You cannot get to your dreams from where you are. In fact, it’s impossible. To get to your dreams, you have to come from the place of your dreams. You have to think like the person who already has what you want.

In our journey to achieve ultimate freedom, we go through several major milestones. First, we have to change our mindsets. Then, we work on securing our finances. Take care of the financial aspect, as this is a huge part of our lives. At some point, we achieve that ultimate freedom that comes from no longer having to worry about money.

So how do you come from the place of your dreams? This is an important question to ask if you are to have ultimate freedom. This is where the idea of future memories enters the picture. When you come from the place of your dreams, you also possess future memories. What are future memories? Future memories are memories of what you want to experience in the future, after achieving your goal. It’s this anticipation of the experience that motivates you to continue moving towards your goal. Another definition of future memories is “lessons learned”. That is, while assuming the role of a person who is in attainment of your goals, you look back in reflection. During this moment of reflection, contemplate the lessons you learned to get here. This latter definition is what we’ll be examining.

Let’s Try It Now

Imagine it’s five years from now. Your finances are in a much better place. Five years into the future, you have a positive cashflow every month. Perhaps you’ve made some major investments into stocks and real estate. Better yet, you now have a stream of revenue outside of your job that provides a few extra hundred dollars a month. Finally, you might even have achieved financial independence. Pick the scenario you like best, and let’s play with that.

Have you picked? Are you ready? Here we go.

As you walk into your garage, you see something interesting waiting for you there. It’s your DeLorean time machine! (Yes, that DeLorean time machine from the Back to the Future movies.) It’s time to travel back in time. You get into the driver’s seat of the DeLorean and set the time circuits to precisely five years earlier. Accelerating to 88 MPH, you find yourself…

…looking at yourself in the Now. At this very moment, you are looking at yourself sitting in front of the computer, reading this blog article.

“Hey there!” Future You says to Present You.

Startled to hear a voice as you are alone in the room, you look up to find someone else standing in the room. Except, you are not scared. In fact, there is something familiar about this person. It takes you several moments to realize that somehow, you are staring at a copy of yourself.

“What’s going on here?” Present You asks.

Present You Meets Future You

Future You explains that you’re from the future, exactly five years from now. You’ve come back in time to help Present You get to your dreams, hopefully a lot sooner than in five years’ time.

Now that you’re in attainment of your financial goals, what would Future You say to Present You? This is the essence of Future Memories.

Here are some things Future You might say to Present You.

• It was a lot easier than you thought.
• Rather than believing you need money to make money, you just started with what you have (bootstraping).
• You hired someone to do the things that you didn’t want to do. As a result, that freed you to do what you excelled at.
• You decided, really decided what you wanted. Subsequently, that was the starting point of all to come.
• You dedicated an hour a day to studying. As you learned more and became more confident in your abilities, you started to take action.

Not Knowing the How Stops Us

Not knowing the how stops most people from ever taking action in the first place. A lot of self-development gurus like to tell you to not worry about the how. They claim that the how will somehow come to you. Well, isn’t that just a bunch of baloney?

I know what they are really saying. Don’t let not knowing the how stop you from even getting started in the first place. Just try something and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, what can you learn from it? What other things can you try?

That’s the idea behind future memories. To summarize, you get an idea that could work. This idea comes from the person who already has what you want. So you go try it. From that, hopefully comes the how.

If you don’t know what a person who already has what you want would do, then here are some suggestions:

• Study them.
• Read their books.
• Listen to their Podcasts.
• Attend their workshops and live events.
• Find a mentor.
• Get a coach.

It’s not necessary that this coach already has what you want before you can work with them. Some coaches can see mistakes a person is making but are not necessarily good at doing that thing themselves. An example would be a coach for Olympic sprinters. The coach probably cannot sprint but has worked with hundreds of sprinters and can see what a new student can improve.

As you study, start asking yourself, “What would this person do if they were in my shoes?” In other words, think like a person who already has want you want. Remember: It’s impossible to get to the place of your dreams from where you are. You have to come from the place of your dreams.

