Forget Being Your Future Self- Do THIS

What if the version of you that's anxious, avoidant, broke, or stuck wasn't trying to sabotage your life, but trying to save it? In this episode, we explore why the identity you're fighting is actually a survival strategy your nervous system built when you had no other option. You don't have to destroy it. You have to understand it, thank it, and teach your body the threat is over. Modern neuroscience meets ancient wisdom in a conversation that will change how you relate to every part of yourself, especially the limiting beliefs and parts of your identity you've been trying to get rid of.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

I want you to think about the version of yourself that you have been trying to get rid of. It sounds harsh when you put it that way, and it is harsh, but it's what most personal development is actually teaching us. Become your future self now. Act as if. Become the person who achieves what you want to achieve.

unknown 0:24

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Sounds like somebody's gotta go. That cannot be good. And it's actually not good at all. So let's unpack that and find a better way of creating the reality that you want to live in. First question: Who is this person that we need to get rid of? It's the person who panics when money shows up and immediately finds a way to spend or squander the money. It's the person who absolutely freezes when opportunity knocks and suddenly decides, like, okay, I'm gonna organize my closet today instead of taking action on this. Or the person who agrees to things that they really don't want to do and then resents everyone, including themselves, after doing the things. I know a lot of that is familiar to me. I'm gonna imagine that a lot of that is familiar to you. Keep listening. This is all about to make a huge change in your reality. So you've probably been told by coaches, books, the entire self-help universe that this version of you is the problem. And you need to become someone new. You need to assume the identity of your future self, act as if, so on and so on. In response to that, I have something that you're gonna probably find shocking, and probably nobody has said before. That version of you that you've been trying to replace is not the enemy, is not broken, and is not a character flaw or a lack of discipline or even a sign that you're doing anything wrong. That part of you is just a survival strategy. The part of you that's been trying awfully hard to keep you alive. Give it a damn hug already and appreciate that sweet, hardworking soul. Today we're gonna talk about why this whole assume the identity teaching as true as it can be in principle keeps failing in real life in practice. Why you can't think your way into a new self when your body is still running an alarm system. And why the real move isn't destroying who you've been, it's understanding that part of you, thanking her, and updating the system so she can finally rest, stand down, and let your higher self take the wheel. Welcome back to my show. I am your host, Kristen, and this is the conversation that I really wish that somebody would have had with me 15 years ago when I was doing all the affirmations, I was writing myself checks from the universe, visualizing my future self every day, and somehow still coming up against the same experiences and things in my reality like a pattern year after year. If you've been in the personal growth space for like any length of time, I'm sure that you have heard some version of this. So, for example, David Baer calls it the law of identity, who you are being will reflect itself into the external world. Bashar says, stop manifesting and start being. Neville Goddard spent his entire career teaching people to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. And the logic on all of these is sound. If you want to create a new reality, you do have to become the person who already lives in it. But here's two important caveats that you need to know if that is ever going to work for you. Number one, when you try to assume the identity of, say, someone who's financially secure, but your body is still braced for scarcity because scarcity was the water that you swam in as a kid, your body just straight up doesn't believe you. And your nervous system is going to veto that whole entire operation before your conscious mind even gets a vote. So you can say, I'm abundant until your voice gives out. And if your body is still reading abundance as a threat, because when you were younger, having things meant losing them. Maybe when you were younger, being seen meant you were target. Or maybe when you were younger, letting your guard down meant that you were going to get hurt. So your gatekeeper is still on the job and saying no. And the identity stays the same. That same one that for decades has had the same experience over and over again, simply because it's keeping you safe in a homeostatic state, for better or worse, like it or not. Number two, you already are that person. Absolute full stop. This is your natural state where you receive love, prosperity, abundance, live life in joy and curiosity. And the problem is that the signal from this part of you, this true element of your identity, and I would argue your true identity, has simply been buried under all of the clutter and the noise from stories, false narratives, and that juicy emotional subconscious programming that happens when we are children. And then it gets reinforced in life. We find ourselves in the same challenging experiences because they are familiar and our nervous system knows how to navigate them. And this further enforces this thing of carrying around this flawed identity idea. And, you know, we carry it all through life like some big suitcase that's full of clothes that doesn't even actually fit us. And here we are, taking it everywhere we go. Today we're gonna look at why that happens, what's actually going on underneath it, and how to work with it instead of fighting it. And I absolutely promise that by the end of this episode, you