Stage 6: Design Your Future Self and New Story

This is my favourite part of the whole programme. Now comes the good stuff.

I can remember going through this process myself. My mind was running wild with dreams and desires, the vision for the future and the person I really wanted to become. It was so energising. It felt freeing, like the weight had lifted from my shoulders and that spark of enthusiasm had kicked back in. I dared to dream, did the work, and today I am living that life. I want the same for you.

From this point on we're looking to the future. You've done the inner work: surfaced your Concept of Self, understood your Story, seen how it was built, found your core values, and released what doesn't serve the life you want. Now we get to build something genuinely new.

And because it's anchored in your actual values, rather than borrowed ideals or someone else's version of a good life, the new story that emerges here has a quality the old story never had. It feels like yours. Because it is.

Self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987) shows that the gap between your current self-concept and your ideal self is a major driver of motivation. Stage 6 works on that gap, not by lowering your aspirations, but by beginning to inhabit the identity of your future self. Mental simulation research (Taylor et al., 1998; Pascual-Leone et al., 2005) shows that vivid, emotionally engaged rehearsal of a desired future draws on many of the same brain systems as real experience, which is why it helps the new story take hold.

This is the fun bit. Grab your values (if you don't have them yet, do the Stage 4 why-drill first) and give yourself fifteen minutes.

• Step 1. Start with two minutes of Heart-Focused Breathing: slow breath, attention on the heart. You'll write differently from that state.
• Step 2. Pick one core value. Say, courage.
• Step 3. Write three I Am Statements for the person you're becoming, each anchored to that value. "I am someone who says the hard thing kindly, because courage matters to me." Present tense. Real, not perfect.
• Step 4. Read them out loud. Notice which one makes you sit up a bit straighter. That's the one with life in it.
• Step 5. Write a short paragraph about an ordinary Tuesday in the life of that version of you. Where are you? Who's with you? How do you feel at 3pm?

That paragraph is the seed of Dreamscaping. In Stage 6 you grow it into the full story of the life you're choosing, across every area that matters to you.