Hope is: a clear and specific goal agency thinking. Belief you have control over what you do, that your actions matter, and you can impact the result… - Benjamin P. Hardy

It is not the past, but the future, that drives a person’s actions and behaviors. All goals can be placed in two categories: approach or avoidance. Connected to your Future Self, you can appreciate, embrace, and love the present. Connection to your Future Self creates purpose and meaning in the present. The more connected you are to your longer-term Future Self, the better and wiser your decisions today.

Why does all of this matter, though? It matters because without being conscious and intentional, you can easily “forget” or lose sight of your former GAINS. You can forget what you previously struggled with and overcame. You can take for granted how far you’ve come, ignore your progress, and miss out on the confidence of remembering where you were. This is why it is incredibly powerful and important to keep journals, records, or “annual reviews.” Like Jill, you can look back and be reminded of the easily forgotten past. You can be reminded that the “normal life” you’re now living may be the dreams — or even beyond the dreams — of your former self.

In The Big Leap, Dr. Gay Hendricks explains these two models as Newtonian Time versus Einstein Time, Einstein time assumes you are where time comes from. You can make as much of it as you want. Newtonian times, assumes there’s a scarcity of time, which leads to an uncomfortable feeling of time urgency inside us. And we think that what is “out there” is causing the feelings “in here.”25