are gonna want to give that version of yourself, the one that maybe up until now you've been trying to escape, a big heartfelt hug. So let me tell you a story, and it might even be your story. When you were young, you made some decisions, not consciously, not the way that we decide what to have for lunch. These were decisions that your nervous system made underneath the thinking mind. Those decisions were made in response to the environment that you were in at the time. Maybe you decided that attention was dangerous because whenever you got attention, it was the wrong kind of attention. Perhaps you decided that money meant conflict simply because every conversation about money in your house was a fight, something that didn't feel good. You needed to figure out how to navigate. And probably you decided at some point that being yourself wasn't safe. Why? Because a lot of times when we're young, being yourself can get you criticized, mocked, ignored. None of these things are personality flaws, they are universal survival strategies. And they were the smartest move to make at that time to your cute tiny little nervous system that was just trying to keep you intact in an environment where it genuinely made sense to do those things. And here's the part that changes everything those strategies worked. That's fine. They kept you safe, they helped you navigate either a childhood or an adult relationship or a season in life that in a very real way was threatening. That version of you learned to fawn, freeze, flee, fight. It wasn't making bad decisions. It was simply making the very best decisions that it could and that it needed to with the information available at the time. And if you think about it, that part of you is actually really quite brilliant and definitely got you through. So the problem is not that these things happened, that these strategies, you know, were laid down and existed. The problem is that the strategy just never got updated. Our nervous system never got the memo, hey, the threat's over. It's cool, we're gonna change gears now. And it's still running this security protocol for a war that probably ended years, if not decades, ago. And then what we end up doing is that we look at this protocol in action here to protect us, trying to keep us safe, right? And we call that our identity. And this is not a metaphor or theory. Stephen Porgis, the researcher who developed polyvagal theory, calls this neurosception. It's your nervous system's constant unconscious scanning for safety or danger. And it doesn't check with your conscious mind first. It decides moment by moment whether you are safe or threatened. So in fractions of a second, even below your conscious awareness, you are being handed an internal verdict about that moment as if it were fact, actually based on things that happened years and years and years ago. So then when you try to assume the identity of, say, someone who's competent or secure or loved, your neurosception has already decided that those states are in fact dangerous. This is great news. You're not fighting a limiting belief. I always struggled with limiting beliefs. I thought, where are they? How do I get to them? You're actually fighting a biological survival response that has simply been wired in over years and years of repetition. Here's the thing: you can't argue or sweet talk your nervous system. You cannot affirm it into submission, and you certainly can't visualize your way out of it. You can only update it. Let's touch on some hard science so you can understand that this is not spiritual woo-woo or positive thinking gone wild. This is straight up biology. Your nervous system has three primary states. There's the safety state, and this is where we have connection, creativity, curiosity, and possibility is a wonderful, wonderful state. And so this would be the version of you who's an amazing writer, a great lover, takes the risks, sees the world, sees opportunity everywhere, and is always evolving in life. Then we have the threat state. In this state, your attention narrows to whatever looks dangerous. Everything else absolutely disappears out of you. Your body's primary move in this state is literally to be looking for danger, and you can't even perceive opportunity that's actually there because your brain is filtering for threat, not possibility. And then thirdly, there's the shutdown state: freeze, collapse, numbness. Everything goes gray. In this state, you know what you should do, and you just can't seem to bring yourself to do it. And this is not laziness. This is a nervous system that has determined, hey, action isn't safe. And here's what matters in the context of the conversation that we're having today about our identities. Each of these states generates a completely different reality, felt world sense of you and who you are. When you're in the safety state, you can look at your bank account and you can think, hmm, I have enough for right now, and more is on the way. In the threat state, you could look at that exact same bank account and start thinking, oh my gosh, I'm falling behind. There's not enough. What's wrong with me? And you have this sort of catastrophic view of the world, despite the fact that they're the exact same numbers, they're just being viewed through a different nervous system and therefore feel like a different reality. You could meet someone who could be a potential partner. And with your nervous system in the safety state, you're like, hmm, got my attention. I'm curious. I'd like to know more. But if your nervous system is in the threat state, then that exact same person starts to look like somebody who's probably going to hurt you. The same person, different nervous system filtering the same situation, trying to keep you safe and literally creating a different reality. And this is why acting as if fails. You're out there trying to perform as someone who's in the safety state, while inside your body is still scanning for danger. And that performance is exhausting. And it's literally running against the biology underneath is never going to work. The biology is always