What can you do, today, to support future you in 24 hours?

Through my internal coaching role, I’m fortunate to have a really lovely office space, where I carry out all of my 1:1 coaching.

It’s important that this is a welcoming space, that enables both myself and my coachees to feel calm, safe, inspired, and empowered.

Over the years, I’ve spent many hours personalising this blank box of a space and I’m always on the look out for wall art, inspiring images/diagrams, positive affirmations and motivational quotes/passages to adorn the walls.  I love to create my own wall content too.

Whilst creating some new content, recently, I started to think about a task that I find really tedious…meal planning and the associated supermarket shop.

When my husband and I first bought our house, I remember having lots of enthusiasm for food shopping - these were the pre-children days, when we’d pour over Jamie Oliver and Nigella cookbooks, and try lots of new recipes.  As life got busier, the novelty of the big supermarket shop wore off and, over the years, with one child who’ll happily eat pasta and grated cheese for every meal, it’s become one of my most dreaded activities.

This got me thinking about how we motivate ourselves to do the things we dislike?  Find tedious?  Or challenging?  How do we stop procrastinating around them, or putting them off?

This is a common thread in coaching and there are things we can do to support ourselves, which include:

• Breaking up the task.

• Setting small goals.

• Being realistic and focussed with the time available.

• Looking ahead to the future (visualisation) - tune into the positives that completion of this task will bring.

From a positive psychology perspective, visualisation is really useful for maintaining motivation and this technique supports me to complete my meal planning and shopping task.  By doing a meal plan, a shopping list and a ‘big shop’, I’m saving future me a lot of hassle.  On the busy week nights, when time is limited and tempers are frayed from tiring school/work days, the last thing I’ll want to be doing is pondering what to make for tea, and then going to the shop to get the necessary ingredients - likely the most conveniently-located shop that will be more expensive. 

So, on Saturday, I grabbed a coffee and completed this task. Yes I did find it a little tedious, but I spent some time beforehand tuning into future me; how grateful and relieved I'll feel that I did this task, today. I visualised how much calmer I'll feel during the busy tea-times, knowing I have the ingredients in to make a pre-planned meal.

In coaching we talk about a desired future state or a future goal.  Sometimes this can be far ahead in the future, so in 6 months I want to feel this… or in 1 year I want to have achieved this…, but this doesn’t always have to be the case.  

Coaching doesn’t, and isn’t, always about ‘big goals’, or the big things in life.  The actions don’t always have to feel extreme, as on the day-to-day hamster wheel of life, these can feel too much.  Smaller goals and tasks often feel more achievable and, quite often, it’s the small things we do that have the biggest impact.

Of course, through coaching, I can support you to connect to your bigger goals, and more longer-term goals, but - using my practical and pragmatic approach - I will also empower you to consider how you can help yourself right now, today, this week.

So,

• How can you support future you, today?

• What can you do, today, to support you in 24 hours?

• What can you do, today, that future you will be grateful for?

• What can you can do, today, that future you will be proud of?

I’d love to hear more about how you support future you.  

If this is something you’d like to think more about, let’s talk: @laurahuntercoaching or laurahuntercoaching@gmail.com.