Ep #32: Future-Focused Thinking

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

What’s up, my brothers. Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. And today, we are going to talk about future-focused thinking. And I’ve mentioned this before in previous episodes, but today, I’m going to really get into what it is and sort of the process and methodology behind future-focused thinking. But it’s going to take a few episodes.

So, I’m going to tell you guys right now, I’m not going to do it all today. It’s going to take a couple of episodes because with future-focused thinking, what we’re really talking about here is going through each layer of the model, and through each layer, what happens to your life as you start to live into your future instead of living in the beta condition, instead of living in that unconscious past where you’re living your old self, getting your old results; the same old results from the same old self – future-focused thinking, getting new results because you’re becoming a new person.

So today, we’re talking about, what do you want? And this is the first step. This is really what is most important when we look at future-focused thinking. And when I do this with my students, when I get into this work with my clients, we look at two models. We look at the ineffective model and we look at the effective model.

And really, it’s difficult to talk about the models these ways because really the model is just truth. The model just looks at us. So it’s really in ineffective or effective, unintentional or intentional, undesired or desired. Really, it’s just life unfolding. It’s completely neutral.

But what we want to look at is we want to look at the model now. I call that the ineffective model or the model that’s not working, the undesired model, which is creating the undesired result. Now, the circumstance doesn’t change; that’s the thing. your circumstance never has to change for your result to change.

When your result changes, your circumstance might change depending on what that result is you’re looking for. If you’re looking, you know, to make an extra $20,000 a year but your circumstance is living at your brother’s house, you know, you don’t have to move out of your brother’s house in order for that result to happen.

So when we look at the model, we look at the undesired model, what’s happening right now, what we want to find is also the desired model, which is where we put that future result in the R-line, that’s where we put that, earn an extra $20,000 a year, in the R-line. That’s in the desired. But the same circumstance will apply.

So really, what we’re looking at, guys, we’re looking at the thoughts, emotions, and actions that will change to get the result that you’re looking for, not the circumstance. And that’s sort of the premise or the preface of future-focused thinking. You don’t have to change where you are, you just have to change the way you think about where you are so that you are thinking about where you want to be.

So, causal coaching is very results-based. It’s not therapy. Last week, we talked about therapy. This is not therapy, this is coaching. This is where you’re going into your future. At therapy, you kind of look in the past and say this is what happened in my past and this is why I’m here where I am today. The reason why you are where you are today is because of what you’re thinking about today.

It might be because you’re past focused thinking and you’re thinking about who you were to get the results that you have today. With causal coaching, we’re looking at thinking about where you want to be, becoming the person you want to be so you can get the results that that person has, the results that you want.

It starts with, what do you want? Causal coaching brings self-awareness. That’s all, just self-awareness, awareness of where you are, what’s happening in your life right now, awareness of where you want to be, that’s the future-focused thinking, and then the awareness of the thoughts, emotions, and actions that you will change or execute to get from one to two.

Now, most people are half aware of number one, of where they are. And I say they’re half aware because there’s still the process of showing the objectivity of life, which is huge. When I do that with the work with my students, you know, showing them that circumstances are neutral, life is objective, it is your thoughts, it is your perception, it is the way you think about the world and what the world means to you that makes it subjective, that makes it good or bad.

So it’s huge in understanding where you actually are in your life versus where you think you are. But that’s number one, the awareness of where you are. The power of making this move, the power of learning the skill set of future-focused thinking, is knowing what number two is, knowing where you want to be, and that’s this episode. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Where do you want to be? Because when you say, “I don’t want to be here,” that doesn’t work. I get a lot of my clients saying this, “I just don’t want to be here. This is what I don’t want. This is why my life is suffering. This is why things are not going correctly.” And I get that. That’s why we usually seek out coaching, because this is where we are and we know there’s something else out there, we know there’s something better. There’s better relationships, there’s better health, there’s more money out there, there’s more to life, there’s more purpose, there’s more everything.

And so, a lot of my students will talk about where they don’t want to be. I don’t know where I want to be, I just know where I don’t want to be. And the brain doesn’t understand negatives. So when you say, “I want to be anywhere except here,” all the brain hears is, “Here, right here.” And it will continue to create right here. It will continue to create the same thing.

So most people know what they don’t want, and very few know what they do want. So you’ve got to know what you want, bro. That’s the thing. So when you think about what you want, when I do this with my clients, and you can do this ahead of time – do this now. Do this on your own. You don’t really need a coach to determine what you want. In fact, a coach should never tell you what you want, only you know what you want. A coach helps you get what you want. But you can do this right now.

