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This is episode 38 what’s your life like in the year 2040 hi, this is Carla Rieger and you’re listening to the mind story speaker podcast for influencers in business who speak to grow their income, influence and referrals.

So you know how everyone talks about creating a one year plan, especially this time of year or even a five year plan. What about a 20 year plan and what about doing it in story form, capturing one moment in time that kind of includes what you want. That implies what you want and that also includes the values you live by in the person you’ve become. Why? Because the brain organizes our self image in story form. So your self image determines your future unless you change it and it determines how successful you are in terms of career, health, money, relationships, everything. But you can’t do that intellectually. You need to go into the back recesses of your mind where the existing story resides and write a new story. And then with repetition over time you can build new neuropathways that the new self image can grow from.

And this new self image will make you see the world in new ways and you’ll see opportunities you never had before. You’ll make decisions that you never made before to the actions you never took before. You’ll sound different, you’ll look different, you’ll be different and you’ll create different results because of that. So here’s an example from my life. So my father raised me alone. He worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day, and I followed in his footsteps, working long hours, being totally goal-oriented. And after seven years of university and three part time jobs all the way through my life took a complete right turn. I’m in this public speaking course because I want to be a lawyer. My father would approve of this career choice and I’m the youngest person in the class. So there I am standing on stage, legs shaking, heart thundering in my chest, brow furrowed.

I want to get this right. The woman running the course sits in the front row along with all the other students watching and she says, stop, stop, stop. How old are you in 23 why? Because yeah, act like a 45 year old insurance underwriter. I mean, you are so serious. If you’re this serious now what are you going to be like in 20 years? Go lighten up and you can come back to my class, get off the stage. That was strange and I felt kind of embarrassed, but I’m driving home that day thinking maybe she’s right. Maybe I am too serious. I mean all I ever did was work and study and I was kind of miserable and depressed when I really thought about it. And other people kind of agreed, yeah, you’re pretty serious. More serious than most people your age. So I thought, Oh, okay, something has to change.

So I took her advice and signed up for a comedy improvisation class, you know, like whose line is it anyways? And I love to spending a whole afternoon laughing and just having fun. It changed my brain chemistry. I smiled more, I breathed more, I worried less. I was more compassionate with myself and others. It was all about being okay with failing and making mistakes and try again. And I was just more creative. I had more creative ideas. So I ended up dropping out of university much to my father’s. She grant and I took more courses in comedy and over time I got better and better and eventually I started a sketch comedy troupe. My father didn’t approve, didn’t come to any of my shows and I faced this big crossroads because they had the story about who I was supposed to be. But now a new story was emerging.

Now I stayed in conflict with myself for a few years progressing, you know, bringing fun to people in workplaces where they were all stressed out and not being very productive because they were so stressed out. But I be taking two steps forward and then one step back. The two stories were in conflict with each other. And then my father passed away. Now he never told me anything about his life in Europe growing up. Yet when I was going through his belongings, I found this box of photos and stories about his life as a teenager. And it turns out he grew up in a band of carnival gypsies. His parents and grandparents devoted their lives to traveling. And bringing fun to the world and I realized the fun factor was actually in my DNA. He disowned that part of his life because he was ashamed of it.

Yet. To me, it kind of provided a foundation for a new story and I remember in 1995 doing this exercise that I want to share with you, which is the 20 year plans story now at the time, 20 years in the future was 2015 which seems so far away, so futuristic, but this is what I wrote using a present tense as if I were there. In the moment. It’s 2015 and I’m standing on stage receiving a standing ovation for delivering a talk on how to marry, work in play. I’m selling my book. I’m feeling on purpose. People are inspired and entertained. I’m loving my life. It’s fun and fully committed to this direction. I have a great relationship with a loving partner who is there with me. Also, a speaker like me. We have fun together, living in different places around the world. I’m feeling healthy because they take such good care of myself.

