How to Change Your Future

How do you change your future? A process from The Three Laws of Performance is powerful and simple. First, you must observe what is called your “default future.” For a given situation, if everything turned out exactly as you expected, what would happen? This future is what would unfold if you didn’t change anything. 

After understanding your default future, you can now define a new one. Think of your default future and ask questions: What would a better future look like? What would I need to do differently in order to make it more likely a better outcome happens? How would I need to change how I am looking at the situation in order to make the new future more likely? There are many other iterations of these types of questions but they all have one thing in common—they are meant to disrupt the default future. 

For example, I felt very tired this morning when I met with a Latin student at a coffee shop. My default future was that I’d be low energy and perhaps even a bit resentful since the sessions are pro-bono and I had other commitments to work on as well. Once I noticed this, I decided that I would be welcoming and attentive to honor my student. I asked questions about how he was doing and spent an extra few minutes going over additional material at the end. Doing these things was easier because I noticed that I was viewing the lesson as a chore and instead decided to view it as an opportunity to practice unreasonable hospitality, a beautiful concept from a book by the same title. 

This week, I invite you to pick a situation from your future and ask: 

What do I expect will happen? How do I expect I will act? What are my assumptions about the situation?

What would a better future look like? How will I act differently in order to make a better future more likely? In what new ways will I look at the situation in order to make this future more likely? 

God bless,
Dan