Ep #60: Benefits of Future-Focused Thinking

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:09.6] ANNOUNCER: 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 is your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:32.5] What’s up my brothers, welcome back to the Alpha Male Coach podcast. I am your host Kevin Aillaud. We just finished a four-part series on emotion. I’m now going to start a four-part series on the results and benefits of cognitive mastery and emotional ownership. Because I talk about these things a lot and I talk about what they are and how to achieve them and why it’s an alpha trait to have cognitive mastery as a skillset and emotional ownership as a skillset.

I’ve also spent a lot of time talking about when you are in that process, when you’re learning this and developing this skill, what changes in your life, what are the results, what are the benefits? I want to start by kind of painting a picture for you guys, like creating an analogy, where think about cognitive mastery and emotional ownership as like a tree, okay?

You have the tree of cognitive mastery and emotional ownership and then the roots of the tree are the skills, there’s really like five main skills that are constantly being taught, constantly being wired, that my students are learning in the Spartan Agoge program, because, they basically correspond to each level of the model or each component of the model which is the universal truth. We’ve got awareness as one of the roots.

Becoming aware of how your circumstances, the objectivity of your life, is very different than your beliefs, the subjectivity of your life and how you’ve made your life made up to this point and how you’re learning to separate the way the world is versus the way you are and the way you think about the world and that’s huge. That’s a huge leap brothers.

You’ve got to understand, that is about 80% of it. As I said before, just separating thoughts from facts is a huge piece of awareness that will change your life in and of itself. And then, the other four skills are thought, choice, choosing new thoughts to think, choosing new belief systems to have, the emotional processing or allowing your emotions. So, it’s stepping away from the emotional avoidance, emotional resisting, and emotional reacting that happens when the emotion takes control of us.

You know, we own the emotion, there’s massive action and massive action is showing up, it’s no longer hiding, right? It’s getting out there and putting yourself in a place where people can decide whether to reject you or not, which is a big scary thing, right? Massive action is another, one of our skillsets and then the last skillset is results production.

Really, that’s kind of the segue going into today’s episode because when we talk about the four results of cognitive mastery and emotional ownership and I talk about these four results, the four results are future-focused thinking, amazing relationships, indomitable self-confidence, and you know, mastery over your behavior or behavioral control, and the first we’re going to talk about today is future-focused thinking.

When we talk about results production and we look at the model, really creating that our line, creating the results that we want in our life. A lot of that is what I talk about when I talk about future-focused thinking. I’m going to begin there, that was the big segue into future-focused thinking guys. I’m going to start there because I’ve done podcasts, I’ve done episodes on future-focused thinking before.

If you guys want to, you can definitely go back and listen to those, it was a three-part series on future-focused thinking, I believe it was back in September episode’s 32, 33, 34 and the reason why I think it was back in September is because in September, in that month, in the Spartans, we were doing calendaring, which is one of the tools to develop future-focused thinking that I might talk about at the end of this episode.

I mentioned those – the tool of calendaring, much more in depth in those episodes.

Today, I want to very quickly talk about the difference between the three types of thinking, there’s the past-focused thinking, tomorrow thinking, and future-focused thinking, again guys, I’ve talked about these before, I’m not going to belabor it, I’m just going to give you a real quick recap of what these types of thinking are.

Past-focused thinking is when your brain is stuck in the past. It uses the past to determine your future, which is the result that you now have, you know? Then the results you will have in the future. This is actually the way the brain works. It’s important for you guys to know that the human brain works this way. If you’re a past-focused thinker, then your brain is working exactly the way it’s evolved to work, that’s the truth.

What we believe is based on our past and that’s the way the brain is, it’s up to us to change, to rewire it into future-focused thinking. Because when we’re kids and we don’t have much of a past, our brain is really focused on the future. You know, we have these amazing imaginations that we wonder about what it’s going to be like to be an adult and we want to grow up so fast, that we imagine what we want to be and what we want to do when we grow up.