And here’s what you’ve got to do to really focus. Be laser focused on what you want. You’ve got to be specific about it. You’ve got to have time domains and you’ve got to go big.

Now, you might say, I’ve heard this before, specificity, make it specific, like time measurable and go big on it. And you may have heard it before because people talk about this when they talk about goal setting. And you can use the same process to achieve big goals and you can use this process to change your identity, to change who you are.

So it’s kind of the same. And I’m going to tell you something, brother; when you achieve big goals, sometimes you do change who you are. And sometimes, when you change who you are, you have to achieve big goals for that to happen.

So you might have heard this before, but I want you to think about this as in becoming a different version of yourself. Like yes, you can do this to achieve things you want, in terms of having things, like I have this big goal. But it’s also the same way to be the next version of yourself, to basically level up. If you’ve ever played any videogames, it’s like leveling up. It’s like, yeah, I now have the morning star whip instead of the leather whip. And I’m not talking about – I’m talking about Castlevania here, so let’s not get crazy, but you guys know what I’m talking about, maybe, that’s how old I am.

But you’ve got to be specific. That’s number one. Be specific about what you want. Now, specific means be clear with yourself. Be clear with yourself in a measurable way. Know exactly how to measure what you want so that you have a metric for when you have it. You can say, this is it, you know, I’ve achieved this.

Now, I call this – this is where we get into the three problems of life. And I coach my students on these problems daily, almost every one of these. The first problem is philosophical. We all deal with the philosophical problems of life. This is the big stuff. The philosophical problem that I lead my students through is self-awareness, right, self-mastery. That is the big philosophical problem, to know thyself.

I call it the alpha state versus the beta condition, but it’s really knowing who you are and why you really are, the alpha, versus what your thoughts are about you and the world, which is the beta, and how to use your thoughts to get what you want because your thoughts are kind of your powerhouse, not letting your thoughts run you and not believing that your thoughts are who you are. That’s the big picture of life. That’s the philosophical problem.

The second problem is the internal problem. And this is how you will feel when you achieve the result. So you have this internal shift in your life. And it’s an intangible shift. So all stories, all movies, have a hero that has an internal problem that gets solved at the end of the movie. It’s why we like to watch the movies. It’s why we like to hear the stories.

It’s called the hero’s journey. You can look it up. But the internal shift for my students is indomitable self-confidence, unconditional self-love, transcending irrational fear and having a better general quality of life. You can see how all of these things are very intangible, they’d be difficult to measure, but that internal problem is the second problem.

The third problem is the external problem. This is where the experience in your life comes from and it’s what you would, I’d say, you want to change. It’s the idea you have about changing. It’s where you envision your future self and what you see is different.

So, you want better relationships, when the relationships are better it’s the external shift.  So you want to lose weight, it’s when you’ve lost the weight that the external shift has happened. If you want to increase your income, it’s when you have more income that the external shift happens.

So it’s all the things that happen outside of you where you can say, yeah this is the move. This is what happens to the hero at the end of the story. We watch the story to see the hero defeat the villain and get the girl. That’s all external shifts. In order for that to happen, the hero has to learn something or become something first, and that’s the internal shift.

So when you look at your wants – and again, brother, when I work with my students, we work on all three of these, but when you look at your wants, when you’re into that future-focused thinking, you’ve got to look at your external shifts. You’ve got to look at your external shifts and you’ve got to be as specific as possible.

So, even the examples that I gave are a little too vague. So it’s not about, I want better relationships, because that’s way too vague.  It’s not measurable. How do you measure better relationships?

Depending on what you want your result to be, depending on what it is you want your future self to achieve, you could say, I want to meet five new people a day, because that’s measurable, that’s metric. Now, that’s a goal, but that ends up becoming your new lifestyle. That ends up becoming your result because when you set it out and you do it, then the new result is, I have met five new people today, I have met 35 new people this week.

And that can create better relationships if that’s what you want in your result, to know more people, to have a greater network. Or it might be, I want to spend two evenings with my wife alone on a date for three hours, you know, six hours alone with your wife a week on two different dates. That’s measurable. You can say, yes we’re going to do it this night and this night. It doesn’t always have to be this night and this night, but two nights a week, and during those nights, I get three hours with my wife. That might be what you mean when you say you want a better relationship.

I want to know the names of my coworkers. I want to know their spouses’ and children’s names. That might be another one. But these are very specific measurable external results. They’re measurable wants depending on your intention by, I want better relationships.

