The future is something we all think about from time to time. We day dream about the ideal life we want to have, the accomplishments we want to achieve, and the person we want to become. But have you ever stopped to think whether your habits support or hinder that future?
Our daily routines and behaviours shape who we become and dictate the direction our lives take. So envisioning your future self and adopting future habits can help you achieve your goals and become the person you want to be.
In this blog post, we will explore how habits affect your future and how journaling can be used as a tool to envision your positive future and identify habits to get you there.
You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.
John C. Maxwell
Why do you want to align your habits with your goals?
Habits are those activities that we do routinely without even thinking about them. As they are regularly repeated they play a crucial role in our everyday life and have a significant impact on our future. For example, if we exercise every day we’ll be fitter when we’re older. It’s crucial to evaluate if your habits align with your future goals. Without deliberate action, our habits might hold us back from achieving our aspirations. Therefore, being mindful of our daily actions is necessary to make sure they propel us towards the ideal future we desire.
Using journal prompts to align with your Future habits
Visualising your future can give you clarity of goals. Creating a vision board is a good idea, but writing down your goals and desires allows you to better clarify what you want in your daily life. Writing helps you to get a clearer picture of your future.
What are journal prompts
Journal prompts are questions or statements that provide focus or inspiration when writing. They encourage you to think about a situation or issue from a different perspective, which is why they are beneficial for personal development purposes.
Why and when to use journal prompts
Journal prompts are often used when people don’t know what to write. In this case, they are used to guide your writing so your thought progress through different topics to an answer.
Journal prompts to envision your future and align your goals
When we change our habits, it is possible to change our lives. Journaling can be a useful method to imagine our future selves and identify the habits we need to cultivate to reinvent ourselves. After reading the book Boundaries by Jennie Miller and Victoria Lambert (my review) I developed four journal prompts to help me explore my present and future habits. The prompts were inspired by this question:
Am I eating for my present lifestyle or one from my past?
Jennie Miller and Victoria Lambert – Boudnaries
- How did this habit fit into my past?
- How does it fit in my future? Take some time to visualize the person you want to become. What does their daily routine look like? What do you want your future to look like?
- How about my present? Does it fit my future vision? If your present doesn’t support the future you want what changes need to occur?
- What actions can I take to transition? What can you do now to move you towards the future you want? You’re not committing to anything here, just capture what is in your mind, no matter how big or unlikely.
I’ve used a double page spread and use half a page for each question. As these flow from each other I rotate the page a quarter turn for each one and used some fun washi tape for decoration and to help me find the page in future.
These prompts helped me immensely when I examined my pattern of snack eating. When I envision my future I look after my body by eating healthily, but my current habits include frequent sugary snacks. One of the actions I identified is to identify what snacks are healthy as I’ve heard different opinions. If I know what will nourish my body, I can make the choice to have those in the house and ignore the biscuit tin.
Success is a few simple disciplines, practised every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.
Jim Rohn
What next?
To reinvent yourself, it’s important to create a plan that includes specific actions and goals. Identifying a change you want to make is the first step. Next you have to take intentional action to change your habits which requires focused effort and discipline. Increase your chances of success by starting small and focusing on one habit at a time. This will help build your confidence and belief that you can move towards a successful future.
You may look at the list you wrote and be ready to implement one of them straight away. Or you may feel emotions that you want to explore further with more writing. Such as identifying if you’ve got a limiting belief associated with the habit or choosing to approach making changes as a series of self experiments, so you can decide which habits will take you towards your future.
Reinventing yourself requires persistence, dedication, and commitment to building future habits that support your goals. So don’t let setbacks discourage you; it’s all part of the process, just acknowledge what happened, look back at your future vision for intrinsic motivation and restart the habit. Remember to celebrate your successes along the way, no matter how small they may seem.
Successful people are simply those with successful habits.
Brian Tracy
Conclusion
Our future is largely determined by the habits we cultivate and sustain in the present. Every action we take paves the way for the achievements we hope to make in the future. So, if we want a bright future, it is crucial to develop habits that support it. Journaling serves as a powerful tool throughout this process, allowing you to explore your thoughts, clarify your vision, and track your progress. With time, patience, and a commitment to change, anyone can develop the future habits necessary for success.