Undercover Billionaire: Glenn Thought Like a Person Coming From the Place of Dreams

In the series Undercover Billionaire, Glenn Stearns goes undercover in Erie, PA, to start a new business in just 90 days. To make things more realistic, he cannot use his existing network or massive wealth to build the business. He has to start with just $100. And of course, no one he works with can know his true identity.

As I watched the series, the one overwhelming lesson I learned from Glenn is that he fails more often than he succeeds. He has more setbacks than he does successes. Sometimes the loss is monetary. Other times, it’s health-related. For example, he suffers the loss of a major deal that would have brought him one step closer to his goal. Yet, nothing deters Glenn. Rather than give up, he keeps moving forward. He keeps trying different things. He keeps coming up with possibilities. Glenn is coming from the place of already being a successful business owner, because this is exactly what a successful business owner would do.

I mention this series as a tieback to the willingness to accept new ideas and try new things. Be ever ready to fail forward. Success looks more often like a windy labyrinth than it does a straight road. You may even take two steps back for every step forward. To bring home the point, Churchill puts it best when he says, “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

Visualize Coming From the Place of Your Dreams

A great way to practice coming from the place of your dreams is visualization. Start by asking yourself how a person who already has what you want lives. For example, what are some of the things he does? Who are her friends? What does he do for a living? What kind of house does she live in? What kinds of books does this person read?

Really become engaged with your visualization, to the point you can see the color of the tiles on the kitchen floor or feel the texture of the carpet in your living room. Then, if it’s possible now, go do some of those things. Capture the feeling of having it now. That feeling is a great motivator. It helps you build more future memories or provides the emotions needed to solidify your mindset so that you can work towards what you want. For this reason, vision boards are great tools for helping you increase the likelihood of getting what you want.

Some of you may have tried visualization in the past. As a result, you may even have declared it to be a waste of time. I, too, have had these thoughts. Unfortunately, many people spend their days and sleepless nights thinking about what they do not want. Often, they imagine this to such great detail that they are not surprised when they finally do get what they do not want. Then they declare, “See! I told you this visualization stuff is a bunch of nonsense!”

I don’t know about you. If I’m going to get what I do not want anyway, then I might as well spend my time and energy thinking about what I do want. The latter is more fun and leaves me feeling better throughout the day.

Conclusion

It is important to learn how to build future memories so that you can come from the place of your dreams. Through this activity, the how is often revealed to you. Then, you may start taking action towards building the future you want.

Look back from where you are Now. Go back 5 years in time. Every thing you have Now started with a strong desire some time ago. Five years ago, you didn’t know how to go about getting it. Yet, you took action, tried different things, and eventually got it. Perhaps you just really decided. As you made small successes, your knowledge grows. Your confidence increases as a result of becoming better at something. You probably even realized it was so much easier than you thought. In the same way, you can use this as a lesson on practicing building future memories. You can use the same process to get what you want five years into the future.

The Final Brain Sneak

One last thing: How far you get ahead in life is determined by the image you hold of yourself. This is greatest thing I want you to take away from this article. Some people cannot ever envision themselves as “that guy (or gal)” or a winner. They cannot see themselves living a good life. Ever wonder why in a competition with friends, the same people are always up top? Winners love winning, and losers love losing.

As the saying goes, when you see it in your mind, then you will hold it in your hands.

That’s why I think this exercise of having Future You pop in to visit Present You is important. If you can see Future You already in attainment of your dreams, then Present You will get there.

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The best financial advice in the world will fail you if you have bad mindsets around money. What are some examples of bad money mindsets? Investing is only for the rich. I can never afford that. Money is the root of all evil.

I had many of the same money mindsets that you may now have. Through a concentrated effort, I was able to change most of these around. In the process, I transformed from a clueless guy–feeling like he’s barely making it–to someone who’s achieved a measure of financial freedom.

I invite you to get your free gift, 7 Money Mindsets Preventing You From a Positive Cashflow, today.

Discover the 7 most common myths (false beliefs) around money that’s keeping you from having more money!