Because the brain hasn’t created a firm belief system about ourselves, we don’t have much of a past to rely on that says, “This is who I am.” Once we get to that adulthood, and it’s different for everyone, you know? It could be in the late teens, it could be early 20s, it could be even a late 20s but at a certain point, you kind of stop, we stop looking into the future and we begin forming this belief about who we are, what we’re capable of, and the way the world is.

These beliefs, these limiting beliefs, they tell us, they kind of remind us what we’re capable of, what we’ve done and where we’ve been. Past-focused thinking is always going to limit your capability, it’s going to limit your capability of what you’re able to do in the future based on what you’ve done in the past. If you are a past-focused thinker, if you ask a past-focused thinker what their plans are, they usually don’t have any idea, right?

They’re being defined by who they used to be without taking control of who they want to be. You can tell when you’re working with someone who is past-focused, just by listening to the language, right? Listen to the way people talk, listen to the way you talk. When you’re talking to someone, listen to the words you’re saying because the words you’re saying will include what your brain is telling you, the way your brain is thinking.

Past-focused thinkers will say, “That’s just how I’ve always done it,” right? “Or that doesn’t work for me, I’ve tried it.” Or, “I’ve had this issue my entire life.” We hear that one too. I hear, “This is just how I am.” Or, “I’m not the kind of person who can do that,” right? Or this one, “I’ve always been overweight, it’s just who I am.”

You can plug anything in there like, “I’ve always been bad with women, it’s just who I am. I’ve always been bad with money,” right? “I’m not very good with money.” You can plug anything in there but when people start saying, “It’s just who I am,” you know that they’re past-focused thinking. Probably the most obvious sentence that defines past-focused thinking is when you hear someone say the words, “I can’t,” because the words, “I can’t,” is only judging their capacity based on what they haven’t done yet. That’s past-focused thinking, right?

Tomorrow thinking is when you want to change something in your life, so you imagine yourself in the future, you create these plans, right? Of you doing something different or being a different person and then you might even start to take control of these plans, like execute these plans. But eventually, you resort back to your familiar comfortable lifestyle and it’s the desire to be someone different, right? To think about tomorrow.

But what the brain is saying is, “I’ll be ready to start tomorrow,” and you know, you may not even actually be conscious of it, or you know, the brain may not be loud enough that you can actually hear it but tomorrow thinking is really closely tied to perfectionism and really what the brain is saying is, “I’m not good enough now. So, when I am good enough, that’s when I’ll start.” Good enough and that time of when it will start is always going to be different.

It may be when I have more education, or when I have more knowledge, or when I have more money, or when I have a better plan, or when I have more time. It might also be on Monday, right? Or tomorrow, or next month, or next year, you know? New Year’s resolutions are great examples of tomorrow thinking. What’s so special about January 1^st, right? There’s absolutely nothing special about this day guys, it’s just New Year’s Day that we’ve put on a calendar and said, “Today, we’re going to celebrate this turning of the new year.” It’s a completely arbitrary day.

But in our brain, everybody’s got all these great plans, everybody’s going to start everything on New Year’s. Check that out, if you’re curious about that, I did an episode on that, number 44. But future-focused thinking is keeping your brain thinking about where you’re going, your future, instead of where you’ve been because that’s past-focused, or where you wish you were, which is tomorrow thinking. I wish I was here. I wish I was there. I’m here but because I’m thinking about being there and imagining myself there, it feels very good, right? That’s that tomorrow place.

Future-focused thinking is thinking about stepping into where you want to be now. The first question is, where are you going, right? This is a fantastic question just to ask yourself, where are you going? Where will you be in five years if you don’t make any changes whatsoever? If you make no changes, where will you be in five years, where will you be in 10, where will you be in 20, where will you be in 30?

What exactly is it that you want to have, how many years down the road? And once you know that, are you on the path you need to be on to get there. Because a lot of times, people aren’t even thinking about their future, you’d think about yourself five years from now, do you have a very clear idea on where you want to be and how you’re going to get there? What can you change to put yourself on the path to achieving what you want most in your life?

