Want A Thank You From The Future You? [Episode 59]

Speaker 1 (00:00)
Hello and welcome to episode 59 of the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast with me, your host, Clare Josa. And today we're talking about taking actions that the future you will thank you for. This is something I talk about a lot in my work, and I want to explain what that means. I also had a really profound experience of this myself last week, and I want to share with you how you can use this to fast track changes and improvements in every aspect of your life, whether or not you're running imposter syndrome, doing something that the future you will thank you for. This is something you'll have heard me say a lot if you've hung around with me and you know my work well.

Speaker 1 (00:37)
I had a really visceral experience of this just over a week ago. I've just come back from interrailing in Europe with my family. So for those of you that don't know what interrailing is, it's basically where you pack your suitcase or your rucksack and you disappear off around Europe by train for three or four weeks. And we had a fantastic time. One of the places I really, really wanted to show them was my beloved Cologne in Germany, my Lieblingstadt, my favourite city.

Speaker 1 (01:05)
I'd lived there for a few years in my twenties, in between semesters studying engineering in Bochum in north Germany. And as we wandered through the old town, I could suddenly feel the impact that the courage the 20 something year old me has had over the over the past few decades. It was 18 years since I'd been back to Germany and Cologne, and I have barely spoken the language during that time. There's not much call for it in my work. I do need to change that.

Speaker 1 (01:35)
If you want a keynote or a fireside chat in German, I am definitely up for it with you. I have to confess that I was feeling pretty nervous as we were travelling by trains through the various countries to get to Cologne, because I knew that my family was going to rely on me to be able to handle everything that we wanted to do. Of course, most people out there no doubt speak English, but there's a really special something that happens as a foreigner on holiday when you make the effort to speak the other person's language. I was worried I was going to be rusty. I could barely even consciously remember how to conjugate a verb in German before we left.

Speaker 1 (02:14)
And as I stepped off that train in Cologne and had that first initial conversation with a stranger, it was like a switch flicked in my brain and I suddenly realised that I, as the future me, was giving that younger me a massive, massive thank you. I was thanking her for the effort that she put in to get near native in German. The hundred or more german books that she read, the number of times that she did her university homework in German and attended lectures in German, the conversations that she had with people, with friends in German, the 10,000 word thesis that she wrote on turbine impeller cavitation in German, the passion with which she embraced the vibrant city of Cologne and how much she loved living there. The courage that she found to carve her own path and to belong there when her english friends were solely hanging out with Brits in irish bars and watching Beavis and butthead on repeat in the university flats tv room. The thing is, that 20 something year old me, it wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 1 (03:22)
She didn't sit there with the ambition of I'm going to achieve this in German, so that in 30 years time there'll be a version of me that looks back and goes, well done, Clare. She'd set herself a goal to be as fluent as she could be. And every single day she took the tiny actions that got her there, even when she wasn't in the mood. There is a brilliant word in the world of yoga and meditation from ancient Sandhya called Abhyasa, a-b-h-y-a-s-a that keeping going even when you're not in the mood, even when you're not motivated. I still remember the number of micro choices I made back in my early twenties to do what was needed to take my German to the next level.

Speaker 1 (04:08)
I wasn't particularly driven or ambitious about it, I just knew I wanted to achieve it. And every single day I took the actions that got me there. You might have heard me talk about how inspiration gives us the idea, motivation gets us started, but it's consistent action and routine that actually create the change. And when there's something in your life that you want to do or achieve or become, yes, having that goal is important, but what is going to get you to the goal is the micro choices, those decisions, the micro courage you show every single day. Taking that tiny next step, having the end goal in mind, but focusing on great, what is it I need to do next to help me get towards that goal?

Speaker 1 (04:55)
So that the future you can look back and thank the current you for every time you did it, even when you secretly might not have wanted to. So the today me feels grateful beyond measure that younger me for the choices she made. Not least because my Germans snapped back to being totally fluent after 20 or more years of neglect. In just a few days, that younger me chose the harder path. It would have been easier for her to sit in the irish bars or to watch beavers and butthead with her british friends, but at the time, it was one choice a day.

