Stop Chasing Success: Become Your Future Self Now with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

YAP Fam, we made it. This is the grand finale of our mental wealth series. All month long, we've been talking about how

to build a successful business without burning out, numbing out, or losing yourself along the way.

>> [music] >> And today's episode ties it all together. I'm sitting down with

organizational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Hardy to talk about how to stop chasing an impossible version of success

>> [music] >> and start becoming the person you actually want to be. If you haven't yet,

head to yapmedia.com/mentalwealth [music] to download your free mental wealth

playbook. Your final challenge is the I Am, I Should [music] Future Self Worksheet, where you'll get clear on who

you want to become and start [music] acting like that person today. Let's close this out strong, YAP Fam, and get

right into it. Ben, welcome to Young And Profiting podcast.

>> I'm happy to be back. >> I heard you say on another podcast that when you released that book in 2018 that

you came on my podcast to talk about willpower doesn't work. You actually considered it a failure because it

didn't reach New York Times bestsellers list. And that's like every author's dream, but nonetheless, like when you

came on my podcast, I remember thinking it was such a big deal. You were such a big blogger. And we we had scored

Benjamin Hardy like episode number seven. And so, you were a big deal to us and to the outside world, but inside you

felt like a failure. So, I want to talk about that. I think it will give us some color on your your you know, your

journey and help us understand the gap in the gain concept as well. >> Absolutely. No, I mean, I think it's a a

a beautiful interesting place to start. So, I guess for a very for a little context,

um I would say in 2000 ever So, I served a church mission from 2008 to 2010.

And like going on that that experience was very transformational for me. I grew up in a really intense environment. We

probably even talked about it. But ever since I came home from that experience in 2010, I wanted to be a professional

author. So, like that was a dream of mine, but I didn't know what form it would

take, and I didn't really start approaching that goal into until 2015. So, from 2010 to 2015, I went to school,

studied psychology, got into a PhD program uh for organizational psychology. And

then once I was in my first year of my program, that's when it really hit me, and I got

really committed, I guess you could say, to my future self of becoming a professional author. So, this was early

2015. You know, I was very already very excited, very motivated, um and I had already learned a lot of

success principles, I guess you could say. And so, I actually grew very fast as a blogger, and that's what took me to

the medium.com, and I grew, and and so essentially, over the from 2015 to 2017, I grew enormously as a blogger

and was able to get a book deal and be able to start providing for my family. I mean, that was essentially my dream was

to become a professional author and to be able to provide for my family. At the time, my wife and I had three foster

kids. We've adopted them since, and etc., but so essentially, I got a small multi-six-figure book deal to write a

book. I'm living my dreams. It all happens way faster than I thought. Into early 2018, honestly, it was March of

2018, the book comes out. >> Mhm. >> And I did have way in my head, like I'd

built everything up in my head that I it needed to be a certain level. It needed to be a New York Times bestseller. And I

admittedly as well threw so much money at it. Like that to early 2018 was the first year I started to make

like pretty dang good money, and I threw a lot of it at that book. And I was just throwing everything, kitchen sink at it.

And yeah, it just didn't end up launching and exploding the way I thought it

would. Like I had just expected it would go a certain way because most everything to that point in terms

of like my writing and my growth just it was all going very, very well. >> Mhm.

>> And so, yeah, it didn't hit the goal, and for probably 4 or five months I was in a very deep depression, very deep

slump. Um and kind of back to the idea of the gap

and the gain now, it's kind of funny that I launch a book. I I'm a I mean I'm a

professional author. I release my first book. Like I've never written a full book before. I release this book and

to my publisher, they were very happy with the results. But for me in my head, I just totally felt like a loser

and I guess I've learned to measure my own self differently. Um So the gap and the gain is something I learned from Dan

Sullivan. I read his little book on the subject maybe actually was in 2018. I read his little book and I was still

blogging back then and it was just an idea I loved and I thought if I ever get a chance to write

books with Dan Sullivan, I'm going to make this a major book. And the idea is very simple. I mean it's a it's

basically the idea that as a person you're you're we all feel happy or sad based on how we measure ourselves and

how we measure our experiences. The reason I went into a deep depression after I had made a monumental

achievement. I mean I'd never done that before. It was totally new and yet I felt like a

loser cuz I was in the gap. I was measuring what was against what I thought it should be, which isn't ideal.

When you're in the gap, you're measuring yourself against your ideals, which are always changing, always moving. Whereas

the gain is the opposite. You measure yourself backward against where you were before. Truth was is I was way further

than I'd ever been and if I was just measuring myself backward against my past self competing

only against my past self I was radically further than I ever was and I just did something huge. And so

I've just I'm I'm learning and I've learned over the years to be more in the gain and it it it's a far more

enjoyable, far happier uh experience. >> Yeah, and I'd love to kind of dig deeper

on this. If you can help us understand the difference between ideals and goals and why that matters with all this.

>> So ideals are very they're very ephemeral. Like, they're not actually tangible. Like, and so like

how how I learned it from Dan is ideals are like the horizon in the desert. Like, you can see them out there. And

like but every time you take a few steps forward, the horizon keeps going. And in America, we're actually trained to

always be pursuing happiness. That's even in the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness. And so, we're very big on ideals in America, which is good. Like, it's good to have ideals. It's good to

be idealistic. There's nothing wrong with ideals. The problem is is that they're immaterial. Like, I think a

definition of ideal is whatever you whatever you believe is perfection. So, when you're in the gap, you're literally

measuring yourself against your view of perfection. But back to the idea of the horizon,

that view is never-endingly changing. Like my former self would have felt like it

was perfection just to get a book deal. But then once I got there, the ideal changed. The horizon moved. And now And

so, if you're always measuring yourself against a moving target and also a moving target that by definition is

unreachable. You can't actually reach an ideal. It's an ideal. But if you're always measuring yourself against it,

then you never feel like you've moved anywhere. And that's that's that's actually why we wrote the book is

because high achievers by nature have huge ideals, but they also usually measure themselves against them. And And

our culture is trained that way. Social media trains us to have ideals and to always be comparing ourselves

externally. And sometimes ideals are other people. Um but if you're always measuring yourself

against something that's way up ahead and also something that you can never actually reach, then what that does for

you internally is it feels like you've never made any progress at all. It also It also devalues everything you've done

to that point. And so, whenever [snorts] you're in the gap, it does not matter how much you've

achieved. It doesn't matter if you're living way, way, way beyond the dreams of anything you ever thought you would

do, you actually feel like you've made no progress at all. And you feel like a loser and you've devalued not only your

current self, you've devalued everything that got you here. And so ideals are beautiful, they're just not a they're

just not useful as a measurement tool. They're they're useful as a as a direction tool. Goals are far more

concrete. Obviously, you can have goals that you set that move you toward your ideals. Um