A very quick analogy here guys, imagine a rudder on a boat, you’re on a boat and if you move this rudder just slightly, just a tiny bit right now today, you’re going to end up in a completely different location five years from now. Compared to if you just left that rudder alone. Just a minor change, a millimeter change.

It’s not as if you have to make this massive change where you have to turn the rotor 90 degrees in order to change your future, to get the future you desire. If you’re on your way to where you want to go then congratulations, hold the rudder steady. But if you want to be somewhere different in 10 years, the time to change is now, you know?

When’s the best time to plant a tree, right? The best time is 20 years ago. When’s the second-best time? Right now, right? That’s the moment, right now. How much money do you want to have in your life? Where do you want to be living, what kind of work do you want to be doing, how fit do you want to be? Lay this foundation for yourself now and then go and get what you want. That’s the future-focused thinking.

The truth is guys, even if we ran at full-focus speed our entire lives, courageously seeking and fulfilling our dreams, we still couldn’t come close to fulfilling our potential. That’s how much potential we have, there’s absolutely no way. But with belief in that, in that truth, you can always be growing, you can always be evolving. No matter how old you are, how busy you think you are, we all have the potential to tap into our dreams and really decide what we want in our lives.

Because quite frankly, at the end of our lives, we still won’t have fulfilled our potential, but it would be nice to know that we gave it our best shot while we were here. Future-focused thinking is an alpha trait. It’s an alpha trait because you become the co-creator of your own life. You are leading your own path. You’re fulfilling your reason for living.

Now, your purpose for living is to exist and you’re doing that, okay? Your purpose is fulfilled 100%. The reason you are alive is to create the life you want to live is to experience life, to experience this world with all of your humanness, that is your gift. You become an example of how life is to be lived, you get to become deliberate with this. You get to have fun, you get to enjoy life, and you get to do it with intention.

Consider what you are an example of in your life, consider what your actions, what your behavior is an example of as an alpha. How do you represent yourself on this planet, right? What are you representing? Are you a follower, are you living by someone else’s rules, or desires, are you an example of what happens when you choose to live as a victim?

Or, are you an example of someone who is living the best life that you know how and with all your heart, are you someone who never quits. Are you someone who is always making something happen? What do you want your life to be? What kind of example are you to the people around you, to your friends, to your coworkers?

I’ll tell you what, how about making your life an example of someone who overcame a struggle and took that energy and created a life that you loved, how about an example of someone who takes responsibility for yourself and doesn’t blame circumstances, or anyone else for your current life?

How can you be an example of what’s possible today? Just today. How can you help other people to do the same, can you let your life show that if you set a goal with your heart and stick to it with courageous belief and you love yourself through the process, that you can achieve anything?

That’s future-focused thinking. And you can allow other people to believe that they can be free of their struggle because they see you do it as proof that it can be done. Allow other people to go after their dreams because they watched you having fun going after yours. Show people how much energy you free up when you drop the limiting belief system, right? Those thoughts that create those negative emotions and how much power you have to contribute to the good in the world.

Now, wouldn’t it be amazing if someone looked at you and was inspired. Not impressed by what you do brother but just impressed by who you are, just by your alpha-ness, right? Just by the way you think, your cognition and the way it carries you through life.

Maybe somebody someday will look at you and say, “You know what? If he can do it, maybe I can do it too.” I believe, just my opinion, but I believe it’s more than just a choice, it’s our responsibility to elevate our alpha and to be an example. Now, that’s what future-focused thinking is and why it’s an alpha trait.

But guys, this episode is on the benefits, right? The results and benefits. I’ve got a list here and I’m just going to start out with the big one, I’m going to hit you with a big one and say, past-focused thinking looks at results and ties results to their self-worth whereas future-focused thinking looks at results as neutral data.

Let me explain what I mean by this, the analogy that I use is that when you’re in past-focused thinking, your actions are like a gamble, right? It’s like throwing dice on the craps table, you don’t know what’s going to come up and it’s either going to be a win, or it’s going to be a loss. There’s this fear around taking action, because you’re afraid of hate result of the action.