I feel connected to my highest calling and live that every day now, strangely enough, that reality came into being much as sooner than 2015 and that can happen for you too. So gave me the courage to really commit back to my business and not keep sabotaging it. Whereas bringing fun and creativity to work places, teaching people how to marry, work can play. And then later I became a performance coach for speakers and leaders and started having them do that kind of exercise with themselves, putting themselves 20 years in the future and noticing they would manifest it a lot quicker. I also started playing around with reframing past the stories with people and I came up with that idea because I noticed this phenomenon. I often helped people who were doing some kind of speech to create a signature story. They could tell it during a presentation or on line as part of their about page to help people understand who they were kind of at a values and mission level, you know, and what put them on that path in life.

And that exercise often changed people’s lives profoundly because it required them to reframe their past hardships and failures in terms of how it forged them in the fire of wisdom to now help others. And that turned out to be the best performance coaching tool ever. And that’s because, as I said, the brain structure, self image in story form. Now coaches, consultants, therapy people, they’re always trying to help people change self image, but often it just doesn’t stick. You see the brain is wired for efficiency. So even if your existing self image creates problems in your life, your brain wants to keep it that way and resist changing because it’s good at that. It’s efficient with that story. But if you rewrite yourself image with new characters, a new visual, a new feeling, and take yourself there in the moment, it gives the brain a new way of being efficient.

So here’s a practical tool to get more clarity and direction on your future and it helps to just pick one moment in time in the future. As I said, most people do you know, the six month goal or vision, the one year, the five year. So this is a 20 year vision. So we’re talking 2040, if you’re doing it here in 2020 and it sounds wildly futuristic, right? So think of your age in that year and you might even wonder, gosh, will I even be alive then? No worries. Um, it might happen a lot sooner. And by the way, they predict many people will live healthy lives way past a hundred by that time anyway. Now the reason for 20 years is that big goals feel more doable, kind of less pressure because you have 20 years to pull it off. The survival brain that likes to keep things the same is open to a story, more open to a story and more open to a story that’s got lots of time to unfold.

Conversely, if you give yourself like a six month really intense financial or career goal, you know, your survival brain can start to go into what’s called cognitive dissonance. Meaning there’s this comparison between where you are now and where you want to go. And there’s this big gap and your survival brain starts to freak out and you get this headache and you know the headache is actually a good thing. It means your brain is having to start working and laying down new neuropathways. It’s building like a new railroad for your life energy to go down. So it’s a bit of hard work, but the 20 year goal creates more openness to that because the track has more time to be built. So here’s an example. It’s 2040 and I’m speaking in an event of 4,000 people sharing about our mind story methodologies. I’m talking about our Academy that served over 3 million people around the world, including our foundation for youth, helping them become masters of the mind.

They are taking these tools out in the world themselves as leaders, coaches, consultants, workshop leaders. And I see my 25 books and our mini programs available for people. I’m feeling on purpose. People are inspired and entertained and taking action. I’m loving my life. It’s fun. I’m on purpose. I have a great relationship with my loving partner who is running things with me. We have fun together, living in different places around the world, in community with likeminded, creative people who support each other and care for each other and I’m feeling youthful and healthy because I’ve taken such good care of myself. I feel connected to my highest calling and live that every day. So now it’s your turn. Pick a moment in time 20 years from now and write it out, then print it out and put it by your bedside. If you reinforce it over time, it’s like building a new house.

The survival brain feels safe enough to move out of the old house, the old self image because the new house has a foundation to grow from in story form and that’s when your world view changes, which changes your decisions. As I said in your actions and the new life starts to magnetize towards you more powerfully. So read it each morning for I suggest 21 days. It’s especially a good thing to do if you tend to worry when you first wake up in the morning because many people do and this way you are using that powerful creative time in the day to actually build the life you want instead of reinforce what you don’t want. I’ve seen people start to manifest 20 year goals right away just by doing this exercise. So have fun with it. And if you’d like a complimentary coaching session to explore how to rewrite your future to become a better speaker, coach, consultant, leader, we help you with mindset, marketing, accountability. So you just click on the questionnaire below to apply and you have to apply because spots are limited. I’d love to give you some immediate results and tell you about how we could actually work together longer term. Also to get you to your dreams

faster was people need longterm support in order to get there, to keep their mind in the right track and to give them strategies and accountability. So I’ll look for that link, I’d love to talk with you and we’ll see if there’s something that’s good fit. And in the meantime, have fun with this exercise and we’ll see you next time.