Speaker 1 (05:30)
I'm just going to do this. Just read the next book, attend the next lecture, join the next tutorial. This was back in the days before we had translator functions on phones, so I was carrying, carrying around a massive dictionary everywhere I went. She made the choices, she took the actions, she did the work, even when she wasn't in the mood. And last week, my experience of wanting to thank that younger me was so powerful.

Speaker 1 (05:55)
I could almost feel the two of us existing in the same space and time. As I sat in front of my beloved Cologne Cathedral in the evening, staring up at it, being litanous so beautifully, just feeling the size and the power of that building and everything it stands for, I could feel the younger me doing that, too. And it was like it gave me a bridge across that divide. And I'd like to think at some level, that younger me could feel me saying thank you, and that maybe in some weird woo woo way, that helped give her the courageous, the tenacity, and the inspiration to keep going on the journey that I'm so grateful now that she did. This episode isn't about how to learn German.

Speaker 1 (06:44)
This can apply to anything in your life. If you think about it right now, I'm curious, what would you love to spend time being better at and how would it feel to be the future? You thanking the YouTube, right here, right now, today, for making that choice and taking those actions and getting the support that you need to develop those skills to achieve that outcome, to become that version of you. There's a lovely story. I remember, and if you know who originally told this, please do let me know.

Speaker 1 (07:22)
I'd love to credit them, but I heard it so many years ago and I'm afraid I don't know who the source is. There was an extremely talented acoustic guitar player, had given a classical music concert, and afterwards, one of the audience came up to him and was gushing with how much they loved the music and how the person just embodied working with the guitar and how impressed they'd been. And this person said, you know, I'm learning the acoustic guitar as well. I've been learning it for about ten years and I wish I. I could play like you.

Speaker 1 (07:58)
And that gifted guitar player just turned around and said, show me your fingers. The audience member was confused. What do you mean, show me your fingers. He said, show me your fingers. The person held the hands out.

Speaker 1 (08:10)
He said, no, you don't really mean it. If you meant it and you really wanted to be brilliant at the guitar. He held his hands up. Your fingers would look like mine. There's an obvious visible impact, even when somebody's been playing the guitar for hours and hours, every single day, to move into mastery on it.

Speaker 1 (08:32)
And this is the problem, is often we say, we want something, we want to do something, we want to achieve something, we want to become that version of us, but we hold back, we don't take the inspired action. We might feel inspired and we might be motivated to get started, but we don't create the habit. And that is because there's a missing link. So a friend of mine is currently reading the book the Secret now. It's a great book.

Speaker 1 (08:57)
I read it back in about 2007, I think, 2007. But so much of the book is about visualising and imagining, and it misses out two incredibly important things that make all the difference when it comes to intentionally creating your future. It misses out the fact that you've got to take action. Yeah. You can't just manifest a sports car arriving on your driveway.

Speaker 1 (09:25)
You actually need to be doing things. You're not going to suddenly wake up one morning and it's driven itself there. You actually need to take action. And there's an element that when you look at the experts and the gurus who were interviewed for the secret, for the book and for the film, that they all do, which wasn't really captured and communicated in the book or the film, is you have to release the hidden blocks. You have to do that clearing out that allows you to become the version of you that can then create whatever it is you're dreaming of, because otherwise it is like you're driving a car with your foot on the accelerator, the gas pedal and the brakes at the same time.

Speaker 1 (10:03)
There's part of you saying, I really, really want this, and I'm manifesting it and I'm going to make it happen in my life. And there's part of you going, yeah, but I'm not going to do anything to support that, because I'm not the kind of person that achieves that. So what you're then doing is giving your unconscious mind two very disparate signals at once, is do this and don't do this. And all it does is create internal conflict. So if you join me for one of my coaching certification programmes, whether it's as an impostor syndrome, first aider or an imposter syndrome master coach.