And so goals are are specific, they're concrete, they're they're mile markers on a journey. Uh and then the useful

thing to do with your goals is to obviously become increasingly intrinsically motivated towards the

goals you set and even the standards you set for yourself that they're less about what anyone else thinks, what anyone

else wants. Um and you actually get better at doing that when you just start measuring your progress backwards. So

like I'll set a goal for myself, I've got huge goals for 2023, but in terms of where I'm where I'm

measuring myself and in terms of my benchmark, like my benchmark for 2023 is what I accomplished in 2022. Like I

accomplished some cool things, but I'm using that since since it's tangible. Ideals are

not tangible. Like I have concrete evidence of what I did in 2022, and I can use that not only to propel me

forward, but I can also use that to say, "What do I want to do that's even going to be bigger and more exciting?" So

>> Yeah. >> you can just measure yourself backwards and use that as the baseline for what

you can do. >> Yeah, so I hear you saying a couple big ideas here. The first one is ideals are

moving target, you're never going to get there, so you're never going to be happy trying to go towards those ideals or

because you're never going to actually achieve that. You can't actually achieve your ideal and it's always moving

further and further as you become more successful, right? Second is comparing yourselves to other people, that never

helps in terms of our mindset or happiness. And then I hear you saying that goals can be tangible and you can

have mile markers and it's okay to have goals, but you need to make sure that you're judging your progress on those

goals based on your past, not necessarily how far you are from your ideal place, right? I know I probably

didn't say it as good as you, but that's basically what I'm gathering. >> it down beautifully. I I think that this

is one of the main problems with the narratives. Like there you know, there's a lot of narratives about how you

shouldn't have goals. Um obviously, I think it's impossible to not have goals. Um

I think human beings are we we can't not have a goal. Um that's part of being intentional. Um

but the problem is the measurement. I mean, even if I had hit my goal, >> Mhm.

>> I would have gone into the gap. I would have moved the target. So, even if I had hit the New York Times best

seller list, >> Mhm. >> from a gap perspective, I still would

have felt terrible about myself because I would have moved the target. The target would have been, "Well, why

wasn't I on it for 4 weeks?" >> Or why wasn't I number one New York Times best seller, yeah.

>> Yeah, or why didn't I hit number one? So, it doesn't even whether you hit the goal or not doesn't even matter. If

you're in the gap, it will never have been enough because the target will keep changing and you're measuring yourself

against something that's immeasurable and something that's external and always changing. And so,

yeah, whether it's other people that you're measuring yourself against or whether it's just your inflated ideals.

Um that's the point is is that you won't be happy hitting or not hitting your goals

if you stay in the gap. Um and that's just that's just the key. >> Yeah, so then on the flip side, let's

talk about gain thinking. What does that look like to have gain thinking or to practice gain thinking?

>> So, I look at gain thinking two ways. One is is it's a way of measuring your progress and measuring your experiences.

So, for me for example, like I have I've had a number of experiences already today. Like even

just to this point. And some of them went to plans and some of them didn't go to plans. Um but if I'm in the gain, I'm

measuring what actually did happen. And I'm measuring myself backwards. I'm only measuring myself against where I was

before. And the truth is is I'm always ahead of my past self. Even if things go backwards seemingly, like even

if I lose my leg in a car accident, right? Like a lot of bad things can seemingly happen, but if you're in the

gain, you're finding the gains and you're creating gains from your experiences.

And so you're [clears throat] I I consider it you're squeezing as much juice out of your experiences as

possible. You're also always choosing to become better as a result. No matter what happens to you,

you're in the gain, so everything ultimately happens for you. So I guess it's really two big ideas. One is is

it's measuring yourself backward against where you were before, and always realizing

that you're further than you were before. And that the only thing I'm actually measuring myself against is

myself, which is where I was before. So that's number one is just measuring yourself backwards. The second one is

literally turning everything that happens to you into something that happens for you. So anything, no matter

what it was, you can actually gain and grow from it. And if you do, then you're always getting better. You're always

learning from every experience. Whereas if you're in the gap, then your past becomes a problem. Like

that's from like a psychology standpoint, what you need to be happy in the present is you need a happy past and

an exciting future. And the past is literally a meaning. And so the gain is just a lens of using your or of

transforming your past into more gains, more learning. Uh even from your most extreme traumas, you can learn to turn

those into gains so that you're constantly better and even grateful for them, which is what psychologists would

call post-traumatic growth. So it's really just those two things. I'm only measuring myself against myself

backward, and I'm literally turning every experience into my gain. >> Mhm. And we're going to touch on

post-traumatic growth later on in this interview, but first I want to get into your new book, your latest book, Be Your

Future Self Now. I think this is a great tie-in. So in your book, you say it's not about becoming our future selves,

it's actually about being our future selves. Now, I think we just got a good foundation of gap thinking, gain

thinking. Here you are telling us basically, let's not compare our progress to our ideals, but you're also,

you know, not opposed to the fact of thinking in a futuristic way or thinking about our future. It's not like you're

saying, "Don't think about your future at all." It's just that you've got to be your future self. It's not about

becoming your future self in the gap between where you are and you know, and where you want to be. So, tell us about

how future self is sort of related to this gap and gain thinking. Because I I have a feeling that you really got the

inspiration from this book from this other book after reading both of them.

>> So, this is a really interesting concept in psychology. So, like when

typically the way we look at time is we look at it as past, present, and future. And we kind of look at it sequentially.

