Would You Rather Meet Your Past or Future Self?
Would you rather meet your past or future self?
Take a moment before reading on.
Which one would you choose?
This question was posed to me by the lovely Gemma Warren in a networking meeting recently, and it provided a fabulous discussion around the table - it was clearly quite thought-provoking for everyone in the room, including myself.
I was one of only two people who didn’t opt for either/or.
I opted for both.
Here’s why…
What your past self has to offer
When I work with clients, they almost always end up engaging in some way with a past version of themselves.
And it never ceases to amaze me what a profound and powerful impact this can have.
There can be something incredibly moving about meeting the younger version of you who experienced things you may have forgotten, minimised, or simply never had the resources to fully acknowledge and digest.
Sometimes, that younger version of you carries qualities you’ve lost touch with too.
Playfulness, curiosity, confidence.
The parts of you that existed before you learned you had to be a certain way.
And this is important:
We can’t change what happened. But we can change how we feel about what happened, and how what happened continues to affect how we feel and behave today.
When we meet a younger version of ourselves with the awareness, compassion and understanding we have now, we can sometimes begin to see an old experience differently.
We may understand ourselves in a new way.
We may soften towards the person we were.
We may realise that something we’ve carried as “there’s something wrong with me” was actually a response to what we experienced.
And sometimes, simply being able to meet that younger version of ourselves differently can change the way we relate to what we’re carrying in the present.
There’s also something fascinating about what happens when we vividly remember or imagine an experience.
Our brains and bodies can respond to imagined or remembered experiences in ways that can feel surprisingly present and emotionally real.
Which is one reason these kinds of visualisations can be so powerful.
But then there’s the other direction…
Your future self
How often do we make decisions based on what feels important right now, even when some part of us knows that the decision may not serve the person we want to become?
Our future can feel abstract.
Five years from now can seem so far away that it’s difficult to feel emotionally connected to that version of ourselves.
But when we begin to imagine, and more importantly, feel that future self as a real person, someone with a life, experiences, relationships, feelings and wisdom, something can shift.
Instead of asking:
“What do I want right now?”
we can begin to ask:
“What would the future version of me want me to know?”
“What would she thank me for doing now?”
“What does he wish I could see from where I’m standing today?”
There is a growing body of research in the idea of our connection to our future selves, and how feeling more psychologically connected to who we will become may influence the choices we make in the present (see research by Hal Hershfield).
And I think this is where the past and future become really interesting.
We need both - visiting our past self and future self are equally important
The reality is, we don’t actually have to choose.
Both are important.
Our past self can give us roots.It can help us understand where we’ve come from.
Our future self can give us direction.It can help us connect with where we’re going.
But there’s something really important here.
Sometimes, our past self is the very thing standing between us and our future self.
Not because we need to fix or erase the past, but because the experiences, beliefs and protective patterns we developed along the way can continue to shape what feels safe, possible and familiar to us today.
So, if we want to move towards a different future, we often need to first create space to digest and understand some of what we’ve carried from the past.
In that sense, our past self can actually help unlock our future self.
Because when we only focus on the future without acknowledging what our system has learned from the past, we can find ourselves repeatedly reaching for what is familiar - even when it’s no longer what we consciously want.
Our nervous system can be drawn towards what it knows.
So if the future we’re trying to create feels completely unfamiliar, moving towards it can feel uncomfortable, uncertain or even unsafe.
This is why I believe we need both.
We need the past to understand what we’re carrying.
We need the future to give us somewhere new to go.
But neither one needs to run the show.
It’s our present self that gets to decide what happens next.
The meeting place is the present
The past self isn’t there to keep us looking backwards.
The future self isn’t there to pull us forwards before we’re ready.
Both can offer valuable information.
But it's the present that gives us the opportunity to choose differently.
That’s where I think the real magic lies.
Past. Future. Present.
Three versions of ourselves, each with something to offer.
And perhaps, before you move on from this article, take one more moment to consider the original question:
Would you rather meet your past self or your future self?
And then ask yourself…
What might each one want me to know?
About Neena Saith
I’m Neena, a stress and burnout practitioner and nervous system educator based in the New Forest, Hampshire. I help people understand and process what’s happening beneath the surface - the patterns, beliefs and protective responses that can keep us stuck in survival mode, disconnected from ourselves or difficult to make the changes we know we want to make.
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