The reason why is because when you’re in past-focused thinking, you’re allowing your brain to use the results of your action as evidence to determine your worth, you know? Whether you won, whether you lost, whether you are good, whether you are bad, whether you’re wrong, all of that kind of stuff. So when your results, when the results of your action, are tied to your self-worth and that past-focused thinking, what you are doing is you are constantly creating evidence by your action to reinforce what your brain is already telling you and it is already telling you that you can’t, right?

It is already telling you that you are using the past to determine your capability over the future. It is not surprising when you take an action and don’t get the result that you want and then your brain tells you that you failed and then it is very easy to quit and give up and say, “Oh it is not for me. I am not good at that,” right? That is all that past-focused stuff. When you are in future-focused thinking, your brain looks at data. It looks at results very differently.

Rather than looking at it as like a dice throw, it is not a gamble. It looks at it like an experiment. Your brain starts to look at your actions as tests. So, you go out there and you take action and then the result you get back is a learning process. You get the data back in order to learn how to adjust your actions slightly this way or slightly that way in order to get a different result closer to the result that you are looking for because you already know what the result that you are looking for.

You are in future-focused thinking. You are looking at the destination saying, “This is where I am going, this is where I am going to get.” If I don’t get that result it has nothing to do with whether I am capable of it, which is past-focused. It has nothing to do with my worthiness or my ability. It has only to do with the actions that I took and the actions that I took need to be adjusted so I can get a different result. So, a future-focused thinking you are very much thinking in a more scientific, experimental way.

Where past-focused thinking you are thinking more of, “What is my value, what am I capable of and whether I am able to this, what are my abilities?” All of your results are very closely tied to your self-worth. Another benefit is rewriting and letting go of your past. I have done an episode, a podcast episode on this before but I want to bring it up in this episode as well because when you are future-focused thinking, you are looking at your future.

You are looking at who you are becoming, who you are evolving into, who you are growing into and when your brain is in that mode, you are only ever using your past as a motivator to create your future, right? So, you rewrite your past the way you want it to be. You look into your past, you look at all the neutral stuff, right? Look at all that neutral stuff that happened and then you decide one, what are the good things? What are the things that make me stronger? What are the things that make me capable? What are my accomplishments?

And two, of the negative things that I am looking at as negative, how can I write this in a way that makes it so that it was a benefit to me that has served me that has happened for me instead of to me? And when you start to rewrite your past like that and focus on your future that’s much easier to let go of a lot of that pain. Well, when you rewrite your past, all of that negative thinking goes away.

Because you write it in a way that serves you but when you are focusing on your future, you actually just step out of it, and you step into who you are becoming. You are stepping out of who you’ve been, and you step into who you have become. So, letting go, that is a big one for a lot of guys that come through in the Spartan Agoge program, letting go of the past, rewriting their past.

Another one is there is no more inherent strengths and weaknesses. And guys, I am not going to belabor this one too much because I could literally do an entire podcast episode on this alone. I believe that our capabilities and growth as human beings fits into a bio-psycho-social model. In other words, we have to have the right biology. We have to have a healthy structure and function of our brain. We have to have a psychology, like we have to have a certain way of thinking, a certain way of perception, of viewing the world, and then our life conditions.

We have to be presented with certain life conditions in order to be able to build-in complexity around our cognition. So, with this bio-psycho-social model of the world, I believe that human beings are really capable of anything that any other human being is capable of, as long as the biology, psychology, and life conditions are met. So, when I have people that say that human beings have certain behavioral strengths and weaknesses, like some humans are just more inherently good at organizing.

Or some humans are just basically, or inherently better at communicating, I have to kind of say, “No.” I’ve got to wave the flag on that one and say, “No.” These are learned skills and so when you are future-focused thinking you recognize that you don’t have any of these learned inherent strengths and weaknesses. Strengths and weaknesses in terms of behaviors and skillsets are only based on what you have decided to focus your attention on learning.