So, and we also look at it chronologically. Like my past is behind me. There's There's no way I can get

back there. My present is now and the future's up ahead of me. I can never I'll never actually be able to go in the

future. All there is is really now. From a psychology standpoint, that's not how psychologists view time. Psychologists

don't view time sequentially. We actually view it holistically. So, what I mean by that is is that the past is

currently existing in my life. Like how who I'm being right now is a complete amalgamation of of my views of my past,

my experiences of my past. We even today we're talking about us having a conversation 4 years ago, right? And so

like my past is of course influencing me right now and my narration of the past, my story of the past, the feelings I

have toward my past, the anchors I may have in my past that are unresolved, call it trauma or whatever. But also my

goals are heavily influencing me. I mean, anyone who's listening to this is

listening to it for a reason. They're listening to it because they feel like this is going to help them contribute to

their goals or help them move forward in their lives. And so, everything about my life right now is a combination of my

feelings and my perspectives of my past and also my excitement or my feelings towards the future.

And so they're certainly not mutually exclusive in terms of being in the gain but also

having a future-oriented mindset. Most people who read The Gap and The Gain are very future-oriented people. The gain

The gain doesn't stop you, I guess, from having a future. Actually, in my perspective, whenever I'm living in the

gain, it actually helps me to be more it helps me to have a future that's more genuinely coming from my own self rather

than something that's coming from the outside. Usually, people's goals and their called their standards or their

ideals actually were fed to them by culture, by society. They They don't even, you know, the future that they

want actually isn't genuinely intrinsically motivated. And so, for me, tapping into the gain just helps me to

stop worrying about the outside world as much, stop competing with other people. Um

And so, in terms of future self um I guess I'd say in simple terms, we all have a future self.

>> [snorts] >> What the research shows us is that most people, especially the older they get,

they stop thinking about their future self very much. Most people, probably 30 and above,

assume that even their future self 10, 20, or 30 years from now is mostly going to be the same person they are today.

So, most people don't have huge imagination towards their future self. What the research does show is that your

future self is going to be a wildly different person than you think. Even in 5 or 10 years from now

it's going to be hard to fully predict who your future self will be, but if you start imagining it, start thinking about

it, and importantly getting really connected to your future self, who you want to be in the future you can then

start using, obviously, your vision of your future self to guide and direct who you're going to be today, and you can be

extremely intentional about it. And so from my standpoint, the best, you know, the best thing to do is get really clear

and connected to your future self, who you want to be, get very specific about that, and then use that as, I guess you

could say, the North Star for directing everything you're doing here and now, and each and every day as you're moving

forward, you're measuring yourself against where you were before. You're measuring yourself backwards, and you're

always seeing that by increasingly living intentionally as your future self, you're always outgrowing your past

self. And I I I do this daily. I mean, if I even look at where I was a week ago,

uh I I I am not the same person I was last week. Um I've changed a lot. I've grown a lot. I know a ton of things my

past self doesn't didn't know. Um and so I'm never my past self, and I'm always growing into my future self. I I that's

kind of how I see it. >> Something that I thought was really interesting when I was reading your work

is this concept of you actually thinking of your future self as a completely different person. And I thought that was

really eye-opening because for one, I feel like you give yourself some more grace when you think of your

past and your future self as a different person. It's like you you start to feel empathy for yourself, and you're not so

hard on yourself, uh depending on what outcomes, you know, end up happening. So I'd love to understand the importance of

actually thinking of yourself as different uh present self, future self, even past self.

>> I've had some of my biggest wins, and I've had also some of my biggest mistakes. But I know that I'm not the

same person I was, again, like I said, even a few weeks ago. And so I don't I'm not mad at my past self, though. Like my

past self was coming from a different place. I'm not And so I think it's always good to have compassion and

empathy towards your former self, um because you now know so many things that they didn't know. You know, you're in a

different place. You You see things differently. And so, one, I think it's very beautiful

to recognize you're not the same person as you were in the past, and and and to have only empathy towards your past. Uh

there's no upsides to having bad bad or negative emotions towards your past. It does nothing for your future, it does

nothing for your present. Um and so always transforming your past into gains and and greater perspective, learning.

Um that is again back you know back to post-traumatic growth. It's that you are grateful. Um like the idea of trauma is

really that something happened to your past and you feel like you're now in some way insu- like inferior. You've

gone backwards. Um you're also crippled in some way because of what happened, whereas the opposite is is that now

you're empowered because of what happened. Um so I I guess that's one. In terms of always seeing your future

self as a different person, to me what that does is it propels a a growth mindset. Like

the definition [snorts] of a fixed mindset is that you've purely defined who you are based on your past and

then you assume that who you are now is who you're always going to be. So you have a fixed mindset. You don't think

you're going to change. You've You've already kind of painted your future self into a box that your future self is the

exact person you are today. And so that that leads you I mean what what the research shows is that leads to kind of

having a fragile or a brittle approach to life where you're too afraid to fail cuz you're trying to prove yourself.

Whereas if I know that my future self a week from now is going to be different, they're going

to be way more knowledgeable, they're going to be less ignorant, then that gives me right now a lot of grace. Like

you said, like I don't have to have all the answers right now. Like one of my favorite um kind of models for this it

comes from Brené Brown's book The Atlas of the Heart where she said you're either trying to be right or you're

trying to get it right. And if you're trying to be right, that's the that's the definition of a fixed

mindset. Like you're trying to prove your current self because your future self isn't going to be any different.

Like you've already you're kind of stuck. Whereas if you're just trying to get it right, I know I'm going to make a

lot of mistakes. I know I don't have all the answers now and I know my future self's going to have better

perspectives. And once I get there, they're going to be blown away at how different they are from who I am today.

But also they're always going to be trying to figure it out. Like you're always trying to get it right, and

you're always growing and changing. And so, it just leads you to not needing to not needing to have it all figured out.

Instead, you're just in a state of learning, which is a growth mindset. >> Yeah. And something that I I think is

really interesting is that it's actually hard to imagine ourselves as a future self. I think some people are better

than others, but a lot of people have trouble imagining who they are in the future. Can you talk to us about why

that is? >> The main reason that people have a hard time, and this is something that Daniel

Gilbert said, he's a Harvard psychologist who's been studying this concept for 20 years, and he actually

gave a main stage TED Talk called The Psychology of Your Future Self back in 2014.

