Where do you see yourself a year from now?
This first is a typical future directed question you may be familiar with. They come with easy answers and usually not very insightful or productive. Responses may range from the – I don’t know. The same place. A job or house that’s a little bit better? Maybe I can see myself with more muscle or less hair? Sometimes the geography changes or there are new figures populating the picture or absent from it.
It may get someone to start thinking intentionally of their future – if they haven’t. It can cause a bit of anxiety in others if they are prone to feeling powerless, lack sufficient drive, or externally located. It is not a useless question but is still hardly a tool for self reflection non-beginners.
How is your relationship to ‘year from now’ future version of you?
Now this second question is a psychodynamic question. It is multi-dimensional. It requires multiple perspectives to view psyche in various relational dynamics. In this case: the self, the future, the relationship between self and self, the relationship to the future, the future self relationship to the present self, the present relationship to the future self, the present relationship between present self and time, the future self relationship between self and time . . . . . you see how far this type of dynamic questioning can potentially go.
So go ahead and ask yourself what is your relationship with this future version of you about? What are your specific ideas about who you might one day become? Are you afraid of this person? Would you be looking to them for advice? Will they be looking at you with gratitude or resentment?
Of the hundreds of different answers I have heard over the last decade one stands out as the most common. I don’t see them, I’d be nervous to talk to them. Most of us who feel judged by our future settle into patterns of behaviors and thoughts in order release ourselves of this judgment. We do not experience the ideal that we environ but rather we encounter the gap between us and them. That distance is a harsh judge.
When we judge ourselves for not yet being ideal- we have focused on what we are not. Focusing on what we are not will be one of those never ending negative endeavors. For you will never exhaust in finding something that you are not. There is no where to arrive.
A better relationship to have with future version of you is guide. It is an acknowledgment and owning present you’s relationship with . . . well, you. Carl Jung wrote of a term called circumambulation, which is essentially a process on the path of Individuation; the apex of psychic and spiritual development. It recognizes in order to find Self, one can shift their orientation from a linear striving toward future, instead to a Timeless circling and surrounding of center.
What this is implying is that you are in fact already complete as a human being, here and now. You can see yourself in the present without need for improvement AND still engage in a process for developing a truer version of you. The encircling reveals and unravels deeper and deeper layers of self-discovery. Circumambulation is emerging out from your center, revealing yourself to yourself.
This type of intra-personal dynamic leads through radical honesty a radical change. It allows the progression of continuous improvement while holding a grounding in the present – in as accurate a reality as can be accepted. It is from that place and only that place can actual change occur. A relationship with yourself that is free of judgment, drive feeding, conscious revealing, intentional, and specific