Speaker 1 (10:34)
This is something we really cover in depth. Firstly, you do it for yourself. You clear out those blocks from imposter syndrome. That meant that you were self sabotaging, holding back, not allowing yourself to become that version of you. And then you learn how to do this for others, because so often what's actually holding us back from our dreams is imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1 (10:58)
Who am I to do that? If I do that, there will be all of these terrible consequences that mean I'm found out is not good enough, or a fraud. When we take action on our dreams without having cleared that out, without having released that, without having resolved that, we're making the journey so much harder. And that is why most people never reach their dream destination. And this is why, in my natural resilience method, which is what I teach, to clear out imposter syndrome, we don't talk about who you want to become and what you want to achieve until step five out of five, before you go round that five step cycle again.

Speaker 1 (11:38)
We don't sit there at the beginning and look at what your goals are. We wait until you've cleared out loads of the baggage that was holding you back so that you can dare to dream even bigger. And when I look back at the 20 something year old me that was studying German and engineering out in Germany and wanting to become fluent, she had everything lined up there. She actually believed she could do it. She was learning from the experience every day.

Speaker 1 (12:05)
She had tutors, mentors, both professional university lecturers, but also her friends, giving her the feedback that she needed to learn and grow, so that the mistakes that she was making didn't become ingrained, they didn't become part of her muscle memory and routine. And she was putting in the reps on the practise. She knew it wasn't a once and done. So I talk about this a lot with my master coaches on my imposter syndrome, master coach training, we talk about something you might have come across called the learning ladder. And there are four traditional rungs to the learning ladder.

Speaker 1 (12:41)
And it happens with any skill that we want to learn, any kind of characteristic we want to develop, or a habit you want to change. So if you're not familiar with it, it starts with unconscious incompetence. Yeah. A tiny baby doesn't know, it doesn't know how to drive a cardinal. There's just no concepts like, not even on my radar.

Speaker 1 (13:01)
Then we have conscious incompetence where we realise we can't do something and we're aware of it. And maybe there's a desire to learn it the next rung. Conscious competence. I will never forget my first ever driving lesson when I was 17. Taking my foot off the clutch, putting my foot down on the accelerator, the gas pedal, the car moved, I screamed with shock and immediately stalled it.

Speaker 1 (13:25)
Yeah, it took a long time before I could drive, for example, with the radio on because I needed to concentrate. I was still making mistakes. 30 years on, probably too much of most of our driving is on autopilot. But it's there at the fourth stage of the learning ladder, which is called unconscious competence, where we can do something and we no longer need to think about it. And a lot of people give up at the conscious incompetence stage because conscious competence, doing something and really having to focus it on it, maybe taking some of your subconscious habits out of the subconscious, refining them and allowing them to become subconscious again, it's hard work.

Speaker 1 (14:10)
It takes effort, it takes energy, it takes commitment, it takes perseverance, it can take courage. And so most people don't. And if you're also running imposter syndrome, then every time when you're at that conscious competence stage, if you do something, if you're running perfectionism, one of the four P's of imposter syndrome, every time you do something less than perfectly, you're likely to be beating yourself up, which is going to make you hold back and never get to that next run on the learning ladder. But when you really want to do something and you've got the right support, the right how to, the right feedback, the right accountability, and you're taking that consistent action and you're becoming better most times when you try it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:58)
And you're keeping going, even when you're not in the mood. And suddenly you find that this energy starts to build, it becomes a momentum that's unstoppable. And suddenly one day you forget you are even having to try because it starts to become effortless and intuitive. And this is what I call the fifth rung on the learning ladder, one that I add in, which is mastery. This is when whatever it is you're doing, you're doing it so well that other people want to know what your secret is.

Speaker 1 (15:28)
And it brings you joy, and it brings whoever's on the receiving end of it joy as well. And it's perfectly possible to get there if you want to, if you clear out your hidden blocks, if you have that mentoring or tutoring to really deconstruct the process tiny step by tiny step, you've got the feedback and you've got a tribe around you to support you and be your cheerleaders. So I take my imposter syndrome, coaching students into mastery by giving them case studies. They hate it. Yes, I've been a professional trainer since 2001, and whenever there's any audience participation, I can see the groans, even if I can't hear them.