Or focus your focus and attention and learning and developing as a skill. If you have never focused your attention on learning how to be more organized, or learning how to communicate, then of course you might say that that is an inherent weakness but that is a past-focused brain telling you that only because you haven’t put forth the effort to develop that skillset. So, when you are future-focused thinking, none of that matters anymore.

There is no inherent strengths or weaknesses. There is nothing holding you back. There is no thought that says, “Oh I am just not able to do that. That is not who I am.” That kind of thinking goes away. But I can do an entire podcast episode on that one. So I am going to move onto the next one guys, which is you begin to prove yourself that you can do things you didn’t think you could do before, and that is a kind of a big umbrella of benefit, right?

Because when you decide what you want to do in your future and then you go out there and you do it, you are telling your brain that, “Look, you have been telling me your whole life I can’t do this and then I just go out and do it.” So you start to prove to yourself, you prove to the sentences in your mind that are telling you what you are capable of, what you are not capable of, that you really are capable of that.

I’ve got a lot more benefits here guys. I am just ramble them off like there is no more procrastination. Procrastination is resisting the moment, it is resisting the moment, it is resisting the future. It is looking at the future and saying, “I am not good enough now” right? Procrastination really comes from tomorrow thinking. You are telling yourself that right now you don’t have what it takes to get this job done. I don’t have enough information or knowledge or time or whatever.

So, I am going to procrastinate and put it on the back burner tomorrow or later on, when I do have enough time or enough knowledge. So, procrastination goes away. You are eager to get jobs accomplished because every time you take action, every time you get something accomplished, you become closer to getting the result that your brain is desiring, because it is going after that future place, more of who you already are.

So procrastination goes away. I am talking like you stop hitting the snooze button brothers. There are so many benefits. You feel like you have more time, you feel like you have more money, just because of the abundance mindset. You are focusing on the future instead of looking at the past where there is much more abundance in the future. So, there is a lot of these benefits that I could go over and list.

I want to move on and talk to you guys about two tools that I use with my students to help them shift from a past-focused or a tomorrow thinking because past-focused and tomorrow thinking they are the same thing, whereas tomorrow thinking is all about – or whereas past-focused is all about past but tomorrow thinking you are thinking about the future to give you that dopamine hit to make you feel good because in the future, you are thinking, “Oh yeah, I’m perfect” right? “In the future I will be great. I will be able to get everything done, where I have the life of my dreams.”

But now in the present, you are just not taking that action, and then when the future comes, you don’t get after it, right? So, that is when it becomes past-focused. So, they are very similar but the tools that I use, one is calendaring, and another is the impossible goal. Now, I am going to talk about calendaring first because we are actually doing the impossible goal this month in the Spartans for the year 2020.

And after I just got done beating up the New Year’s Day, I am going to tell you guys that I am preparing for the impossible goal in 2020, which will start on New Year’s Day. But let me talk about calendaring first and I have done an episode on this before. Now these were the previous future-focused thinking episodes, but calendaring is basically creating your own blueprint. It is creating a blueprint for yourself from the person that you want to become.

You look at your life, you look at your goal, and the goal has a time domain guys, all right? So, a goal is not just a wish. If it doesn’t have a time domain then it is a wish. “I wish I had quarter of a million dollars,” right? That is a wish. “I will have a quarter of a million dollars by June 30^th” is a time domain. That becomes a goal. So, when we talk about goals, we have that time domain and when we have a time domain, when we have an end point, what we can do is we can work backwards and say, “Okay, this is where I want to be, what do I need to do? What needs to happen? What is the change that I need to make between the person I am now to the person I need to be at that time?”

With calendaring what you do is you go through and you decide what that is, and you look at all the math. You look at all the actions, all the force times distance that you take, and you set up a to-do list, and you set up obstacles where you let your brain loose on all the reasons why you won’t get it done, and then you set up strategies for those obstacles from your alpha state. Then you set up your calendar so that everything is accounted for, which really freaks out most people, honestly, because you are looking at your calendar like, “Well, there is no gaps.” Of course, there are no gaps because gaps in your calendar lead to distractions. That leads to the beta condition, right? That leads to where you are now, you are back in your past-focused.

