How To Rewrite The Future

Invent The Life You Want

You don’t need to build the biggest company in the world to alter the course of history.

Nor do you need to make the greatest scientific discovery.

All you need is for a change to happen in you.

Yup, a positive change in you is enough to rewrite the future.

Not just for yourself… For others too.

This is what Steve Jobs meant when he said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

I don’t know the 177,000+ people who’ve read “Don’t Just Set Goals. Build Systems,” but publishing it may have been all one person needed to realize their goal.

That’s when the domino falls…

Them realizing their goal opens the door for another person to realize their goal, and so on.

The future has been rewritten.

But it starts with a change in YOU.

If only more people were aware of their impact on society…

Failing to realize what’s been placed in your heart causes delays in other people’s journeys.

Yup, I’m calling you selfish for not starting that side project.

Well…

Maybe not you since you’re reading this article, which is a sign of intent.

But I’m gonna show you how to rewrite the future either way…

Your pain is our pain

Whether you know it or not…

We’re all connected in some weird way.

John Guare referred to it as the “Six Degrees of Separation.”

It’s the notion that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other.

Guare demonstrated this phenomenon in his 1990 play that showed any two people on the planet can be connected by completing a six-step chain of “friend of a friend” statements.

I’m guessing you’re nodding in agreement, as you’ve likely heard of the concept before.

But what many don’t know is the original idea stems from a short story told by Frigyes Karinthy 61 years prior — heck, you probably didn’t know the name of the playwriter either but that’s not the point.

Karinthy got a group of people to play a game in which they had to connect themselves to anyone in the world by a chain of five others.

Without Karinthy, we would have never met Guare. Maybe…

But thanks to Guare reliving what Karinthy started, many actors got plenty of recognition — especially since the play was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the Tony Award for Best Play — and you now have this story I’m writing.

Can you see how we all affect each other?

The same sorta pattern is playing out in your life right now.

Your interconnectedness with the rest of the human species means all your actions impact everyone else.

You’re literally writing the future as you read…

It’s easy to conceptualize your impact on everything else when you think of something major like global warming or killing turtles with plastic straws…

But have you ever considered what refusing to become the best version of yourself does to everyone else?

Let me guess…

The answer is “No.”

And that’s the problem…

Too many people are unaware of how their decisions, or lack thereof, impact the rest of society.

Your failure to arrive at a certain destination on time delays everyone else.

Every decision you make alters the course of history ever so slightly.

If the first person to launch his cigarette on the floor in London never did… Hmm, we can only speculate.

What I’m getting at is this —

If you’re displeased with where you are right now, you may be living out what Dave Logan refers to as your “Default future.”

It’s the predetermined future you may or may not have had a partial hand in writing.

It dictates your actions without requiring you to think.

Without a dramatic or unexpected intervention, what’s supposed to happen will happen…

And this impacts everyone else!

If it weren’t for X, there wouldn’t be Y

Your actions don’t require thought when the default future has been accepted.

They’re predetermined.

They intend to course-correct you toward your guaranteed future.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a nice guy or gal; the outcome is the same…

Unfulfilment.

Unfulfillment for you and those who needed your creativity to take inspiration to fulfill their lives.

For example, in Dave Logan’s presentation, he gave a scenario of the default future for professionals in medicine.

The doctors he asked responded —

Our pay will be cut, our profession will be marginalized, we won’t attract the best and brightest, and the quality of care for everyone will suffer.

In response to their default future, they said their actions would be to do the minimum to keep a license and look for something other than medicine — basically, enough not to get fired.

Not only are the doctor’s lives being impacted, but so are yours and mine. A drop in their quality hurts everyone.

But it’s the same with YOU (and me).

Living in your default future hurts someone else.

Just imagine Twitter never happened…

Maybe, just maybe… Ev Williams never gets the inspiration to create Medium — I don’t know; I’m hypothesizing.

Many people on the platform would have no way to get paid for sharing their thoughts in written form without needing to sell products, do affiliate marketing, or put a bunch of ads on their personal websites — and if the internet doesn’t happen, maybe those options don’t exist either.

It also means you don’t get to read interesting takes from cool authors like Matt | Financial Imagineer, Prakriti Sharma, and Noah Miller.

Benjamin Hardy, Ph.D. was one of the earlier users on Medium — arguably the first to go ultra viral.

He used the platform to build a mailing list of 100,000+ subscribers to land a six-figure book deal. It’s his books that inspire a lot of the thoughts I share with you. If I didn’t encounter his work, you would never get these sorta stories.

Don’t get me wrong, someone else may have filled in the blank.

But their execution may not have been relatable to you!

If they can’t relate to you, your life doesn’t change.

Our interconnectedness means everything we do impacts someone else.

Whether you know it or not, someone is building on top of your current output right now.

You have a direct influence on how the future looks.

That’s not to say you must start a revolution or anything like that…

But you should take the initiative.

Things around you aren’t gonna change unless you do.

Your environment is a direct response to who you are and vice versa — alter one and the other changes as a result.

Be like MLK, but don’t

Martin Luther King delivered the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech during the march on Washington in August 1963.

This was when racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement were all legal in the USA.

Without the intervention of figures such as MLK, the default future of African Americans would have been pretty much the same…

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free.”

African Americans had been stuck in their default future for 100 years, waiting for things around them to change.

In the speech, MLK sought to dramatize the shameful condition and call for equality and freedom for African Americans.

But MLK understood merely shouting “This isn’t fair” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial wouldn’t guarantee the outcome he wanted.

What did he do instead?

He painted the picture!

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

Rewriting the future isn’t as hard as you might think.

All you gotta do is switch from your default future to your invented one.

This is the future you’ll make happen regardless of what comes along.

It’s the ideal future YOU want for yourself that impacts everyone else.

Creating it is simple…

Be like Martin Luther King Jr.

You don’t have to start your own movement.

… But you do have to:

Articulate the default future you have so you can reject it.

Define the future you want and the specific action items consistent with it.

Carry out those actions consistently!

Final Thoughts

You play a vital role in scripting the future.

This doesn’t mean you’ll produce the next revolutionary product…

Your role may just be to change the perspective of one person.

Without you, others are delayed.

Not only are they delayed, you’re stuck feeling unsatisfied with what you’re currently doing.

The only way to alter the course of history is to reject your default future and invent the future you want.

Thanks for reading!

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