Define what you mean by how you measure success. What do you mean by better relationships? That’s what it is. You’ve got to be very specific. And it’s the same with losing weight and it’s the same with increasing your income.

You don’t just say, “I want to lose weight,” and then when you’ve lost weight, you’re successful. You say, “I want to lose 30 pounds.” This is where I am. This is where I want to be, that’s the metric. That’s the external shift. So be very specific about your external shift.

The internal shifts are what coaching is for and it’s how you achieve your external shifts. So that is how you get to the external shift, by making the internal shift. Again, it happens in every story and every movie. The hero undergoes the internal shift that creates the external shift.

But now, we also want to add a time domain. So when you look at your wants, add a time domain. When do you want this by? Decide when you want to have this move, this result, accomplished by. Time domains are so important, so important, bro. Look, here’s the thing, you are always kind of, I don’t want to say at war, but you’re always involved, let’s put it that way.

You’re always engaged with your brain because either your brain has tricked you, the beta condition is there functioning as you and has fooled you into thinking that you are your thoughts, or you’re always wrestling with your thoughts. You’re always in that awareness of them, so you can choose them and decide your results. That’s what I mean by self-awareness and self-mastery. That’s cognitive mastery.

So you’re either in alpha state or beta condition, but you are always in relationship with yourself, you’re always in engagement with your brain. And if you don’t tell your brain when you want to have your goal accomplished by, it won’t get done. If you don’t tell your brain when you want to have this external shift happen – like when does this happen, I want to have it happen by this day – then it won’t get done.

And the reason is because you’re telling your brain, or to be more specific, your brain is telling you that it is okay with no completion, that it’s okay if the project, if the shift, if the transition, if the goal, if the identity change, whatever it is doesn’t happen because you don’t care when it happens. Do you understand me?

Your brain is thinking never is just as good as next week. And it’s telling you this because you’re not in control of this. When you are in control of your brain and this is something you want, you have this time domain, you’re driving for it. But your brain has basically taken over. That’s the beta condition. And now it’s telling you, “If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.”

In fact, your brain would rather it not happen because, quite frankly, when you want something, the next step is belief and action and result. That’s how we go through the model. Your brain wants things efficient. And efficient means familiar. So anytime there’s a change, the brain will resist it, which is why you want it, which is why you’ve got to want it and you’ve got to be aware that your brain is going to be okay with having you never get it.

You’ve got to put a time domain in there. You’ve got to decide, this is specifically what I want. This is how I measure success and this is when I want to have it achieved by. So decide on the time domain for when you want to have this shifty complete.

Now, guys, here’s the thing; you’ve got to go big. When you want something, really, really want it, want something huge. Want something really, really huge. Like, I’ve heard people say set small goals and build your confidence by achieving them. Like, I get it, I understand. It’s a decent theory, and if it works for you then use it.

Like I know I can walk down to the end of the block. So if I set my goal to walk down to the end of the block and back, then I know I will be successful, and that will build my confidence. That’s the theory.

Here’s the way my brain works; I prefer to test my brain. I don’t want to feed it something it knows it can do because if I feed it something it knows it can do, then I’m not really building my confidence. I want to scare my brain. I want to make huge leaps in my capacity and my capabilities.

If I tell my brain to do something and it doesn’t scare me, I don’t have, like, an irrational fear, whatever that irrational fear is, and we’re going to cover those in a minute, but if I do tell my brain to do something and it doesn’t scare me then I won’t build my confidence from doing it because I already have the confidence to do it.

I already have the confidence to do it, which is why I don’t have the fear. I feel confident instead. I want to tell my brain to do something where my brain has to stop and say, “Whoa, is that possible?” Because when I start to ask myself that question – understand, you’ve got to be in alpha state, because if you’re in beta condition and you ask yourself if that’s possible, you’re going to get no.  You’re going to get no and you’re going to quit and do something else. So you’ve got to be in alpha state.

But when you’re in alpha state and you ask yourself, is this possible, and you start to ask yourself these questions, then you’re going to want to go for it. That’s when I want to go for it because if it feels impossible, it’s a goal, it’s a transition, it’s a shift worth making. It’s kind of like that fear, that discomfort is the price of growth, it’s the price of development. It means to me that I’m afraid of this, this shift, this move, because it’s going to create discomfort. And that’s my price. That’s what I pay. And I want to pay it, right, because I want the shift. I want what’s at the end of the goal.