When you are on your calendar, you’re honoring your calendar. You set that up and you stick to it. you are stepping into the shoes of the person who has achieved the result that you are looking for at the time when you set that time to manage your goal because you are doing the steps. You are taking the action. Now managing your mind and managing your emotion around the moment and being in that present, in that space of time, that’s cognitive mastery and emotional ownership.

But setting up your calendar as a blueprint to getting there, helps you with that future-focused thinking, helps you setup a path and then, walking the path is where you get into coaching, that’s where the coaching helps, that’s where the cognitive mastery is the goal of movement from where you are to that future-focused place. Your future self.

The impossible goal is very similar but it’s a little bit different and that’s why it’s a little bit for longer, it’s a little bit longer goals. The calendaring is going to be done throughout the year 2020. Everybody that’s in the Spartan program is going to be calendaring throughout the year 2020, they’re really going to have to be in order to become the person that they’re looking to become by December 31^st 2020. But there’s more to it than that, right?

Because from that future-focused place, remember guys, I said this and I opened with this, as a future-focused brain with your alpha state, you don’t look at the results of your actions as failures. From the alpha state, the only way you can fail is in your action line and that is by not taking action, that’s by not doing the work that’s required to become the person that you want to become.

Basically, to make that change, make that shift. There is a different pike to the impossible goal and that piece is going after failures, taking enough massive action from the A-line of the model, right? Taking action from the A-line in order to count failures in the R-line. Again, I’ve done a podcast on that more recently as well. But the reason why that one is so powerful is because throughout the entire year, you’re teaching your brain not to look at the action as the drive, it’s not the doing that’s the purpose, that becomes now the means. What you’re looking for is the ends, you’re looking for the actual result, because a past-focused thinker will fear the action, they will look at the action as the ends.

Their brain will be stuck in the action, they’ll say that they’re worried about the result, right? But it will be the action that they don’t take, so they’ll actually end up failing before they even get a result. Because they won’t take action. When you make that shift, when you practice looking at the results rather than looking at the action, then you’re eager to take the action.

Because the action’s the only way to get the result and that’s when you start to shift your brain, that’s where you start to be excited about getting results because it’s no longer about failing. Your result is not determining anything about you, it’s helping you to determine how you’re going to achieve the result that you’re looking for, right?

It’s helping you to determine success, rather than telling you something about who you are, which is that past-focused brain that we’re making that shift out of. We’re rewiring the brain to instead look at those results as how to make changes in your action to get the success you’re looking for.

Guys, I’m going to leave you with that. That is the first of four results that you get from cognitive mastery and emotional ownership. Future-focused thinking, results production, living the life of your dreams. I’ve said it in many different ways but really, that’s what it is, future-focused thinking and if that interests you, in fact, if the impossible goal interests you, there’s still time left to get involved with that. This podcast is coming out now, looks like December 13^th, right? It’s mid-December.

You guys can get involved with the Spartans now and you still have plenty of time to setup your impossible goal and start looking at your failures for the first quarter before January first begins. It’s an amazing process, the impossible goal, it’s an amazing program, the Spartan Agoge program. If you have any questions about that, if you want to take a further look at that or deeper look at that, go to my website, thealphamalecoach.com. Make sure you put in the THEalphamalecoach.com and right at the top there, it will say, “Spartan Agoge program.”

You can also go to elevatedalphasociety.com/elevatedalphasociety, that’s where the website will take you, that says everything in there about the Spartans and you can also get a 45-minute free consultation call with me. If you have any questions about the program or you have any questions about causal coaching and you want to give it a try and you want to see if you got something you’re struggling with and you want to see how causal coaching, how cognition management, cognition mastery, will change your life.

Have an amazing week my brothers. We are getting very close to the holidays, we have three more episodes on the results of cognitive mastery and emotional ownership, and until I see you next week, elevate your alpha.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:30:49.4] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoyed what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset, at the alphamalecoach.com/unleash.

[END]