But he said that the reason people have a hard time imagining their future self is because they don't do it. Like, they

literally don't take the time. Like, if anyone here was sitting listening, I would ask, in the last

7 days, how much time have you spent imagining your future self? How much time have you spent journaling and

thinking about it? Um my guess this is that the average listener, and this is a very like, you know, and maybe this

group would be different because this is these are young people who are actually, you know, have big visions. But I'd say

the average person who struggles to think about this, it the main reason is just because they're not taking the time

to think about it. Um imagination is very much a skill. Uh it's a skill that you can get better and better at. Um

psychologists, there's kind of levels to to seeing your future self. The first one is honestly just connecting with

your future self and having empathy for them. Just like you would want to have empathy for your past self,

a a crucial first step to connecting your future self is having is having empathy that your future self is a real

person. They're coming from a certain place, and they're being impacted by what you do. And so, like, if just like

I would have empathy for another person, if I was more emotionally intelligent, I would realize

that they're coming from a different place than me. They've got different perspectives, different values,

different goals. They're in a different situation. I would want to start by understanding. Um but then you go from

connecting to getting really vivid where it's like you now start to kind of see the context of your future self.

And obviously, you get to create that. Like your future self is going to be different from mine and I get to choose

in large part what I want my future self to look like. Um and so I think you just take the time to think who do I want my

future self to be in 5 or 10 years? What do I want that to look like? What's going to be really important to my

future self? Um what's going to be really important to them that I should be paying attention to now? I mean, so

you I think it's just taking the time to really think about it and putting yourself in the situation. Like just as

one simple example. Like let me just put myself into my future self's shoes.

>> Mhm. >> Call it in 2030. So 2030 is 8 years away.

One way of putting myself into that person's shoes is literally just thinking things through. So I know that

it's a little crazy for a lot of people, but I have six kids. And the oldest one is 15. The youngest one is two. So like

I know that my 15-year-old in 8 years from now is going to be 23. Like so that's one thing is like okay,

I'm going to have a 23-year-old son. My youngest is going to be 10. And so I'm just starting to like actually start to

think about that. I'll be 10 years older. What do I want that to look like? Where do I want to be? What do I want to

be focused on? What's going to be really important to me then? Like literally starting to put yourself in the shoes

and start to think about it. And then starting to think what are the most important things that I could do now

that would set that future self up. I know that and you can do it in shorter time frames, but it's literally just

actually putting concrete around it and context to really start thinking about it.

>> Yeah. So the related to this, in your book you say that your identity is what you're most committed to. And it's your

identity that actually drives your behaviors or or your future identity. Can you talk to us about that?

>> Yeah, so identity is such an interesting concept and I really do think it's it's kind of the driver of everything. Um but

then the question is well what drives identity? And identity is really actually driven by

what your goals are, what you're most committed to. Um and when I when I say it's what you're most committed to, it's

really two things. It's the story that you're most committed to in terms of your past,

present, and future. Like we all have a story about our past and who we were and what led us to this point. We have a

story about who we are now and we also have a story for our future. Um and so that's one commitment is the

story or the narrative you have. The second one is actually your standards. So your standards as a person are what

you're committed to. Like we all have standards. Um [snorts] like I'll give an example.

Like I was recently back home visiting home and I have a cousin who's been living at my dad's house for call it 5

years. He's He's a cousin that lives at my dad's house now and he's one of those people who plays World of Warcraft

literally like all day unless he's at work or sleeping. And actually honestly that's how I used to be. Um um like I

used to be that way um where I played video games like 16 hours a day. But it was interesting cuz I was talking

to him and I was just catching up with him and I was just asking him what was going

on in the game cuz that's kind of the main thing he does. And he said, "Well, I recently left my group, my guild."

It's a guild in this online game and I said, "Well, why did you leave the guild?" And he said, "Cuz they're just

not up to my standard. Like I I have I I have bigger goals that I want to achieve in the game and there's

there's things I want to do and I just can't do it in this group." And he's one of those people who's like at the top of

the top of the top in this game. And I just thought that was interesting that his standard for himself is really high

in the game. Like I have zero standards for myself in that game cuz it's not it's not it's not valuable to me. Like

it's not what I value. So my I have no standards there. But the question is well where are my standards? Where do I

actually care and how high are my standards in those areas? Uh and your standard does reflect what you're

committed to. So like he showed that he was committed to something more which is why he left that group cuz his standards

were higher. So, as you elevate your standards and your story, you change your identity.

And so, your standards are just whatever you hold yourself to. Um that could be in your finances, it

could be in your health. And when you raise the standards and it's a true commitment, you don't go

back below those standards. You start saying no to everything that's below those, and it stops resonating with your

identity. Like cuz your standards and your identity are pretty much the same thing. Um so, as you elevate your

standards basically, you no longer can go back to doing what you were doing before because

it just doesn't resonate with your identity anymore. Like I I there's things that I was even saying

yes to call it a few months ago, which would be unfathomable to me now. Like I

it just doesn't fit with with with what's acceptable or even with what's relevant to me anymore because it

no longer fits the standard. >> Yeah. So, basically, it's it's having this very clear, vivid picture of your

future self. And then, whenever you have decisions in terms of how you act or the things that you do, you're always being

true to your future self. And it helps you basically be able to say no more often and make the decisions

that will be good to your future self or what is aligned to your future self.

