Is seeing your future a dream come true—or a nightmare?

– The Night Room

I don’t expect a honest answer to this question, not because I think you’re a liar, heck, I don’t expect a honest answer from myself either. It’s just human nature, we need hope to survive, even if it’s false. That is why we paint the best possible picture of the future we can imagine cos we really can’t bear to picture a  mediocre future. That bright future is our hope, the hope we live and feed on.

That hope is necessary for success and great achievement, I have nothing against that hope. Nothing. You want to know what I have something against? False expectations of the future ungrounded in the reality of our present actions, character and values.

We all seem to forget that today is yesterday’s tomorrow, and tomorrow would also be a day that will come and go soon enough and on and on till that ‘future’ is today, then yesterday. When imagining our future we ignore all the realistic indicators today and paint a grand picture where we’re free of the limitations of our ‘flesh’. I’m talking about factors such as financial discipline, self discipline, values, emotional intelligence etc. We ignore all those and believe that in the future we gon’ be alright.

I’ve got bad news for you. Look at yourself today there’s a very high probability you’ll be exactly the same tomorrow.

This leads me to a  very important point, the only thing we should strive for if we really want to have a better tomorrow is to be better than our past and present selves. To put in the work to ensure we’re improving our lives daily. To make sure we are measuring our success and improving upon them. To make sure we are holding true to our values.

When next you imagine a great future for yourself, think about  what is required to live such a life. The sacrifices, the discipline, the courage, the persistence, the resilience, the learning, the re-invention of yourself. If you’re not living true to it today and doing all it takes to really achieve that future, I’m very sorry to tell you my friend, that that dream of your future self would follow you to the grave without ever materializing in the real world and you would realize it only when it’s too late.