If there’s no price to pay, there’s so growth to have, and that includes confidence. So go big. Go huge with your wants, guys. Now, I’ve used the term minimum baseline before on the podcast, so if this is not the first episode you’ve heard, if you’ve heard these episodes, you’ve probably heard me use the term minimum baseline.

And I do use minimum baselines with my students. It’s a tool and I definitely recommend it for certain times. If you’ve never heard me use the term minimum baseline then what it is, it’s a way to build trust in yourself by doing what you know you can do as a minimum and following through because you know you will. It’s your minimum baseline.

But again, it’s very cognitive. It’s not just doing it because you know you can do it. I’m not just pouring a glass of water to prove to myself I can pour a glass of water, you understand, there is a lot of cognition that goes around your minimum baseline because you’re looking for evidence. You’re using the model. You’re out of the matrix, but in the matrix, right? You’re a free mind in the matrix. So it’s more than just a minimum baseline where you just do things that are easy for you.

But I do want you guys to know and I want you to understand that the two concepts of impossible goals, of impossible shifts, like these huge go-big external shifts and the minimum baseline tool, they’re not exclusive. You can use them together, and I do with my students.

We set an impossible goal, a huge want, huge desire, and then use minimum baselines to get there. For example, you say you want to lose 150 pounds, I love it. It’s a huge goal, it’s a big lifestyle change. It’s a big internal shift as well as external shift because that kind of external shift, 150 pounds, that requires a big internal shift. It requires the way you change your thinking, your relationship with food, with rest, maybe with exercise for sure, and with life in general.

So a 150-pound external shift requires a big internal shift which requires a big lifestyle change. These are all big things. If I were just to say I want to lose 10 pounds, it might be different. But using a minimum baseline will help make getting those small changes required so the brain can get used to the new person, the person you will become when you live like the person you will be when you’re 150 pounds lighter. And that’s future-focused thinking. You’re living as if you’re already 150 pounds lighter.

Just make your goals big. If you want to lose 150 pounds, you set your goal to lose 150 pounds.  But if you set your goal to lose 10 pounds, you might lose 10 pounds, and that is going to be awesome. That’s great. I love that. There’s so much awesome things that happen when you start to see evidence for losing weight when that is something you want to do. But there’s not much of an internal shift happening. It’s the external shift of losing 10 pounds, you can lose the 10 pounds, and then you can put it right back on the next week just in terms of, like, water and in terms of one joy eat.

The point is, you’re still going to be the same guy in your mind. And before you know it, you’re probably going to put some of that weight back on because you’re still the same guy in your mind, you still have the same habits. You’re still living the same life.

What it takes to lose 10 pounds as an external shift doesn’t require you to change your thinking about yourself, doesn’t require the internal shift, doesn’t require the philosophical moves that 150 pounds do. And again, it’s the same with wealth, guys, it’s the same with relationships. When you want to make these big changes, make them big, big changes. When you want something in your life, really go for it. Make a list.

Do this; I have my students do this and I want you to do this. Do this; make a list of 25 things you want and I challenge you to make them the more outrageous the better. So you could say on there, like, I want to have my spare bedroom in my house on Airbnb and in six months making an extra thousand dollars a month. Okay, cool, that’s an amazing goal. It’s a wealth goal. It’s something you create, you think you have to become a different person, you have to become this person that uses the internet and runs their business and meets new people and, kind of, gets used to having people in their personal space.

It might open you up. You’re going to grow from this experience and you’ll be creating some wealth on the side. You have some internal shifting and some external shifting going on there. That is amazing and I love it. If that’s what you want to put on your list of 25 things, put it on your list of 25 things. But you can also put, on your list of 25 things, I want to own my own private jet or I want to lease a private jet, I want to be able to lease a private jet when I want to, when I want to go. I want to use a private jet to go overseas once a year.

Again, just go crazy. Really, go crazy because the bigger the wants, the more fear and the more you can use that as a way to grow yourself, to become this higher version of what’s already there, what’s already inside you, brother.

The biggest thing here is the barriers to the wants. So again, do the 25. Do the list of 25 and have that in your back pocket. Know what your wants are. You’ve got to know what your wants are. Most people don’t know what their wants are. Most people do not. They know where they are, again, like I say, they have some idea of where they are and they’re in their alpha state. They know the difference between what they believe and what is a fact. They can do the thought and fact thing. But not a lot of people spend time thinking about what they want.

