Your Future Self, the Queen
This post is the fourth (and final) in my series on the three relationships that shape your life. If you're just arriving, start with the first post—it sets the stage for everything that follows, and the series is best read (or listened to) in order.
The Three Relationships That Shape Your Life
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We've arrived at the last of my three Selves, and the most fun of them all.
But I have to be honest with you, the way I've tried to be honest in every one of these posts: for years, my Future Self really resented me. And she had every reason to.
Here's the confession. Almost two decades ago, I was sitting with my Coach, and he asked me a question that should have been easy: Describe your Future Self. Who is she?
I had nothing. I genuinely could not picture her.
When I finally reached for an image, you know what came up? A cleaning lady. I'm not joking. The only Future Self I could conjure was someone exhausted, constantly tidying up the mess my Present Self had left behind, wiping the counters, doing the dishes I'd piled in the sink of my life.
When I pushed further, the picture got worse: someone with an empty bank account, because my Present Self kept making withdrawal after withdrawal and never once checked the balance.
My Future Self was a house cleaner and a debtor. And mostly, even those grim images wouldn't hold. Mostly, she was just… a blur!
That was the moment my Coach woke me up. Because here's the thing he understood and I didn't: if your Future Self is a blur, it means you don't actually know where you're going. And in the words of the great philosopher Yogi Berra, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else."
I had ended up someplace else more times than I could count. In my twenties, that had a certain charm to it (who knows where the wind will take me!). By my forties, the charm was gone. "Someplace else" stopped being an adventure and became a pattern: my Present Self spent, and my Future Self paid.
Look at what I'd done. In the Past Self post, I learned to forgive a woman for the trades she made with the information she had at the time. In the Present Self post, I learned to parent the woman holding the wheel right now. But for years I'd been treating my Future Self as nothing but a dumping ground, the one who'd deal with it, clean it up, foot the bill. I was indulging my Present Self at her expense. No wonder she resented me.
So how do you repair a relationship with someone who doesn't even exist yet? You do the one thing I couldn't do in that room with my Coach.
You make her real.
This is the work I now do with nearly every client, and it's the gift I want to leave you with at the end of this series. You cannot be in a relationship with a blur. You can't serve someone you can't see; you can't honor someone you can't picture.
So we bring her into focus, and specificity is everything. Not "I want to be happy and healthy someday." We get granular:
What does she look like?
How does she carry herself when she walks into a room?
How does she feel when she wakes up in the morning?
What matters most to her and what has she organized her whole life around?
What does she know that you don't know yet?
What will she never again tolerate?
What has she finally said no to?
And here's my favorite:
What is she grateful to you for? What did you do today that she'll thank you for?
And don't just answer these on paper. Close your eyes and actually go there. Put yourself in her morning, her room, her body, and let yourself feel it. The more vividly you can see her and the more emotionally connected to her you become, the more you'll find yourself acting like her now. That's the whole trick. You can't act your way toward a stranger.
When my Future Self came into focus like that (and it took some time, lots of practice, and patience), everything changed. She stopped being a cleaner and a debtor and became someone I actually wanted to know. Someone worth working for.
But now I want to push you somewhere most people won't let themselves go.
When you pictured her just now, how big did you let her be? Because here's what I see constantly: people imagine a Future Self who is basically just today's self, slightly improved. A little fitter. A little richer. A little calmer. A linear extension of who they already are. And I understand the instinct; it feels responsible, realistic, safe.
But why? Why limit her to an upgrade of you? Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge, and this is exactly where he was right. Your knowledge is a record of what's already been. Your imagination is the only thing that can reach past it. So I'll ask you what I ask my clients: dare to picture a Future Self who feels almost impossible from where you're standing right now.
What has she accomplished that today's you would call a fantasy? What does she care about that you haven't even given yourself permission to want?
There's a reason this feels uncomfortable, and it's not the reason you think. Harvard's Daniel Gilbert put it perfectly: human beings are works in progress who mistakenly think they're finished. We assume the person we are today is more or less the final draft, but research suggests the opposite is closer to the truth. You will be different. The only question is whether you'll author that difference on purpose or just let the wind hand you "someplace else" again.
Letting yourself imagine a radically bigger Future Self doesn't diminish who you are today. It simply changes the trajectory you're already on.