>> Yeah. I mean, when you start to make your future self the standard then it becomes a massive filtering tool

where it's like, "What would my future self do?" Or if I was my future self now, how would they approach this? And

how would my future self want me to do this?" Um we were talking about Viktor Frankl,

you know, earlier in this call, and that's literally what Viktor Frankl invited people to do. He said, "I want

you to imagine this moment that you're sitting in right now, and imagine that you had already lived it. So, whatever

you're doing, you know, let's just call it you're on your way home from work and you're about to go home from work. So,

let's just imagine that this moment right now has already passed. And you acted poorly. Like you you did you acted

the way you're you're you're about to act. Now I want you to and you're and you're

having to deal with the consequences of whatever it is you're going to do, but now you get to come back and relive it

again and you get to actually do it differently and better. Like that that's something that

>> [snorts] >> Like and so that's just using your future self as the standard. Like I know

that my future self wants the best for me and also wants me to be my best. And so if I start to make

my future self the standard, then all of a sudden I I'm going to start making a lot better decisions in the present

because not only am I am I am I thinking about what's best for me and my future, but I'm now using that as the tool for

making the best decisions now. Whether that's call it I'm at home and you know, I could be engaging with

my kids on a really high level, which is what my future self would probably want me to do, but instead I'm just kind of

spacing out like sitting on my phone. Like if I'm using my future self as the standard and my future self being what

my would would be ultimately best for me and what I value most, it becomes a lot easier to make the decision here and now

to do what's best for the present and the future. >> Mhm. And I I could imagine that if you

don't have a clear goal or vision of your future, your life is just willy-nilly, right? You're just doing

things to do them. You don't have a clear goal. It's chaotic. Um so what's the downside of not even having a future

self vision? >> Yeah, so if you don't know who your future self is in any degree or if

you're absolutely not connected to your future self at all. Like the extreme end of that and and

like you can see this, the extreme end of being disconnected to your future self is someone who has zero perspective

of consequences. And like they're like almost so they're so out of touch. Like and I've

seen this even with my kids where it's like they're acting so poorly like right

before bed. Sometimes as a family, like if they do certain things like our night routine really well, sometimes

we'll like watch like half a movie or something like that before bed. And like we will tell them

sometimes like if you go through these if you do the routine really well, we'll we'll like have ice cream and

watch a movie. Like you know, for like 40 minutes. If they're not connected to that future

self even 45 minutes into the future, like they will do absolute terrible things

that then lead us to saying nope, can't do it. And then they throw a fit. They're like they can't even believe

that they lost what they did, but they were so disconnected to what they were doing and the consequences. And like

this is what happens for extreme addicts, where like you do something and you're so disconnected from the

consequences that you're shocked when you when all of a sudden like everything's falling apart. And so

like one degree of looking at this is is like if you are so disconnected from your behavior and and re- reality being

consequences, which is what my kids were. Like they're acting so opposite to the results that

they want or think that they want, but they don't even know it. It's like are you aware

that what you're doing right now is literally sabotaging you in 10 minutes from now and you're about to throw a

fit. And they don't see it. Like that is utter blindness. Um but the other angle, which is kind of more the direction you

were going, was it's kind of like the Alice in Wonderland thing, where you know, Alice meets the cat and the

cat says you know, Alice says which way should I go? Cuz there's two different paths. And

the cat says, well, that depends on where you want to go. And she says, well, I don't know where I'm going. And

so he says, then you can literally go any direction you want. Cuz if you don't know where you want to go, if you don't

have a destination in mind, then it literally doesn't matter what you do today.

And that's that's part of I guess what you would say is being connected to your future self is once you get specific

about where you want to go, about what you want, then you can start to formulate pathways of getting there. But

if you have absolutely no direction, no destination, then it does not matter what you do here and now.

You're essentially rudderless. I mean, your future self becomes the anchor and it becomes the compass to like the

decisions you make here and now. And that's that's actually literally what all the research shows now. And And by

the way, the Psychology Today magazine that just came out in September and October was all about

um future self and about the [clears throat] person you're going to be in the future because this topic is

becoming so so big in in psychology and even in therapy. Like therapists are finding that there's really no way we

can help someone change long-term without getting them connected to their future self because if they're not if

they're not thinking about who they want to be, it's very hard to change without a goal or without a why. Like that then

just becomes behavior change, which is kind of willpower focused, and you can't really sustain that without a direction.

And so >> [snorts] >> yeah, it's it's I would say it's very

difficult to to be intentional if you don't have a future self you're working towards.

>> Yeah. And, you know, I interview really successful people all the time like yourself. I had Alex Hormozi on the show

who's like everybody's new favorite sales and marketing entrepreneur and guru. And we were talking about focus

and this idea of focus is becoming such a big theme lately. I've been doing podcasting for almost 5 years now. And

more and more it just sounds like people saying, you need to get focused. If you're unfocused, if you're

unprioritized, you're not going to really achieve extraordinary success. Like you can be successful, of course,

but to really, you know, become that 1%. Scott Galloway was on and said the same thing. And so what you're saying is

aligned to that. You know, understanding your future self is having this extreme focus of who you want to be, right? And

the steps you're going to take to get there because you understand who you want to be. And that target's always

moving, but you're always taking the actions that's going to help your future self. You talk about Mr. Beast in your

book, I believe. And so I'd love to understand how Mr. Beast used this concept to be a 17-year-old kid, no

money, no skills to one of the most famous people in the world. >> So, [snorts]

this was really interesting to me. I was shocked >> [laughter]

>> when it happened. Um cuz I was writing Be Your Future Self Now. Um it was kind of So, I wrote a book

called Personality Isn't Permanent, and I did not know about the future self research, even though like I had already

done a PhD. It was still kind of a growing, they call it like a branch or a vein of research. Like it was a topic

I'd never really heard of, and it was kind of small, but it was burgeoning, meaning it was growing. And anyways,

while I was writing that book, call it end of 2019, early 2020, I fell upon the research on future self. And I was like,

"Oh my goodness. Why have I never heard of this before? Like why have I never even seen this? Why have I never heard

people talking about this, whether it's in psychology or in self-development or anything? Like why is this

a new idea? Uh it seems like this is like the grounding of all self-development ideas and also like

psychology. Like I'm But anyways, I I knew I wanted to write a book on it. Um and so I was doing all sorts of research

on it while writing other books. And then all of a sudden in 2020, and I had known who Mr. Beast was, just cuz I mean

I like YouTube, I was watching it. You know, he's the he's this interesting figure, right? Doing these huge

outlandish videos. Uh and I was mostly watching them with my kids and just blown away by what he was doing. And

then all of a sudden in October, so it's in October of 2020, uh a video comes up, and it's called Hi

Me in 5 Years. And it's got a picture of like a younger version of Mr. Beast, Jimmy Donaldson, right? And it's it's

sketchy. Like I turn I click the video and it's it's him talking as a 17-year-old kid in

2015. So, it's it's filmed in 2015 and he's saying, "Hi, you know, whenever you see this video, I just want to let you

know like it's 2015. I'm filming this video from my room. I should be

uh studying for my history test, but I just wanted to take this minute and have a conversation with myself in 5 years

from now." And he basically just starts talking to his future self. It's like 2 minutes long. It's It's really rough,

filmed from a really bad camera. He shows where he's at with his YouTube channel. I think he's got like 8,000

subscribers. And basically he just talks about his future self. He's like, "You know, where do I want to be in 5 years?

Like who do I think I'm going to be in 5 years?" Um and he's just kind of having this intimate personal conversation with

his future self in public. So, basically what happened and you know, as you scroll way back in time

through his channel, you actually see that he did this multiple times, but he did it all the

same night. So, it was in October. It was well, you know, if you use the exact date, it was October 4th of 2015.

And he was 17 years old and he what he ended up doing, I don't know where he got the idea, but he filmed four

different future self videos. Each of them were like 2 minutes long. So, the first one was, "Where do I want

to be in He said, "Hi me in 6 months." or something like that. And so, he was talking to his future self 6 months into

the future and just saying where mostly because his obsession, which as you can see, whatever you focus on expands, he

got very good at YouTube, but most of his future self was related to like himself as a YouTuber. You know, he

wanted to be a famous YouTuber. He wanted to be be the biggest YouTuber in the world. And so, like as he's talking

to his future self 6 months into the future, he's like, "You know, if I have 20,000 subscribers, it's going

to be absolutely amazing and stuff like that. If I don't, it's going to be embarrassing." So, he did one for 6

months out, one for a year out. I think he did one one for 5 years out. And then he did a 10-year

all that night. Basically, all of those videos were only 2 minutes long, and what he did is he filmed them all in one

one place, one time. He probably took 10 or 15 minutes to film the four videos, and then he put them, you know, he set

them to go publish on his YouTube channel, but he set them to go into their corresponding times. And so, he

set the 6-month one to go live 6 months in the future, the one one one-year one to go live a year into the future, the

5-year one. And so, on October 4th of 2020, when the video just automatically went

live because he had set it to go live 5 years into the future, he actually had forgotten

that he had made that video. Like, it was a shock to him. Um, but in that video, he said he wanted

to have a million YouTube subscribers, and he wouldn't have even been able to fathom what it would have been like to

have a million subscribers. Well, when the video actually went live in 2020, his channel had like 45 million

subscribers. By that point, he was incomparably a different person. He had a huge business. He was like had a big

team. He was All of his videos were getting like tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of views. And even

since then, now, you know, he's got multiple channels, and he's doing so many things that's even ridiculous, but

I mean, he's just an interesting example of someone who was very public about his future self, not afraid of admitting his

future self. And you can actually see, when you watch his old videos before that day, October 4th of 2015, you can

see that obviously, he got really clear and committed to his future self because the

videos started changing after that time. And his growth started to like really like accelerate. And so, he's just

someone who is obviously connected to committed to his future self. He used his future self as the basis for what he

did. He was talking to his future self in public. Um, and that was obviously his identity that drove him forward, and

he continued to raise his standard for who he became and what he did. So, he's just a brilliant example of it.

>> Yeah, and what a great idea in terms of like shooting videos, uh, basically speaking to to your future

self. Um, what a great kind of a >> like no embarrassment. Like he doesn't care. And I think that's a huge thing is

to not be ashamed of your future self. So many people are afraid to admit what they want.

>> Yeah. How about in terms of like the timeline of your future self? Is there a certain Should we think about ourselves

5 years from now, 10 years from now? Do we want to think of like a range? Like what's your suggestion there?

>> So, this is the beautiful part about time psychologically is that you can use it however you want. One of the areas

and we don't have to go too deep into this in the book, but like obviously a lot of people believe in God, right? And

so a lot of people believe in their future self after this life. And like And so like obviously a lot of people

are thinking about the afterlife and they're using their views of that to dictate their decisions now. So like you

can go as far into the future as you want. You can go beyond this life if you want. You can think about your future

self there and learn about that. Um and which a lot of people do and that influences a lot of their decisions and

the meaning in their life. You can think, you know, Stephen Covey had the old uh concept of imagining your 80th

birthday party and like what you want your life to be like on your 80th birthday party. Who do you want to be

there? What do they What do you want people to talk about your life about? So like you can think way ahead and think

you know, big picture. Um you know, and expand that out and really start to think like what will really have

mattered at the end of my life? Like what matters and ideally you spend most of your time on the things which matter,

not on the things which don't. Um but in terms of hyper-practicality I think it's good to build your future

self around various timelines. Um like various important anchor moments. And so like I gave you 2030 on purpose. That

wasn't an accident. Um the reason I gave you 2030 is because in 8 years from now the youngest one that we adopted So we

adopted three kids and then we had three of our own. And the youngest one that we adopted is currently 11 years old. In

2030 he will turn 18. >> Okay. >> And so the older two will be gone.

He will be leaving in 2030. And that is going to be a big moment for me, my wife, and our younger three kids. Cuz

chances are we're going to move from Florida, like when he moves. We live in Florida. We might not, you know, our

future selves might have might have different plans. But that's kind of a huge anchor moment for my future self,

for my family's future self is like our older three kids are going to leave. Our younger ones are much younger than the

ones we adopted. So, like me and my wife have spent some time thinking about like what's going to

happen when Logan leaves. Like are we going to go become nomadic and like travel the world live in different

countries? Like And so, like we're starting to think about our future self on that timeline because there's a key

moment there. Like there's a key anchor to that. And so, like it's good to think about your future self in terms of key

anchoring times. Cuz then you can really start to map out like what do I want to see happen in the next 8 years? And like

where would I like to be when Logan leaves? Like I can really think big on an 8-year scale. Like I can do a lot of

things um between now and 2030 when he leaves. In terms of super practicality, I think 3 years in terms of tangible

goals, in terms of like if I want to accelerate toward a big progress, um 3 years is a really good timeline for

really achieving big specific things. Like, you know, you and I over the last 3 years, you know, it's been a little

over 3 years now, but like in terms of you 3 years ago, if you were thinking about like how big do you want

to see your podcast go? Like over 3 years, you can grow enormously toward a very specific goal. And so, thinking in

terms of like if I want to grow really big in a very specific direction, call it me as an author, you as a podcast,

someone in their finances, someone towards skills, 3 years, you can you can get really

specific and you can still grow like quant like 10x, 100x, 1,000x big in a certain direction. So, I I think 3

years or less in terms of really big sprints towards big goals. >> Mhm. I love that. I think that's super

super helpful. Okay, so I want to go I want to move into purpose and understanding

how purpose is related to all of this. And so, I think a good place to start would be understanding the levels of

every behavior. You say it's the what, the why, and the how. Can you talk to us about how your why really drives the

what and the how? >> Yeah, so the why is the reason for doing it, right? So,

it this is where you start to become intentional. So, as an example, if someone's listening to this podcast,

my question would be, "Well, why are you listening to it?" And the why would then highlight

what you're ultimately trying to do and what you ultimately value. Like, everyone's going to have a different why

for why we're doing this. You have a different why for interviewing me as I have for being interviewed, right? Mhm.

And so, it's important to clarify and understand what what what the why is that's driving

everything you're doing. Um and I'm of the belief that you do choose the why. Like, you do choose it,

you clarify it, but you you can scrape away levels of understanding it. But, the why is just the purpose. The purpose

is the goal. Like, what is the ultimate reason you're doing this? Um Aristotle would call that final cause, which is

basically the end. So, as an example, like if if I'm hungry, you know, like if I get up and go to the

to the kitchen and start eating, well, it's like, "Well, why did I get up and go to the kitchen?" Um it might have

been because I'm hungry, but it also might have been cuz I was triggered and I'm just trying to avoid like I'm just

like trying to avoid working. Like, and so, it's just understanding the why and the purpose starts to help you realize

what's driving your behavior. Is it Is it something you really want? You know, like when you're a teenager, maybe your

why was which again, the why is the goal. And this is why the goal drives everything you do, including your

identity. Um you know, when you're younger, the why might have been just to impress your

friends, right? And or And so there's always a why behind every action. And how psychologists frame it is is every

goal is either an approach-oriented goal where you're trying to approach what you want or you're trying to avoid what you

don't want. And so the why is always going to either be approaching something you want or avoiding something you don't

want, you know? And so it's it's it's helpful when the why is more approach-oriented. Sure you want to

avoid bad things from happening, but if if everything you're doing is just to avoid negative things from happening, um

that kind of probably shows that there's a lot of trauma that's unresolved in the past and

so you're trying to avoid a lot of pain. >> Yeah, so I I'd love if we could like just dig on this a little bit. So we're

talking about the difference between approach motivations and avoid motivations. When we approach

motivation, we're basically creating our future rather Avoid motivation is just avoiding a future we don't want and it's

better to proactively create one is what you're saying. I just want to understand what you're trying to say.

>> Well, I mean, it's good to avoid things you don't want. Like it's good to be strategic about avoiding call it bad

decisions, avoiding bad people. But if you're always just avoiding, um then then then basically every action

you're taking is a reaction against something else. Like I'm trying to not But even avoiding things is based on the

future. Like I'm you know, so I'm like I'm trying to avoid being out of shape, right? Like that could be I I don't want

to like be obese in the future, so I'm going to avoid that. Like that's one way of approaching your future. Um but it's

far more powerful and more proactive to say, "Well, what do I What is it I truly want to approach?" Like what is it that

to like direct my attention towards and focus on and create? And yeah, I can avoid landfalls along the way and I can

learn from experiences and avoid those kind of people or I can avoid those kind of dumb mistakes. Like certainly you can

avoid things. But it is very powerful to be proactive and

and kind of consciously creating like this is what I want and then to watch yourself go and get it. And and so both

are useful. Both are incredibly useful. Um both are motivations and I think it's helpful when you're trying to observe

yourself like why am I doing this? It's either going to be to approach something you want or to avoid something you

don't. Um and and that can start to highlight kind of the why. And I I guess one reason why avoid

motivations can have downsides is because if you're always just trying to avoid something, then that means that

one of the things you're avoiding is fear. Like you're avoiding going through the going through the emotions of

getting what you want. Like if you're always avoiding then you're also avoiding the hard truths. You're

avoiding the fear. You're you're avoiding hard conversations. If you're always avoiding, then that what what

that means is that you're not passing through the emotions and the fear that are going to get you where you want to

go. When you're when you're operating with commitment and courage, you're not avoiding. You're going right through it

and you're transforming through it. >> I love that. This has been awesome, Ben. So just to round this out, I thought a

good story that kind of ties into a lot that we were talking about and I know this a big inspiration for you is Victor

Frankl's life. So um you can can you tell us a story about

Victor Frankl and how he used his purpose of protecting his book to survive while he was in the

concentration camps in the Holocaust and what you learned from his story about hope and purpose and then we'll we'll

close out the conversation. >> So the reason Frankl is so important is that Frankl highlights

a lot of what Mr. Beast understood. Um but Frankl makes it even more dramatic. Basically, what Frankl shows,

and again, Man's Search for Meaning, one of the most important books in the world, he was a Jewish person who in

1942 was taken into the Holocaust, right? One of like the German Nazi concentration camps. And what he found

with people who were living in such dire situations. We really, I mean, unless you actually study the Holocaust, you

you don't even understand what I'm saying. It's gibberish right now. It was almost unfathomable how bad it was.

