows that we receive most of our ideas when we are not actively engaged in something and doing things that relax us like walking, eating or taking a shower. This is a technique called “Think and Rest”.
“Failing to capture ideas in writing is a idea usually lost.”
Writing is a process of getting to know you. Most people misunderstand it and judge it without even thinking.
Judging is fatal to success.
It helps you with your goals, most people never write and think about how they are going to achieve this and most often their goals are more like wishing and hoping.
Writing is a tool not just for writers but for everyone who wants to get the most out of their life.
•Exercise.
Probably you already know why you should exercise and there is no need to tell you why to do it but I would like to share my perspective about exercise.
I do exercise to express my greatness through efforts. I found that exercise is a must to create momentum for your future self. It is about the energy restore you have to create things. There is a lot of energy used in creation and a healthy body is a necessity for it.
A sound body leads to a sound mind which leads to a sound spirit. Exercise can be used to train your mind due to the pain that comes while training.
Maintaining a high state of consciousness while creating things of high order is a necessity and this could be learned from not reacting to the pain we feel while exercising.
Exercise plays a vital role in training one mind to overcome emotions, It is about feeling those pain. Pain only comes when one goes beyond their capacity.
That is why exercise for just being healthy does little help in other aspects of life but continuously crossing one’s limit means exercising to achieve mastery over one’s body helps incredibly in other areas as well.
Exercise is training for success, it teaches a lot of things patience, self-determination, self-honesty, and confidence which are essential for success.
Conclusion:
Here is how you can employ these habits to serve you in becoming the person you intend to be.
To become your future self, you need to learn tremendously about a lot of things including yourself and the world you live in.
There are many ways to consume information but as much I know from experience is that the reading is the most condensed form of learning apart from your life experiences.
The key to growth is the ability to maintain a state of awareness, without awareness, we cannot grow, what we need to do is to break the mindlessness which comes from lack of awareness.
The more you are connected to your deeper self the less doubt and worry you are going to feel and the more faith you have in yourself and the process.
To be your future self you must need many things but some must be clarity about who you wish to be, a mind not filled with judgement, self-control over one’s emotions, especially negative ones, maintaining a state of awareness and a willingness to learn beyond one’s capacity.