Today my freshman brother came home telling me their teacher asked him to write a letter to their future 12th grade self… this suddenly jolted my memory: my wise friend (actually so many of them are so wise indeed!) once told me “to do my future self a favour” when I was making a decision that I’ve now forgotten but must have been significant at the time.

It’s basically a reversed perspective; instead of using the logic of my (too young too simple sometimes naive) present self as the basis of decision making, I think about what my definitely older and hopefully wiser future self would do 5, 10 years down the road.

The way human brains work is that it is always flawed no matter how we meditate or train up; with our upbringing our cultural background and our education etc, we form certain filters that led to biases when we view things which in turn also impact how we make decisions. It always help to view things from multi angles hopefully reducing our blind spots.

Aside from using others as sounding boards, perhaps it would also makes sense to consult the person who knows you best – your future self. And that, is something I’ll try to do in 2018🖖🏻 and here are two perspectives of the world, deep under the ocean and high up in the sky.

other random wise words that suddenly came to my mind:

“Always assume the best intentions of people so you will in turn treat them kindly too and hopefully that gets a positive cycle going because the world has enough negativity going around already”

“no one is responsible for your happiness but yourself”

“worrying doesn’t stop things from happening”

“only do things with upsides to yourself but never at the cost of others”

“what you see reflects what your heart feels”