How to Get a Glimpse Into Your Future

Aside from the usual things like working, eating, and sleeping, what activities do you spend time doing on a daily basis?

The reason I asked this question is to make you aware of some of your daily habits and to motivate you to consider thinking about the consequences that these daily habits will have on your life in terms of your self growth and happiness 1, 5, and 10 years from now.

How your life will turn out will largely depend on what you habitually do on a daily basis. We all know instinctively that spending an hour a day watching mindless TV will lead us down a different path in life compared to spending an hour a day reading or learning something or exercising. We also know that eating bad foods 3 times a day, every day, will give us a different result compared to eating good foods.

This is all basic knowledge. However, the challenge is that it’s not always easy to do what we know we should be doing mainly because we don’t see the effects of our daily habits right away. Marriages don’t usually go bad overnight. It often takes years of doing the wrong things for that to happen. Eating junk food for a short period won’t really wreck your health but do it over a few years or decades and you’ll be in trouble.

I’m not here to tell to you on what you should be spending your time doing. It’s your life and you can do what you wish but just realize that what you choose to do or fail to do on a consistent basis will have a huge impact on the kind of life you will be experiencing down the line. Also remember that you’ve got just one life to live. So although engaging in time killing activities is an option, it’s probably not the wisest choice.

If you want to get a glimpse into your future, look at your current habits.

Think about the life you want to experience 5 or 10 years from now or even 1 year from now and figure out what habits you would have to develop for your vision to become a reality. Whether it’s being able to speak another language, play an instrument, be an expert in your industry, develop strong friendships, feel healthy and vibrant, or anything else, it’s going to take consistent work over an extended period of time.

If you look at and project the results your habits out into the future and don’t like what you see, the time to make some changes is now.

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle