I cried 😭 when I met my ghost of Christmas-future 🎄

I cried this morning. I'm not too much of a man to admit it (although maybe I'm just enough man to admit it?). I was doing a future-self meditation. I met my future self. And it was almost like I was meeting the ghost of Christmas-Future. 🎄 Except unlike that story, this ghost didn't show me a bleak future that would happen if I didn't change my ways.

This ghost showed me the future I'm building, especially as I lean into my own gifts, my own purpose, and my own willpower to be intentional with the life I'm building.

I saw my kids; fighting, laughing, and loving each other.

And I wept.

😭

I was just overcome with emotion. I sobbed. And sobbed. It was beautiful.

I also had a chance to sit down with my future self. I asked him what his biggest challenge was, and I asked him how he got through it. I asked him what he thought of my HAPPY LAWYER book, and the next steps I should take on it. And I asked him what I needed to do to become him, and what I needed to let go of in order to do that.

Is this a bit woo-woo and weird? Certainly. 🧙‍♂️ Is there a part of me that feels weird sharing this with you? Certainly.

But I'm doing it anyway. Because the message my future self gave me was that my biggest challenge is caring too much what others think. And it's true, I do. I've been watering myself down since I started doing this (and probably long before). 💦 Diluting myself in the hopes that I'll avoid criticism.

I wonder - if you've been reading my posts/emails for a while, do you think my personality shows through the text? 🤔

I assure you, it's but a fragment of my personality that's been showing through.

And I know from all of my work that to become the person you want to be, you've got to act like the person you want to be. The actions start, and the identity follows. If you're feeling next-level, you can also give yourself permission to feel the way you would feel as if you've already achieved your goal. That will turbo-charge your transformation and your journey, no question.

So this is me. 😊

The full me? Not yet. As much as I have a side that embraces this idea of a future self meditation (and future self-creation), I ALSO have a side that is an inveterate skeptic. And though that side of me is agnostic on whether I care what others think of me, it also knows better than to think that a transformation that deep will occur with a single post.

And yet there is power in commitment. A transformation (however small) takes place when you truly commit. And so here is me committing to myself, and committing to you. Because my future self shared one other thing with me. I asked him what his purpose was in life, and with no hesitation, he said:

To shine and to help others shine.

That's it. I've been working on this for years and it's never been articulated so simply.

I know there's a brilliance inside me waiting to shine, and I know there's a brilliance inside you waiting to shine. We've got so much life inside, what a shame it would be not to live it.

In one of her books, Brené Brown quotes Leonard Cohen who says that there's a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in.

I'm here to tell you that there's a crack in everything, and that's how the light shines out. 🌟

Be you.

Paul

PS. Thanks to my friend Cory (of Mental Gym fame) for hooking me up with the visualization.

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