going to win. When someone tells you to assume the identity of your future self, that seems very abstract. And future, by definition, is not here, not now. And the irony is really what they are saying is assume the nervous system state of safety, your true state, which then filters your world to allow for creativity and possibilities and options and things that enrich you rather than filtering your world just to keep everything out and protect you from harm. And this can be so frustrating when you're walking around trying to do this acting as if stuff, and you think, gosh, I'm earnestly trying, I care, I'm coming from a place of love, and I'm not making any headway here. Well, you're never gonna make headway because you're fighting just the biology, that nervous state that is inside. And that's where you need to meet this. Ancient wisdom and spiritual philosophy knew this. They just talked about it in different ways. For example, in the Tao Ta Qing, there's a line that a lot of people overlook because it just seems so simple, like too simple. And the line is this the soft overcomes the hard, the gentle overcomes the rigid. In that line, Lu Sao was describing water, but he was also describing a nervous system. You cannot grip your way into safety or force your way into a new identity. The part of you that's been running the show doesn't actually need to be defeated, it needs to be met with something softer, not hammered out of existence. In the yogic tradition, they have a word for what we've just been talking about, samskara. And samskara are the grooves worn into the mind by repetition. For example, anxiety is samskara. Avoidance, samskara. The impulse to spend money the moment it comes into your life, samskara. It's just the grooves worn into the mind by repetition. And in the yogic tradition, they aren't saying, hey, you need to become somebody else and escape that version of yourself. They simply say stop feeding the old groove and start laying down some new grooves. It's the same mind, just different grooves, different repetition. And this is exactly the same concept as what we now refer to as neuroplasticity. Neurons that fire together wire together. The yogis were just mapping this territory thousands of years ago, and now we have the science that we can relate to to better understand it. And then there is my favorite, my beloved, Rumi. But he certainly understood the assignment when he said this. The wound is the place where the light enters you. So he's telling us right there, it's he's not saying amputate the wound, remove the wound, the identity, whatever. He's literally saying it's the doorway. That identity that you have been fighting so hard, trying to get rid of, whether it be anxious, avoidant, or just somebody who can't seem to hold on to money or a loving relationship, it is not a mistake. It's simply a wound that became a survival strategy. And when you stop trying to destroy it and start bringing curiosity to it instead, that element of you stops being a cage and actually becomes a compass. So while the ancients might not have had the vocabulary that we have now, they might not have talked about neuroception or the vagus nerve, they certainly understood that the self that you think you are is not the self that you actually are. It's just a program. And programs can be updated. Now, wherever you are right at this moment, humor me for a moment and play along. Whether you're driving, walking, sitting at your desk, whatever, just take one deep breath. And all I ask is that you exhale longer than you inhale. So let's go ahead and do that together. Breathe in. And exhale. Now, what just happened there? Biologically, the exhale, the long slow exhale, is activating your vagus nerve. And it's telling your system in a language that your nervous system can understand, hey, there's no threat here. Everything's good. We're all good. And you didn't just think your way into that. You didn't identity your way into that. You simply breathed your way into that, and that's it. That's the door. It's quite interesting that we have in many ways made this whole idea of identity and who you are and what it attracts so overcomplicated that it's just like unattainable when it was really just this simple all along. And something that you can do for yourself is just to breathe. Breathing is the bridge between that involuntary alarm system that's been going off and the conscious part of you that wants to update it to help it to feel safe. So you can be in that safety state and create the kind of reality you want, filter in the things that are aligned with the kind of experiences that you want to have. And there is so much more that we can do with this now that we are looking at it through this frame, through this perspective, understanding. The biology. If you've been listening and thinking to yourself, like, okay, I want to go down this path. How can I actually do this? How can I change this identity that's been protecting me for decades? Well, remember, we're not changing the identity, we're simply changing the nervous system state. And the very first move is to stop fighting that old identity and start understanding it, start loving it. The version of you who panics about money, what are they protecting you from? Just get curious. Start looking at all of these things with love and curiosity. Like, hmm, what actually happened when I was a little kid that made me start thinking that somehow having money was dangerous to my nervous system. And, you know, you don't have to spend years in therapy to get these answers. You just need to start being a little bit more curious and less critical. Another thing to reflect on is this version of you who fawns, people pleases, and then feels resentful. Curiosity. Hmm, what is that protecting me from? When was there a time when that was a really good idea? And of course there was a time, right? And that was a brilliant strategy at that time. It's just not needed anymore. And I can look at these things from a place of curiosity. And then after we do that, the next thing is to teach your body, not your