Trust Your Future Self

Let yourself run toward dreams, even when your present self doesn't know all the answers.

A few years ago, I woke up one morning feeling the impulse to run.

It was the middle of the pandemic, and being cooped up indoors was touching on a part of me that wanted to feel free.

I put on my running shoes and started running from my San Francisco apartment. The thought of running toward the ocean, more than five miles away, crossed my mind. But I quickly dismissed the idea.

After all, I hadn’t run more than a mile in years. Within the first two miles, my legs already felt sore. My lungs were coughing up phlegm. I ran past people enjoying the sun on the grass, and I just wanted to give up, lay down, and join them.

How could I possibly think that I could run to the ocean, let alone have the energy to make it back it home afterwards?

But I just kept picturing how amazing and free it would feel to be someone who ran all the way to the ocean and stood in the cold water.

I decided to keep running, choosing to believe that if I just relentlessly focused on what I wanted, my body would take me there.

I told myself if I was really going to do this, I might as well go all out. And so I straightened my spine and ran in the middle of the street — they were empty anyways. I started exhaling loud sighs and cheered myself on with “woo!” sounds. I spread my arms like wings and felt the wind against my skin.

Before I knew it, I’d ran all the way to the ocean. When I got there, I took off my socks and shoes, and stood in the freezing cold water in my running shorts. My heart beat fast. I felt so alive.

“I am a warrior!” I shouted into Pacific Ocean. With each incoming wave, I unleashed the deepest roar I could summon from my belly, feeling my fierceness and declaring my existence to the world. I was someone who could do hard things.

I felt powerful, exhilarated, and free.

I stood in the cold water for nearly ten minutes. My feet transitioned from shock to numbness to peace, as I breathed and roared, Wim Hof style. Tapped into my inner warrior, it became obvious without question that I would have no trouble running the five miles back home. All it would take was the decision to do it. So I put my shoes back on, my socks slightly wet. And I just ran all the way back home.

I ran over 10 miles that day, more than I’d ever run in the past six years.

My coach at the time would later reflect back something important to me. The man who ran back wasn’t the same man who ran out there.

He’d shown himself that he had access to more power, more resource, and more possibility that he originally thought, and from that place, running an additional five miles felt easy.

I think back to that day often, whenever I have a dream that feels too big and that I’m afraid to run toward.

In the past, I’ve often had the tendency to only run toward goals I knew I could reach, to only tackle problems I knew I could figure out. The strategy kept me safe from failure, but it also limited my capacity to dream and to open my life to mystery and possibility.

If I’d tried to figure out how I would run back from the ocean at the start, I would’ve just given up. It would’ve felt too daunting of a task.

But if I just follow the energy and trust that my future self has got me — even if the current version of me doesn’t know the answer — I can reach dreams that don’t seem possible from where I stand today.

All I need to do is run toward them.

Thanks to Jessica Fan for reading an early draft of this and Henry Kimsey-House for his coaching.

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