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hey guys I'm Heidi Priebe welcome back to my Channel or welcome if this is your first time here on this channel a lot of what we talk about is how to get inside our own minds our own thought patterns
Heidi Priebe explains why people feel they lack follow-through: confusing fantasies about the future with concrete plans, often used to escape present unhappiness. She outlines five signs.
Key Takeaways
- Lack of follow-through is often caused by confusing fantasy with actionable planning, not by laziness.
- Dissociating from present difficulties into future fantasies blocks the concrete first steps toward goals.
- Real plans start from an honest assessment of current reality, including its limitations and obstacles.
- Healthy goal-setting keeps a long-term vision in the background while focusing day-to-day action on the present.
What the video covers
- The video is hosted by Heidi Priebe and addresses the feeling of lacking follow-through despite having many dreams and goals.
- A core problem is failing to distinguish a concrete, actionable plan from a fantasy used for self-regulation during a difficult present.
- Using the Pirates of the Caribbean example, she explains that people can enjoy fantasies without confusing them with reality, but confusion leads to unrealistic expectations.
- A coaching assessment reveals that very high future optimism combined with very low present-moment enjoyment may signal escape into fantasy rather than genuine engagement.
- Sign one: constantly ideating on new ideas while rarely executing them, often because of dissociation from the present rather than laziness.
- Overwhelm from current circumstances (such as debt) can drive people to grasp at future fantasies instead of mapping the path from where they actually are.
- The 'you are here' marker is essential: real plans start from the present reality and build outward from it.
- Successful people focus mostly on what they do in the next days and weeks, keeping long-term vision as background motivation.
- A useful test: are you thinking concretely about the next 72 hours, or only about a distant future state?
- Fantasies about relationships or circumstances often ignore their limitations, and accepting those limitations is part of turning a fantasy into a plan.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: The Problem of Lacking Follow-Through
- 01:41Fantasy vs. Reality and the Pirates Analogy
- 03:27The Future Orientation Assessment Insight
- 05:27Sign One: Endless Ideation Without Execution
- 07:59Grounding in the Present and the 'You Are Here' Marker
- 10:55Accepting Limitations: Relationships and Other Fantasies
- 15:35Sign Two and Regret from Unlived Plans
- 21:19Closing Reflections and Call to Action
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
our own bodies Our Own emotions in order to get more of what we want out of our lives and less of what we don't want and today I want to talk about a particular phenomenon so the phenomenon of feeling
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like you lack follow-through maybe you identify as the kind of person who has a lot of dreams and goals and visions and who maybe feels like they have a lot of unexpressed potential inside of them but for whatever reason you keep finding
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yourself not actualizing on that potential now there are of course Myriad different reasons why this might happen it could be that you're under-resourced it could be that you struggle with planning it could be that you get emotionally dysregulated in the process
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of working towards your goals and so you struggle to stay on track but there's also this one kind of foundational problem that I've seen people run into multiple times without seeming to have an awareness of what it is and what that
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is is the failure to distinguish what I would call a real concrete actionable plan that is likely to play out in reality from a fantasy about the future that we're using to self-regulate through a difficult present moment now
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here's where it gets sticky when we know that a fantasy is a fantasy we are in reality it's kind of like watching a movie when I was a kid I loved Pirates of the Caribbean but I was never
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disappointed to wake up one morning and find that I was not a pirate on a ship in the middle of the Caribbean Ocean because I knew that that was a fantasy not reality but when we confuse fantasy and reality things can get really sticky
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really fast because we can start expecting things to happen in reality that we are not taking the proper concrete steps towards in order to make those things happen and so that's the goal of what we're doing here too
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distinguishing between fantasy and reality and figuring out if we have something in the fantasy category that we want to be in the reality category what would we have to do in order to move that into the proper place so I
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remember years ago there was this coaching program that I was taking where the people leading the program encouraged us to use this assessment at the beginning that would test the client on a variety of different measures just so we could kind of get an idea of where
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they were starting from and one of the measures was how future oriented that person was so how much optimism and hope did they hold for their future and I remember looking at the assessment and figuring well optimism about the future
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would always be a good thing of course right we need hope and inspiration and motivation to get through our lives however the instructors kind of stopped us at one point and pointed out that if we have a client who comes in and they
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have a very very high level of optimism about the future they are highly future oriented however they score very low on Hedonism and Present Moment enjoyment it's possible that what you have is a person who is not truly engaged with and
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excited about their future but a person who is really unhappy in the present and who is using fantasies about the future to escape from the present moment and the more I thought about it the more I thought about how that's the type of
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person who is probably most likely to struggle with follow-through because if you are so unhappy in the present that you can't even stay Associated to it for long enough to figure out what steps you need to take towards those goals you're
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going to have a really hard time reaching them now of course we all need to plan and get excited about and feel motivated to work towards our dreams and visions of the future so in this video what we're going to go over is how to
