WHO IS YOUR FUTURE SELF? FOOD FOR THOUGHT
One of my favorite quotes is by Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach: “Always make your future bigger than your past.” As some of my friends are retiring and winding things down, I think about Dan’s words, my future self, and all the possibilities before me. In other words, I’m not retiring anytime soon. Reinvention is more like it. I’m actually in the process of an Identity Upgrade. You might wonder — what’s an Identity Upgrade? The best way for me to describe it is to say that it’s what you want your future self to be. How many times have you looked in the past to see the person you were, and how often do you look to the future to see the person you want to be? It’s so much easier to look at the past than the future, and see who you were versus who you will be. With an Identity Upgrade, you’re looking to the future to the person you want to be. I don’t mean casually looking to the future and wishing you could be better. I mean actively pursuing — that this is the person I see myself as, in the next year, three years, or whatever years. Even though I’m in the middle of an Identity Upgrade, I didn’t know there was a name for it. Then one day while meeting with my business coach and friend Jennifer Hudye, she told me the name. In the business Michael and I have, I’m lucky to have seen so many people make that Identity Upgrade (also without realizing there was a name for it). People will come into our world wanting to become a tax resolution specialist or expand their existing tax resolution business, and from my side, I watch the transformation happen as some take classes to become an Enrolled Agent, while others find a way to exit their tax prep business to focus solely on high-value tax resolution clients. “How many times have you looked in the past to see the person you were, and how often do you look to the future to see the person you want to be?”
It’s a wonderful feeling to see how many people have achieved their goals and become the person they want to be, and knowing Michael, our team and I have been a part of making that happen. It’s also easier to make that personal upgrade when you’re doing it with a coach or in a community of like-minded people. For all of the achievements in my life, yes, I’ve done the work, but I couldn’t have achieved the success I have without the guidance of others who were experts showing me the way. Working with Jennifer, one of the things she helped Michael and me create was a Vivid Vision for our company three years from now. We created it and shared it with our team, and with every decision we make going forward, we ask ourselves: Does this align with our vision? If it doesn’t, we don’t pursue that opportunity. The same is true with an Identity Upgrade. I have an idea of what I want my future self to be, and then I take action to make it happen. For example, one of my Identity Upgrades is to be more focused on my best health for the future. I’m a person who eats healthy and works out, but in the past few months, I’ve been even more focused on my future health. A few of the things I’ve been doing include consciously setting goals to drink more water and take more steps, and I even joined a program called OsteoStrong, specifically designed to make sure I keep my balance and muscle strength. With every decision I make for my future health, I ask myself the same question I did when Michael and I created the Vivid Vision for our business: Does this align with my future self? Other Identity Upgrades are on my list; it’s not just my health I’m looking to improve, but the point is that I’m still learning, growing, and reinventing myself. In the words of Dan Sullivan, I’m still making my future bigger than my past. This all leads me back to you and my questions for you: Have you thought of your Future Self lately? How do you see yourself in the next three years? Who is that person you want to be, and what will you do to make that happen? It’s something to think about. –Roslyn Rozbruch
2 • www.rozstrategies.com
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