Like, everyone was they the people were starved, they were thrown in gas chambers, people were shot in the head

right next to you. Like, you're sitting doing grunt work for months, months, months, years and

years and years. Everything's been taken from you, even the clothes off your back. You're standing there naked,

deprived of everything, deprived of your dreams, deprived of everything. And what Frankl noticed when he was in

those situations, cuz he was a psychologist, and so like he was paying attention to this stuff,

he was very in tune with what was going on in people's heads, and like whether why some people could be resilient and

even be happy in these crazy conditions, and why some people would get desperate, lose their minds, and

he started to draw an interesting correlation, which was in those dire situations, when you're kind of deprived

of everything, and you're also starved physically. I mean, they were only given like a small piece of bread every day.

Is he saw an immediate correlation that like when someone lost hope toward their future,

within days they died in those situations. Like, their body didn't have enough sis- to sustain them. If you and

I lost hope in our future, we'd start to fall apart physically. Like, we'd probably lose our health.

Um, you know, and hope from a psychology standpoint is like air to your physical body. Like, food and air. Like, you need

hope psychologically because your who you are right now is largely dictated by your views of the

future. So, basically, what Frankl found was is that unless you had a specific goal, which is a huge aspect of hope,

without a specific goal that gave your life meaning and substance, you couldn't handle the present,

especially when it was that bad. And so that's why he always quoted Nietzsche, which is when you have a why to live

for, you can bear almost any how. And so everything he did, and he literally he layers it, and I share the best quotes

of it in Future Self, but he says, you know, when you lose you when you lose hope in your future,

you know, you're doomed. But he also said that everything we did in the concentration camps to give people hope,

or to even help them to be able to manage their mind or manage their emotions, was we had to give to them a

goal in their future which they could work towards. And he himself, you know, he literally

stated the goal that gave him purpose and gave him meaning and allowed him to endure the trials. And for him it was he

wanted to be reconnected with his wife Tilly, who was taken to another camp. He didn't know that she'd already been

killed. Who and she was pregnant with their baby, but he didn't know that. He wanted to be reconnected with her, but

also he wanted to rewrite his book, which was almost done being written when they got basically taken by the Nazis

and they took the manuscript and tore it apart. And so he really wanted he literally states this in Man's Search

for Meaning. He said, "My deep desire to rewrite that book anew and publish it allowed me to overcome the rigors and

the pain of the camps." So, when you have a why to live for, you can bear almost any how. If you don't have a

why to live for, if you don't have hope and commitment in your future, then you're not going to be very

productive. I mean, little things in your day can throw you way off, right? But for him in those situations, it was

life or death. It's literally life or death. >> Yeah, so so fascinating. I think this is

a great way to close out the interview. So, I always end the interview with a couple last questions, and then we do

something fun at the end of the year and recap them. So, the first one is, what is one actionable thing our Young and

Profiteers can do today to become more profitable tomorrow. >> Um

>> It doesn't have to be money related. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, here's what I'm going to say. It goes back to the

Alex Hermosi comment for me right now, which is I love the quote, "It's better to be a meaningful specific than a

wandering generality." And so the more clear you get on your future self and the more specific, um that

obviously takes you down a specific direction. You're not trying to be everything for everyone. Like

some of the recent decisions I've made in my career and in the books I'm writing have to do with

like becoming even more focused, even more specific in a narrow range. It's kind of like the 80/20 principle. Like

80% of what you're doing is kind of a distraction, whereas it's just the core 20 that makes sense.

And so you want to go deeper and deeper into that. Like let go of everything else. Like actually commit and go deep

and get 10 times better in something specific. Like if you get really, really good in something specific,

it kind of reminds me of that quote, "Become so good you can't be ignored." Like it but it's really about

qualitative, not quantitative. It's not about the quantity of what you do, it's about the quality of how you do it. And

that requires focus, commitment, uh and purpose. And so just commit to something and commit to

getting really, really good and unique in that thing. That's actually what mastery is. It's not about doing

something well, it's about doing something uniquely well, incomparably well.

And that takes commitment and depth, not broadness. >> Love that. Mic drop. All right, and what

is your secret to profiting in life? >> Um defining what profit means to me. Uh not everything is profitable. Not

everything is worth my time. Not everything is useful. And so defining what I value, what I care about, what

matters most, and then going all in on those few things and letting go of everything else.

>> And Ben, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? >> benjaminhardy.com and futureself.com.

>> Awesome. And we're going to stick all of your links in the show notes. Ben, thank you again for coming back on to Young

And Profiting podcast. >> I'm happy to be with you. You your future self who you are today is a is

unimaginable to who you were 4 years ago. It's so cool. >> Thank you so much.

What a powerful [music] way to close out our mental wealth series. I have to say this episode is

one that [music] I always think about. And if there's one thing I hope you take away from this conversation, [music]

it's this. You are not behind. You are not your past, and you are not limited [music] to the version of yourself that

you are today. Benjamin reminds us that high achievers often get trapped in the gap. We measure

ourselves against the ideal, the dream, the bigger goal, the thing we still have not reached yet. [music] And when we do

that, even our wins can feel like failures. But when we measure backwards, when we

look at who we were a year ago, [music] 5 years ago, or even just a few months ago, we start to see the gain. We start

to see the growth, and that gives us the confidence, clarity, and energy [music] to keep going from a way healthier

place. So, here's your final challenge, YAP gang.

>> [music] >> Go to yapmedia.com/mentalwealth. Again, that's yapmedia.com/mentalwealth,

[music] and open the future self worksheet. In the I am column, I want you to write down who you want to become

in 5 years from [music] now. And try to make it bigger than just work. For example, it could be I am a present

parent, [music] or I am a great leader, or I am a healthy, creative, joyful person. Whatever it is.

>> [music] >> And then in the I should column, write the small actions you're going to take

[music] right now to become that person eventually. Because your future self is not built

someday, [music] it's built in these small choices that you make right now, today. And as we wrap up this series, I

want you to remember this. >> [music] >> Your mind is your greatest business

asset, not your sales funnel, not your calendar, not your strategy, your beautiful mind. So, protect [music] it,

train it, listen to it, and build a life and business that your future self will thank you for.

Thank you so much for joining me on this Mental Wealth Series. This is the final episode [music] of our program, and I

hope you enjoyed it. Keep doing the work, keep choosing growth, and keep becoming the person you were meant to

be. This is your host, Hala Taha, signing off.