180. Unlocking Your Future Self: Communication, Happiness & Wellbeing

Why creating happiness in the future starts today.

The new year gives us an opportunity to reflect on who we are and who we want to be. As we set resolutions and prepare for evolutions, this special four-part series on communication, happiness, and well-being explores practical ways to enhance our lives through better communication, deeper connections, and more meaningful choices.

In pursuing happiness and well-being, we often focus on the present moment. But according to Hal Hershfield, one of the best ways to help ourselves today is to have a conversation with ourselves in the future.

"When I say future self, I really mean any version of us that exists at some later point in time," explains Hershfield, a UCLA professor and author of Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today. By thinking of our future selves as different people — ones we should care about — we can make better choices in the present. "If we can tap into the feelings of our future selves, then we can do more that benefits them, which may make our lives easier now and later." In this episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, Hershfield and host Matt Abrahams explore how communication between our present and future selves can help us set goals, make decisions, and overcome pitfalls like procrastination, enabling us to take meaningful action now so we can thrive today and tomorrow.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/ThinkFast and get ten percent off your first month.

Episode Reference Links:

Hal Hershfield • • Hal’s Book: Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today

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Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction (02:12) - What Is a Future Self? (03:37) - Mistakes in Time Travel Thinking (04:45) - Overcoming Procrastination (07:16) - Connecting to Our Future Selves (10:35) - Disappointment and Adjusting Goals (12:14) - Goal Setting and Motivation (15:02) - Public Accountability for Motivation (16:04) - The Final Three Questions (20:35) - Conclusion

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