Speaker 1 (16:15)
Okay, so I do get it and I'm with you. But there's such a big difference between information and implementation. And it's the implementation, the practising, the routine, the learning from what you were doing and what you would improve, that moves you up that learning ladder to create those new skills and habits, allowing you to become that version of you. So with my master coaches, for example, half of the course is taught and then half of it is supported. Case studies, I sometimes encounter resistance, but when you've got a group of people all going through this together, that accountability is so valuable to just get it done.

Speaker 1 (16:56)
And when I interview people at the end of their assessment, they tell me, 100% of them tell me the difference between their first case study and their final case study is remarkable. They cannot believe how much they've grown as a master coach, how much they've integrated the techniques, the strategies, the concepts, how much more confident they feel. They tell me the difference in the results they're getting with clients because they gently, every day, every client session, moved their way through the learning ladder. They put the reps in, they put the effort in. They had me and their co students there for the feedback of, okay, so this might be why it didn't work so well.

Speaker 1 (17:40)
What could you try differently next time? And suddenly, almost before they realise they're moving into mastery. And that's just the beginning of their journey. Whatever it is that you want to be achieving, creating or becoming, there is an immense power in feedback. Having a mentor, someone who's ahead of you on the journey, who has the ability to deconstruct and reverse engineer their process so they can help you see where you could make tweaks to improve your process.

Speaker 1 (18:12)
I mean, why invent the wheel of mistakes? In the UK, we have a saying that we often teach to children when they're getting frustrated that they can't do something, is if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. The problem is, this doesn't work unless you're getting feedback. You need to have that feedback to figure out what to tweak, and then you do it again. If you keep repeating the same thing and expecting different results, Einstein allegedly said, that's one of the first signs of insanity.

Speaker 1 (18:44)
We can't see our own blind spots. So working with someone who can help you to see and release yours is life changing. But there are courses out there, whatever you want to study, that are just self study. You get the certificate just for showing up, watching the videos, maybe passively consuming a couple of group calls. But I got a question for you here.

Speaker 1 (19:06)
Okay. And you might cringe at this. Would you go to a dentist who only learned it from YouTube? Yeah. So, particularly, though, in the personal development field, I would not want to be working with someone who only learned their art from books, YouTube and Google.

Speaker 1 (19:24)
I would want to be working with someone who had that mentor, who had that feedback, who had that reverse engineered, deconstructed process so that they've got a range of tools, whatever it is they want to do to help you that allow it to work for everybody they're working with every single time. Yeah. Diy rarely leads to mastery unless you've made a lot of mistakes and had the courage to learn from them. And it is very much the slow route. But the absolute key for creating a future that.

Speaker 1 (19:59)
That future you will thank you for is my favourite italian word. It is drum roll. Basta. That is pasta with a b. It means enough.

Speaker 1 (20:13)
And change doesn't happen until we've had what I love to call your basta moment. So if there is something out there that you've been thinking, I really want to do this. I really want to achieve it. I really want to become that version of me. It's time for a basta moment.

Speaker 1 (20:30)
What would happen if you just said, right here, right now, basta. Enough. I am not going down the old self sabotage route anymore. I'm not making any more excuses for why I'm not taking action. Today is the day I start to turn this around.

Speaker 1 (20:47)
I might not know how yet, but I bet as soon as I make that decision, I have that bastard moment. Whoever I need to help me is going to show up and be there to support me. And when you take inspired action from that space, from that energy, having had that bastard moment, making that promise to the future you of, I might not have all of the map laid out right now, but today I'm taking a step. And tomorrow I'm taking a step. And the day after that, I'm taking a step.

Speaker 1 (21:17)
The future you will do a happy dance, and I'd love to hear what have you been putting off, which the future you would love to thank you for. How about having a bastard moment on those excuses, fears or worries right now. And what is the very first step you can take? There's a link in the show notes to where we're talking about this. There's also a link in the show notes for how you can join me to learn this stuff in so much more detail on my imposter syndrome first aid, a programme, or as an imposter syndrome master coach.

Speaker 1 (21:51)
If you're already an experienced coach or therapist, and I want to hear from you, what would you love the future you to thank you for, and what choice and very first step could you take on that today?