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differentiate between a plan for the future that is concrete actionable and likely to actually play out versus a plan for the future that is actually more of a fantasy so without further Ado we're going to go over five signs that
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some of what you are considering to be a goal or a plan might actually belong more in the fantasy category as well as what you can do to change that if you decide that you would like to so sign
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number one that your goal might actually be a fantasy you are using for self-regulation is that you are constantly in the ideation phase when it comes to new ideas but you rarely if ever find yourself executing on your
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ideas now what might happen here is you might go I just don't execute because I'm lazy especially if you're someone who has toxic shame or who has a very negative self image you can spend your entire life in this stage beating
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yourself up for never executing on your ideas when in reality the reason you're never executing on your ideas might be because you are never present enough to actually take the first steps in order to work concretely towards our goals we
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have to be in the present moment we have to be aware of and noticing what's in between us and our goals what about our lives exactly as they are today is income compatible with the goal that we have for the future that's an incredibly
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important thing to be present with because it shows us the road map for getting there but if we are constantly dissociated into the future because we find the present really painful and we don't actually like taking a look at our lives
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as it is today right now it's going to be really easy to just chronically dissociate into that fantasy about the future where you see maybe the last five steps that you would need to take to get there but not the first five because the
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first five would require you to look at your life exactly as it is today and acknowledge the full spectrum of where you are at if you have this dream where you're super wealthy but today right now you are in a ton of debt and you have no
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idea how to get yourself out of that debt what might happen when you think about your Current financial situation is you might get extremely overwhelmed and that sense of overwhelm particularly if you're someone who struggles with toxic shame might lead your emotional
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system to desperately grasp onto anything it can to make itself feel better and in this case what it grasps onto might be a fantasy about the future where the problem is solved but we cannot solve problems until we start
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from the ground that we are actually starting from so we have to be willing to land inside of the problem Orient ourselves to where we are today in relation to where we would like to get to and spend a lot more time looking
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at that than we do thinking about the future fantasy it's kind of like looking at a map and going here's this phenomenal mountain peak that I want to arrive at but being completely unwilling to look at the you are here Mark the you
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are here Mark tells us where we are relative to where we want to get to and if we are just chronically imagining ourselves on the Mountaintop we're not going to be willing to look at the path through the valley that we have to take
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to even arrive at the base of the mountain right a goal or a plan starts with the present moment and it gets built continuously out of that so people who are on their way to success are a lot more focused on what they're doing
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today and tomorrow and the next day than where they imagine themselves to be in five years that might be a program that runs in the background of their mind that keeps them motivated but the majority of their thoughts and actions
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are oriented towards what they are doing in the present so that's a really big sign that kind of distinguishes a real goal or plan from a future one are you thinking a lot about what you're going to be doing in the next 72 hours to work
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towards your goal or when you think about your goal are you largely thinking way into the future without a lot of awareness of what's going to happen between now and then sign number two that what you're considering to be a
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goal might actually be more of a self-regulatory fantasy is that when you picture the future you're picturing the Highlight Reel but you're not really picturing the reality of what that future would look like on a day-to-day basis so if you want to be an
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award-winning actor or an award-winning novelist or you want to be super rich and Powerful are you only picturing yourself accepting the awards checking your bank account and seeing how much money is in it having the perfect most beautiful wedding imaginable with your
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soul mate or are you also picturing what it would feel like to be that kind of person person on a day-to-day basis so if you wake up and you are someone who is extraordinarily powerful and Wealthy do you think that really your job day to
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day is going to be to sit around and enjoy your wealth or are there going to be a whole slew of new problems that come along with this Fantasy Life that if you were to have it in reality you
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would have to deal with if you were to achieve all of these things that you seem to want so badly what would you have to give up about the life that you have right now would you have less spare
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time would you have to vet your Social Circle more carefully would you have let's say a company to manage full of a lot of moving parts that would add new forms of stress to your day-to-day life now this is not to say that you want to
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take your fantasy or take your vision of the future and get really negative about it but what you do want to do if it's actually a goal or a plan you have is get really realistic about it so it's
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not about throwing your current life in the garbage and trading it in for a life that is perfect and has no problems what you're looking at when you set a real goal that is not a fantasy is which of