And here is why. Here’s some barriers. Number one, there’s the fear of failure, like, if I go after what I want and I fail, what does that mean about me? What does it say about who I am? What does it say about the people who have done what I want to do but I have not done what I want to do or I didn’t get to where I wanted to be? It’s the fear of failure. And again, that’s all thought. It’s all that beta condition, right, the idea of failure. That’s a thought. That’s a concept. But these are barriers. This is truth. I know a lot of people that deal with the fear of failure, the fear of choosing the wrong thing.

This is another thing. So there’s two paintings on the wall, which one do you want? Which one do I want? They’re both amazing paintings. I can choose either one of them, which one do I want? There’s this fear inside of me of choosing the wrong one. What if I take the one on the right home and I get home and all of a sudden I realize, you know what, I really like the one on the left, I should have gone with the one on the left. So there’s the fear of choosing the wrong thing.

There’s the fear of wanting the wrong thing. Like, is it wrong for me to want more? Is it greedy? Is there something wrong with me because I want more, because I want to have an amazing relationship with people, with my wife? I want to have this amazing relationship, is that something that I shouldn’t want? Again, the losing of the way, having more of the wealth, are these things that I shouldn’t want? So the fear of wanting the wrong thing.

The fear of losing out on something else. It’s kind of like number two, the fear of choosing the wrong things. Again, go back to the paintings. It’s like, if I’m choosing the one on the right, I’m losing out on the one on the left. It feels a little bit different. So when you think about it, the fear of choosing the wrong thing or the fear of losing out on something else, they feel a little bit different. But they both hold you back the same way.

There’s the grass is always greener, and if you haven’t already, go to my website, go to my newsletter because I put out a letter about this, when the grass is always greener, which is basically saying what they have is better, like, what other people have is better. This is a barrier for you knowing what you want because you won’t know what you want if you’re always thinking about what other people is better.

Don’t worry about what other people have. If what other people have is something that you want then you want it, don’t worry about what they have. If they have it, that’s great for them, awesome for them, who cares? What do you want? But that’s the grass is always greener.

Another one is, once I have it, I don’t want it. And that’s a very interesting one that leads to a lot of interesting action and result in your life because it’s a lot of this, kind of, like I have it, I go through this hunt, I go through this quest and I get it and then once I have it I do everything I can to sabotage it. So it’s a barrier to want.  You go after it with your wanting and maybe you get it maybe you don’t, but that barrier of not having it, you sabotage yourself, maybe right before you get there or right after you have it.

And the last one, which again, I hear a lot of as a causal coach, as a life coach is wanting what other people want for you or for them. So wanting what other people want for you, like, it’s not what you want.  It’s not what you want for yourself. It’s what other people want for you. It’s what you’ve always been told you want. It’s what people have always told you, you should have or what they want for you. That’s number one.

But the other one is wanting what other people want for them. So it’s kind of like living your life for other people. And it’s not because other people are telling you what you should do for you, but it’s what other people are telling you what you should do because it makes them happy. It’s kind of like being a servant of their emotions, a servant of their wants, a servant of their desires. It’s people-pleasing, right? If you’re people-pleasing, that’s what it is; wanting what other people want for them. It’s not what you want. It’s just what you want them to have. Does that make sense?

Okay, guys, so those are some barriers to want. Now, I’ve gone over 30 minutes. I usually don’t do this but I’m doing this because this is a big episode. This is an important episode. There are cognitive problems. These are cognitive problems, these barriers that are resolved with coaching.

Go to my website now and sign up for a free 45-minute consultation. It’s free. You’ll get on the phone with me, not a contractor of mine but you’ll get on the phone with me and I will guide you through any issue that you’re struggling with, any issue. And we’ll find out if you’re a good candidate for causal coaching and developing your self-awareness and self-mastery, finding out about elevating that alpha state.

But it’s free, 45-minute consultation, and do this ahead of time. Do your wants ahead of time because on the consultation, what I ask people is where are you now, what’s happening in your life now, and where do you want to go?

Again, I’m not a therapist. We don’t talk about your past. I don’t get into, like, the old stuff. We get into the new stuff. Where are you now is the old stuff. The results you have now is from your thinking now and the thinking that has been created by your conditioning, your past, the beta condition. So where you are now is your old stuff. We’ve got to know where you want to go.  We’ve got to know where you want to go. You’ve got to know where you want to go. That’s how you get to where you want to go; by having a destination. Know what you want. Do this, my friend. Do it. 25. Make a list of 25 things you want and go to my website, sign up for a few 45-minute consultation.

Until next week when we’re going to continue talking about the process, the methodology of future-focused thinking, you’re the man, brother. Get out there. Make your life the way you want it and, as always, elevate your alpha.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha – your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset – at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.