Learn

Meet the Person You're Becoming: The Science of Your Future Self

Your brain treats future you like a stranger, which is why the late-night snack keeps winning. Here's what the research says about closing that gap, and why picturing the goal on its own can backfire.

By John Schaefer, fat loss coach for 27 years · 6 minute read · Skip to the 10-minute exercise

Picture yourself a year from now.

Not the number on the scale. The person. What their Tuesday looks like. How they talk about food. What they do when the day goes sideways.

If that felt fuzzy, there's a reason, and it isn't a lack of willpower. It's how your brain is built. Once you see it, you can work with it.

Your brain treats future you like a stranger

The psychologist Hal Hershfield, now at UCLA, put people in a brain scanner and had them think about themselves, about other people, and about themselves ten years in the future.

Thinking about future you didn't look much like thinking about yourself. It looked more like thinking about someone else. And the less "future you" registered as you, the more people chose the small reward now over the bigger one later.

That explains a lot about fat loss. It's easy to skip the walk for a stranger. Easy to eat the late-night chips and leave the bill for someone you've never met. Nobody would describe it that way, but that's the trade we make.

Hershfield and his colleagues later showed people digitally aged photos of their own faces. The ones who met their older selves put more money toward retirement. Same people, same paychecks. The future just felt more real.

Get to know them and you treat them better

In a 2018 study, Abraham Rutchick, Hershfield and colleagues had about 500 college students write a letter. Half wrote to themselves 20 years in the future. Half wrote to themselves three months out.

Over the following days, the 20-year group was about 40% more likely to exercise, and they exercised longer.

A few minutes of writing. That's it. They didn't get a new program or a coach. They just spent some time with the person they were going to be, and that person started to matter.

Where picturing it goes wrong

Here's the catch, and it's the part the vision board crowd leaves out.

The psychologist Gabriele Oettingen followed women through a year-long weight loss program. At the start, she asked them to imagine scenes like finishing the program, or being face to face with tempting food.

The women whose fantasies were the most positive, the ones who pictured themselves breezing past temptation and coming out slim, lost less weight over the year than the women whose pictures were more honest about how hard it might be.

Oettingen has spent decades studying why. Her answer: a rosy picture of the finish line feels so good that your brain relaxes, almost as if you already got there. The energy you need to actually do the work drains out.

So the goal isn't to daydream about being lean. The goal is to get to know a person well enough that you know how they'd handle the hard parts.

Meet them: the 10-minute version

Set a timer for ten minutes. Write in present tense, like you're describing someone you know well. Be specific. Your answers save on this device as you type, and nobody sees them but you.

How stressed are they? Not "happy." What does a busy Tuesday feel like in their body? What words do they use? About food. About their body. About themselves in the mirror. What do they believe? About restarts, about what they're capable of. What would they never say about themselves now? How do they handle the hard moments? A work dinner, a sick kid, a bad weigh-in, a weekend that got away. Walk through one like a scene. What does a normal day look like? What's lunch? When do they walk? What's in the fridge?

That last one matters most. A person who is lean a year from now isn't living a highlight reel. They're living a pretty normal day that happens to add up.

Now name what's in the way

This is the step that turns a nice picture into a plan, and it's what Oettingen found actually works. What is the one thing most likely to stop you from becoming that person? Be honest. Then decide now what you'll do when it shows up.

The obstacle If that happens, then I...

Researchers call this mental contrasting with implementation intentions. I call it thinking ahead. It's the habit I build with every client, because the moment you need a decision is the worst moment to make one.

What it means today

You don't become that person in a year. You become them one choice at a time, starting with the next one.

Every time you do what they would do, you collect a little proof that you're already becoming them. That proof is where confidence actually comes from. I wrote more about that in Confidence Is Something You Collect.

If you want a concrete place to start, the person you're becoming probably knows two numbers: how much to eat and how much protein to hit. Get your two numbers here. It takes a minute.

Your takeaway

This week, write the ten minutes. Then pick one thing that person does every day and do it today. Not all of it. One thing.

Future you is a stranger until you start spending time together.

Research mentioned: Ersner-Hershfield et al., Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2009); Hershfield et al., Journal of Marketing Research (2011); Rutchick, Slepian, Reyes, Pleskus and Hershfield, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied (2018); Oettingen and Wadden, Cognitive Therapy and Research (1991).