mind. You're not trying to change your mind about who or what you are. Teaching our bodies that the threat is over. And this is where things like breath work, meditations, somatic practices, things that actually impact your nervous system regulation come into play. You cannot think your way into safety or a new identity. You simply feel your way into it. And remember, the samskara, the grooves of the mind, your body learns safety the same way that it learned the threat through repetition. And you can do this all day long. Every time you take that longer exhale, you're casting a vote to your nervous system that says, hey, I'm safe now. Everything's good. If you just notice that you have some tension in your shoulders and you deliberately soften them, once again, you're casting the vote. Threats over. What's good here? We're safe. And if you just take your hand during the day and put it on your chest and breathe into your heart, that incredibly simple but powerful practice is casting a vote. I'm here. I am okay. And this moment is just fine. You do not need to become someone new. You simply need to quiet the version of you who is navigating life based on the idea that you weren't enough. This isn't about adding anything or becoming anything. It's more of a case of subtraction, taking away the clutter. And I like to think of this like a garden. I love flowers, I love gardens. And I picture myself standing in the middle of this absolutely beautiful garden, and these beautiful flowers swaying in the breeze, and they're so fragrant and just absolutely spectacular. And I think, well, if somebody walks up and says, stands on the edge of my garden looking in and says, Your garden isn't good enough, or your garden is lame, I would just laugh. I'd be like, You're incorrect. I am unshakably okay with my garden. Because guess what? I'm standing in it. I feel it. That is my reality. It's not an idea, it's not a future state or event or something I have to become or achieve. It just is. And that, my friends, is the state that we are after. We're not trying to manufacture confidence or pretend to be abundant or somehow be our future self now, right? We're just removing the weeds. We are letting those beautiful flowers that were always there be seen and play their role so that that old threat response that kept running long after the threat was gone can quiet down. And the garden and that wonderful safety state can come back online. And here's my invitation for you today. It might seem strange at first. However, the next time that you notice that old identity showing up, whether it be anxiety, avoidance, people pleasing, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, instead of getting frustrated with it, pause. Get curious. Put your hand on your heart. Give yourself a hug. Take a deep breath. And this, please do this. I want you to say this either silently or out loud. I see you. I know why you're here. You kept me safe when I needed protecting. And I'm so grateful. But the threat is over now. You can rest. I've got this. That's it. That is the move. Write that down. Pull it out of your pocket if you have to. Remember to do this because remember those well-worn grooves. Yeah, it's natural for river to flow down the carved river path. You're going to do this to support yourself, to get your nervous system to be repeatedly back in the safety state. And as you proceed down this glorious path, do keep in mind that we are not getting rid of or shaming any part of our identity. We're not trying to affirm it away or get past it. We are acknowledging it, thanking that part of us for their service and just letting that part of yourself know, hey, your shift is over. I wholeheartedly assure you that you were never broken, inadequate, or not enough. You were simply living in a reality that your nervous system was building without your consent, running programs that you never chose, and continuously seemingly seeing and responding to threats that had stopped being threats a long time ago simply because of the state of your nervous system. And the part of you that kept that program running not only wasn't the enemy, but in fact the most loyal, loving, protecting, and hard working part of you. It simply never got the update that the threat is passed and we can start working with a new nervous system. So please give your identity a great, great, great big hug. It has been working awfully hard for you, and it's time for your identity to get the respect that it deserves. This is a concept that I come back to very frequently. I like to have this conversation in my head, have these experiences, remind myself, because in fact, those well-worn grooves, you know, that's a pattern, and you have to use repetition to create the new well-worn grooves, you know, so to speak, metaphorically speaking, and the nervous system state that we know serves us. It's been so helpful for me to stop blaming myself. Like it's almost ridiculous now when I think about it, you know, for not being this, that, or the other, disciplined, or just have to be somebody else. When the truth is so much simpler, so much more kind. That hey, okay, my body is just a prediction engine. It's filtering and rendering reality based on what it believes is true and will protect me, things that it learned, a little filter system that was developed a long time ago when I wasn't even in charge of you know my life. So I realize now I don't have to change my mind. I'm just changing my body, and the body changes the mind. If this episode resonated with you, please, please, please be sure to share it with someone, maybe who's a little too hard on themselves, who could benefit from hearing this. And if you'd like to actually take that somatic experience and calm your nervous system, I have created a wonderful companion guided meditation to go along with that. And I'll put the link in the show notes for you. So until next time, take a deep breath, a long one, and remind your body that the threat is over. You can rest now. We are in the safety state. And with that, my friends, I'll see you in the next episode.