And if the stretch feels difficult, even a little destabilizing, good!
That feeling is your identity beginning to shift. That's not a warning sign. That's the proof it's happening.
Now, there's a trap on the other side of this, and I'd be doing you a disservice not to name it. The moment you make your Future Self vivid and bold, you can start clutching that single vision so tightly it becomes a tyrant. It has to look exactly like this, or I've failed.
That's not reverence; that's just a new way to suffer.
So I hold her image firmly and loosely at the same time. I'm crystal clear on who she is (how she feels, what she values, what she won't tolerate, how big she's willing to dream) and genuinely flexible about the exact shape her life takes. There are a hundred roads to a life well lived. I don't need any single one of them to play out perfectly in order to live well.
The clarity is about her character. The flexibility is about her circumstances. Hold the first tightly, the second loosely, and she becomes a guide instead of a jailer.
And here's the piece that finally made all of this click for me, the thing I wish someone had told me in that room two decades ago.
The future isn't actually out there.
I used to think of my Future Self as a destination, far off on the horizon, that I'd arrive at someday if I behaved myself in the meantime. But that's not what she is. She's a tool I use right now. The psychologist Roy Baumeister said the self isn't a thing, it's a process, and it uses the future to organize the present. The whole reason to make her vivid isn't so you can arrive at her one day. It's so that today, in this ordinary moment, you have something to organize your choices around. She doesn't live in the future at all. She lives in how you decide, right here, this afternoon.
And that brings me to the skill I associate with my Future Self, the one that turns this from a planning exercise into a relationship.
Reverence.
I treat my Future Self like a queen. And I've trained my Present Self to serve her.
This is the great reversal, and it's the whole point. I used to borrow from my Future Self, spending her health, her money, her peace, leaving her to sort out the consequences. Now I do the opposite. I'm always asking what I can do today to make her life easier, richer, and more beautiful tomorrow. Every workout is a deposit in her account. Every hard conversation I don't avoid is one less mess on her counter. Every dollar saved, every promise kept, every moment my Present Self wins, it all flows downstream to her.
And here's what surprised me most: it's fun. This is the lightest, most joyful of all three relationships. There's no war to end like there was with my Past Self, no firm hand required like with my Present Self. There's just the deep, simple pleasure of working for someone you love and cannot wait to give the gift to. I genuinely can't wait for my Future Self to open what my Present Self is wrapping for her right now.
It's so much fun to serve the Queen!
So step back with me, because we've come to the end of the road, and I want you to see the whole map at once.
Three Selves. Three relationships. Three skill sets, all of them yours to tend.
You forgive your Past Self, laying down the war, thanking her for getting you here, releasing her from a debt she already paid. You parent your Present Self, holding the line with warmth, winning the moment in front of you, asking not just what you want but what you need. And you revere your Future Self, making her real, daring to make her bigger than seems possible, and serving her like royalty.
And here's the secret I've been building toward this whole series: these aren't three separate jobs. They're one continuous act of self-respect, and every bit of it happens in the same place: now. The Present Self is the only one any of us ever actually lives in; the other two are tools she uses to live well. Forgive the past, and you free up the energy you were spending at war. Revere the future, and you've got something to aim the present at. It's all one motion, lived across three tenses, from a single moment: this one.
That deep, lasting happiness I promised you back in the very first post, the kind that doesn't bounce around like a yo-yo with every external circumstance, this is where it actually comes from. Not from out there. From finally being on good terms with all three of the Selves in here.
So let me leave you where we began, with the question that started it all: which of your three Selves have you been neglecting? You've met all three now. You know their names, their needs, and the skills each one is asking you to learn.
Go tend the relationship that needs you most. And when you do, send me a message on the website or DM me, and tell me which one it was. I've read every single response across this whole series, and yours has shaped every word of it.
Thank you for walking the whole road with me. Now go serve your Queen.
In 10 minutes or less, you'll get a clear picture of which area of your life is quietly draining everything else—and exactly where to focus first.
For each question, choose the answer that best reflects where you honestly are right now.
There are no right answers, just your truth.
Once you complete the audit, I'll share with you three handpicked reads from my journal (or you can listen to their audio versions)—chosen specifically for the area that needs your attention the most at this time.