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my current problems do I want to trade in for different problems that I like better there is not a path in the world you could possibly go down and there is no place you could possibly arrive at in
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life where you do not have any problems where you are just Problem free forever but a good life is about having a life full of problems you like so if I want to be an award-winning novelist do I
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actually like sitting down to write do I like the problem of writing a chapter realizing something was kind of off in there I don't really know what it is so I'm going to reread it 17 times and try
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to figure out what I need to change is that a fun problem for me to solve if I want to have a family do I actually like the problem of figuring out how to raise kids if I want to have a healthy
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relationship do I like the problem of learning to understand a new person a adjusting to the ways in which they're different for me figuring out conflict resolution skills and getting to a place where we can relate in a healthy way and
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am I willing to accept the limitations of all of those things am I willing to accept that a romantic relationship is not going to solve every area of my life it's not inherently going to make me feel good about myself forever it's not
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going to fix issues that I have with my family or with other relationships it's not going to give me an enduring sense of purpose and Direction and the same goes for any particular fantasy are we looking at this fantasy as a One-Stop
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shop for solving all of the problems we currently have or if it's a realistic plan or goal are we looking at the new problems it's going to bring into our life and saying yes those are the problems I want those are the things I
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want to struggle with on a daily basis that's the kind of work those are the kind of questions that I want to spend my life trying to answer knowing that I'm going to get frustrated on route that I'm going to get stuck that it's
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going to feel difficult and challenging is that the type of Challenge and discomfort that I want to have that's how we know that we are looking at a more realistic plan as opposed to a fantasy one in a fantasy plan there are
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no problems our lives are solved forever and we never again feel a negative emotion because we have found the one thing that forever takes away all of our pain or we're romanticizing even the problems that it would bring about right
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but in reality we know that any plan or any goal we take on is going to include challenge pain failure strife and we still want to say yes to it we look at the goal and go that's the kind of
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problems I want to deal with on a day-to-day basis if your plan is more of a fantasy you're going to get discouraged real fast the second you try to move towards it in reality and realize oh this isn't a perfect
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problem-free path Ergo I'm gonna Abandon Ship because I didn't want the reality of this thing and the problems that come along with it I just wanted the fantasy and if you just want the fantasy it's a lot easier to stay exactly where you are
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dissociate into the fantasy use it to regulate through a difficult moment and then go back to whatever life you have built for yourself in the present which probably includes the problems that you're more comfortable solving sign number three that you might be
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self-regulating through plans about the future rather than creating realistic plans about the future is that you feel very defensive talking about your plans for the future because some part of you knows that you don't actually intend to follow through on them so if you're
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telling somebody about let's say a business idea that you have and they start asking you questions about the steps you're going to take to get there you might instantly feel super defensive because they're poking holes in your fantasy your fantasy is a world where
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you don't have to take action to get to those goals or give anything up or trade anything in about the life that you currently have in order to get the one that you want so when we have a real
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concrete actionable plan and people start giving us feedback on it especially if we have explained clearly to them where we're at we usually welcome and feel enthusiastic about good feedback because it helps us get closer to where we want to get to but if our
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plan is not a real plan and it's actually just a fantasy that we use to self-regulate someone pointing out to me that I'm not taking the relevant steps in that direction is going to feel like they're stomping on my Daydream like how
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dare you bring the reality into this this isn't what that's about you know it's kind of like watching Pirates of the Caribbean and someone going well you know this could never have happened because X Y and Z shut up I'm watching
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Pirates of the Caribbean I don't want to remember that it's a movie right I want to immerse myself in this and have fun inside this make-believe world by temporarily suspending reality and the same is true when we have a fantasy if
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it's not something that we're truly trying to work towards in reality it's going to feel really annoying when people start talking about the reality of it and we might find ourselves not wanting to share what we think are our
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dreams or goals with people who we know are going to ask questions about the reality of them because that's going to force us out of that kind of spell that we're in now this is just something to note once again right it's not to say
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that you have to take advice from absolutely anybody who wants to chime in on your goals or plans but it tends to be a pretty rad flag alerting you to the fact that a goal or plan that you think
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you have is actually more of a fantasy if you get really upset anytime someone tries to bring the reality into it our fantasies tend to be very private things that we can get real touchy about real quick but our goals and plans tend to be
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more realistic things that feedback can be really helpful for or even someone just asking a question that you realize you don't have the answer to can be really helpful if you're working towards a concrete goal right because even
