When developing new plans and strategies, we often have to do new things. However, one of the most basic resistance we face is the evidence of past attempts or past abilities.
We often say: “We have tried that before” or “We are not very good at doing that”. It begs the question of why the past seems more real than the future?
The past feels more real than the future because of the simple reason that it has already happened and has physical and mental proof. This mental proof has visuals and emotions attached to it, making it easier to refer to. That’s why it is easier to imagine 2016 than it is to imagine 2036, even though they are both 10 years from today.
When you think about the future, your brain retrieves fragments of past experiences and recombines them into new scenarios that feel possible to you. This is called episodic foresight and that’s what makes it difficult to completely imagine brand new possibilities.
The future, on the other hand, has not happened yet so it may not seem as tangible.
The defining attribute of a visionary and strategist is that he/she must have the ability to regard the unknown future as more real than the known past. If you are not able to develop this mindset, then your plans and strategies will have a glass ceiling that is limited to previous experiences and outcomes.
You must regard the blank canvas that is the future to be a driver of the strategy, not the tangible past. Moreover, we must avoid temporal discounting, which is the tendency to devalue a reward simply because it is uncertain or far away. Memory remembers the world. Vision creates it.
