Be Your Future Self Now: Hi Me in 10 Years. The Decisions That Shape Your Future
Stop relying on motivation and start thinking from your future identity. Most people underestimate how much they’ll change over time. Elite performers think differently.
You can set goals as much as you like, but if you act from your current identity, there will be a significant gap between your results and goals.
Benjamin Hardy, PhD, is a globally renowned Occupational Psychologist who wrote Personality Isn’t Permanent, which I discussed in my recent blog, You Only Need One Goal: How a Keystone Goal Changes Everything. I loved his thought leadership so much that I recently also read his book Be Your Future Self Now.
In the book, Hardy argues that your Future Self should drive your present decisions. While most people are overly attached to their past or present selves, transformation requires identity-level change - not simply behaviour tweaks. This is what the world’s most iconic performers understand:
“The Future Self concept is simple yet rarely practised. To make quality decisions, know where those decisions will take you. Decisions and actions are best when reverse-engineered from a desired outcome. Start with what you want and work backward. Think and act from your goal, rather than toward your goal.”
1. Beast Mode: Identity First Transformation
Hardy shares the story of James Stephen “Jimmy” Donaldson. On 4 October 2015, while Jimmy was in high school, one night when he was supposed to be studying for a history test, he instead made and scheduled 4 videos to his small YouTube channel. He had 8K+ subscribers at the time.
The first would be for his Future Self 6 months from now, with the other three also scheduled for key Future Self milestones:
Casually recorded on his shaky, outdated iPhone, in his bedroom, he spoke to his Future Self and imagined what life would be like. For example, in his 6-month video, he said, “Hopefully you have at least 15K subscribers”, and marvelled at how crazy it would be if he had 20K subscribers.
His ‘Hi Me in 10 Years” went live just over 7 months ago. He said, “If I don’t have a million subscribers when you see this video, my entire life has been a failure.”
Just over 10 years on from the night he recorded his original video series, the video already has 60M+ views. And Jimmy - or as the world came to know him - MrBeast - has a lot more than 1 million subscribers. He has 480M+ subscribers - on his main channel alone, at the time of this writing. He has several multimillion-subscriber channels. The now billionaire - several times over - is, by subscribers, the biggest creator on YouTube.
To make a real transformation, stop asking what I should do and start asking who I would be if I became the Future Self I desire. And use that identity shift to drive your present-day behaviours.
To put the magnitude of his 10-year shift into perspective, watch MrBeast reacting to his 10-year video. He describes his parents’ bankruptcy a few years prior, not being able to afford an actual camera and being teased at school for his obsession with talking about YouTube. But MrBeast saw his 10-year Future Self potential in a way many don’t.
2. The End of History Illusion: Underestimating Future You
Hardy’s discussion about being your Future Self reminds me of the research on the End of History Illusion - an idea coined by psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Jordi Quoidbach in a 2013 study. The researchers found that people can clearly see how much they’ve changed over the past 10 years. But, they believe they’ll change very little in the next 10 years.
The research studied thousands of participants across ages 18–68, and discovered. people reported significant changes in:
Personality
Values
Preferences
However, when asked to predict the next decade, they expected minimal change. Even though change is likely to continue. We recognise our past growth but underestimate our future evolution.
This is compounded by a few key drivers:
Identify Comfort: “I have arrived. I like who I am now, so I assume I’ll stay this way.”
Effort Blindness: Retrospection is easier than construction.
Present Bias: We overvalue current tastes and have a preference for now.
Elite Future Self thinkers, like MrBeast, for example, are masters at being future-oriented while also collapsing time altogether. Don’t wait for readiness; make decisions as if you are your Future Self now.
3. The Routine Paradox
The very structure we strive for in creating success could also be what limits your transformation.
If you follow this blog, you likely know I love all things routines. I’ve always been fascinated by experimenting with the high-performance habits of the world’s most successful people. For example, I’ve discussed:
Routines create guardrails for your performance, but if followed too strictly, they can also prevent you from reaching your next level.
For example, by your 30s, something changes:
You begin to optimise.
You find what works and repeat it.
You refine your strengths and rely on them.
You build systems to make life smoother, faster and more efficient.
But it’s also where the paradox begins. At a certain point, efficiency replaces evolution.
Psychological research shows that as we age, our behaviours become more habitual.
Our brains are designed to conserve energy, so once something works, it gets automated.
Researchers like Wendy Wood have found that a large portion of our daily actions are driven by habit, not conscious decision-making.
None of this is inherently negative. In fact, it’s what allows you to build a career, a reputation, a life. But there’s a trade-off: The more your life runs on autopilot, the less often you interrupt it. And interruption is where transformation lives.
Most people don’t consciously choose to plateau. You just keep repeating what works:
Same thinking
Same circles
Same standards
Until one day, you realise, life is running perfectly, but it’s no longer evolving.
Transformative growth requires disruption, think:
New environments
Daily tiny experiments
New relationships
New standards
The magic happens when you develop high-performance routines that you’re constantly redesigning to push you past your comfort zone and the behaviours and skills you already have on autopilot.
Act like you already have it
Your Future Self isn’t something you arrive at - it’s something you begin now through the decisions you make today. The gap between who you are can be shaped with intentional standards and strategically interrupted routines.
If you want a different future, you can’t just plan for it—you have to start acting from it. Because ultimately, the next 10 years won’t simply change you on their own. They’ll reflect the decisions you’re making today about who you’re choosing to become.