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though it might feel kind of embarrassing for a moment it alerts you to a blind spot or a gap in your knowledge that might be really important for you to focus on in order to get closer to your goal so overall that
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feedback process is more helpful than it is annoying but again if it's a fantasy feedback is more annoying than it is helpful so just noting where you fall on that scale might be really useful in pointing you in the direction of
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figuring out whether what you're working with is a plan or if it's just a fantasy the next sign that what you think is your plan about the future might actually be more of a fantasy that you're using to self-regulate through
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difficult moments is that the older you get and the longer your life goes on for the more regret you experience about the life that you didn't lead and this is one that can be kind of tender and heavy
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for a lot of people because when the best option we have out of our lives from a young age is to dissociate into a fantasy about a better life what we tend to develop is a feeling of learned
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helplessness this feeling of I don't actually have the power to make my life better but there's a small hopeful part of me that knows that I'm capable of more right that knows that there's a me out there who's living more in alignment
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with the person I actually am and who has relationships and a life that reflects my authentic self so there might be this awareness throughout a lot of your life that you're not living up to what you know or can conceive of to
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be your true potential probably because you're doing what you learn to do from a young age and dissociate from the present and chronically focus on fantasies about the future but there's a certain point where this strategy kind of starts to fail right when you're in
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your early 20s and everybody is full of hopes and dreams and plans for the future it might not be as obvious to you or to other people observing you that you're not actually taking the relevant steps towards your plans but by the time
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a few more decades have passed and you're looking back on your life and recognizing a lot of what I wanted to happen for whatever reason I couldn't find a way to make happen it starts to become harder to deny that unless you
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change something your goals and dreams and plans might never come to fruition and you might end up with a deep sense of regret because you have memories of all of these plans and Ambitions you once had but when you look back on your
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life you notice that those things didn't happen now I want to be clear it is not ever too late as long as you are alive to turn that train around maybe some goals have certain types of expiration dates
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however you are never at a loss of where to take your life next if you can learn the art of presencing yourself and actually starting to build from the ground up so instead of starting at the end of the process start now in the next
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72 hours and you will start to actually build a life that you want to have nobody just wakes up the next morning and magically has the life that they want but everybody has the capacity to do something in the next 24 hours of
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their life that brings them closer to the Future they actually want the only way to guarantee that you are never going to get there is to spend every 24 hour period of your life thinking and fantasizing about the future without
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taking any steps towards it so if this is a place that you have arrived at this place of recognizing that you are a person with so much potential so many hopes so many dreams about the future and that you have always been that way
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but very few of those plans have come through and you're experiencing a sense of regret about that ask yourself the question what could I do in the next 24 hours because I can guarantee you that the people out there who are currently
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working towards their goals and dreams and plans and are actually going to get to where they want to get to they have a plan for what they are going to be doing within the next 24 to 72 hours to get
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there and that is what separates you if you are not doing that from the type of people who are and there's this other kind of tender edge here that I want to bring up which is that the more we live
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our life in the present moment the more wonderful memories we end up with because we're actually paying attention to our lives as they're happening and we're actually noticing the really beautiful moments when they arrived to us often completely unexpectedly if we
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are always zoned out and dreaming about a different life it's really hard to make meaningful memories inside of the present moment and so it's much more likely that we'll be left with a sense of emptiness and regret when we look
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back on our lives if we spent the whole time dissociated into some fantasy about things being different in the future in order to feel thankful and grateful and happy and satiated looking back on our lives we have to be willing to show up
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to the present moment and actually notice what's happening inside of that moment and learn to love and appreciate what's happening so this idea of focusing on the next 24 hours is really in large part about bringing our attention back to the only thing that's
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ever real which is the present moment and if we are living inside of the part of our lives that is real we're going to naturally at the end of our Lives end up with a plethora of experience chances
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and memories that we feel really grateful to have had that sense of emptiness looking back on our lives won't even be a possibility because we want to spend our lives sleepwalking we'll have spent them living and chances are if you stay really committed to the
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act of living in the moment which can very much include taking consistent concrete action towards your goals you're going to find that what happens on Route is a lot more meaningful than what happens at the top of the mountain
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anyways there's a million cliches about that so I will spare you them in this video but there are a million cliches about that for a reason what happens to us on the way towards our goals is where the story of our life actually unfolds
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and we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to have a life story at all if we are spending our entire lives avoiding the present moment in favor of dreaming about a distant future and the last sign and this is a huge one that
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your plans or visions of the future are more fantasy than they are reality is that you see this kind of future version of yourself as the most or the only authentic version of you so you have this idea that you're going to build
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yourself into a different person and maybe that person is the you that you know is hiding in there but that you feel like isn't allowed to or won't be able to emerge until you have a completely different life again we build
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a completely different life from the present moment out so in the moment when you're feeling overwhelmed and you're noticing yourself go into this magical fantasy about the future ask yourself who is present in this moment if I were
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to drop the fantasy and actually look around and Survey the life that I have at this exact moment in time including the person that I am in this exact moment in time what would I see what would be coming up for me emotionally in
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this moment where I'm dissociating into a future where I feel prideful and happy and like I have no problems is it possible that what's actually going on for me in the present moment is is a feeling of Shame inadequacy pain in some
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capacity and how can I stay present with those feelings how can I accept that all of those things are a part of who I am and that I am never going to get to a level of success where I don't feel
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those difficult emotions I have to take Who I Am with me on this journey if I ever want to get anywhere so who I am right now in this moment is not a mistake or an accident that I can
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correct by dissociating into a fantasy about the future where all the things I don't like about myself are magically absent and only qualities that I do like about myself are present and on display for everyone to see there is no version
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of the future that is real that involves you not having to experience any of the more difficult aspects of The Human Experience you can be the richest person in the world you could have the love of your dream or ideal partner you could
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accomplish everything you have ever wanted to accomplish in your life and nothing none of that not a single part of it is going to save you from being human you will arrive at any of those goals and you will still have shame pain
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regret insecurity wounding from childhood all of those things you cannot personally develop your way out of you have to learn how to integrate them be present with them feel them accept them as a part of the human experience and learn to bring them
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with you on your pathway towards your goals and you might be wondering at this point why even work towards goals if I'm still going to feel all of those things when I get there and this brings us all
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the way back to point number one realistic plans and goals are about trading in the problems of your current life for problems that you would prefer to have there is no life where you have no problems but setting the right types
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of goals means we're putting ourselves on the track to having problems that we more naturally enjoy having and usually those problems are problems that are more aligned with our authentic selves so as the people we actually are which
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questions would we like to spend our lives exploring which problems would we like to spend our lives chipping away at which types of relationships with which types of people would we like to spend our life figuring out how to navigate
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because in all of these areas we are never done ever we will never have a day in our life where we have finally wiped our hands clean of all problems and there's not a single area left in our
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lives where there is no tension or nothing to resolve so our absolute best shot at having a life that we actually want to show up to is picking the right types of problems that are aligned with the people we actually are the holistic
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version of ourselves and spending our lives struggling delightfully with those problems that's what it means to have a realistic plan or goal to have an Escapist worldview means to hold tight to the belief that something we could do
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or figure out in the future will absolve us from Pain forever that's not an option for any of us and it never will be but if we can kind of mine the Gold from those fantasies so figure out what
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about my life in those fantasies or my relationships or myself do I absolutely love and how can I balance out that fantasy with the realities of what would come along with getting that thing and find a way to start concretely working
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towards it you know that you have found a path that you enjoy being on when you like taking the steps towards it it's not just about picturing the Mountaintop you're actually enjoying the hike because you have chosen a goal that you
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feel aligned with so every step of the way you are getting closer to the type of person that you actually want to be in the world and the types of problems that you actually enjoy trying to solve alright that's all I have to say for
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today on the topic of whether you are using your goals and plans as self-regulatory fantasies or whether they are more realistic as always let me know in the comments what's coming up for you as you're watching this I love
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you guys I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other and your inner children and I will see you back here again super soon [Music]
Topics:follow-throughself-regulationfantasy vs realitygoal settingpresent momentdissociationprocrastinationfuture orientationpersonal developmentHeidi Priebe
