Have you ever wondered about traveling through time? Revising the past, creating the future?
You may have seen one of the funniest movies made, going Back To The Future. In the film, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and the lovable professor, Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), travel back and forth through time, trying to change the future or right the ills of the past. Seeing Michael J. Fox riding his hoverboard was exciting. We watched him “light up” the band with his rendition of Great Balls Of Fire—simply spectacular. It’s a fun movie that got me thinking about how our imagination is a lot like time travel. We often go back in time, revising the past, and we can, with a bit of forethought, go into the future to bend our current reality to our strongest desires.
I think this is what Einstein was getting at in his quote.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
—Albert Einstein
I love the Einstein quote. A great example of of what he is talking about, the power of imagination, can be seen in Walt Disney. If you google EPCOT Center, you get the short description; EPCOT allows you to travel to the future and ignite your imagination. The power of imagination is well established in history and in creating new technologies, new entertainment, new experiences.
There is another great quote from an interview with Walt Disney’s son. Walt, his father, had already passed away. The interviewer asked the younger Disney if he thought it a shame that his father never got to see the completion of Disney World and EPCOT Center, his son, wise in the ways of his father, replied,
My father saw it before any of us.
That is the power of imagination. That is the power of traveling through time to the future to create what you can only imagine today.
As children, we largely model our parents, and that modeling forms the foundation of our thoughts, beliefs, and values. Children are outstanding learners. They are sponges, absorbing all that life offers. They are amazingly good at mimicking our behaviors and picking up on our emotions.
Just say that one curse word in anger, and you might hear it repeated from your child for years to come. They often come up with new, novel combinations of ideas. Creating new games as they play. I love to pretend I’m a child again.
Our childhood is a fantastic time for most. Many of us also experience traumas in our early years or even as adults. These traumas can cloud our present-day experiences. Constantly reliving the trauma can cause plenty of present-day problems.
These traumas, or “Dragons,” as Dr. Daniel Amen calls them in his new book, Your Brain is Always Listening, can haunt us if we are careful. I know I had a dragon from my childhood watching my parents fighting. These fights were often over money. Now I am talking about the real MMA style fighting with blood, sweat, tears, and the occasional 911, domestic disturbance call.
Dr. Amen talks about lots of different dragons. From ancestral dragons like mine, ones that can be handed down from generation to generation, to many others. Dragons like abandonment, inferiority, shaming, anger, judgemental and more. I recommend the book for anyone interested in why you do the things you do or why others do the things they do. It’s a good read.
As a teenager, getting hit with a strap could have left some emotional scars, but thanks to “Time Traveling,” I believe I have healed and covered over these scars with new meanings. Yes, I went through a form of time travel to heal the hurts, and so can you.
Thoughts Are Powerful
Our thoughts are powerful and can have a profound effect on the way we feel. They can even trigger physiological responses in the body.
Whenever you have a sad thought, an unkind thought, or a hopeless thought – such as ‘I’m never going to land my dream job’ – your brain pumps out a dose of chemicals that makes you feel bad. On the flip side, conjure a happy, loving, or encouraging thought, and your brain gives you a blissful jolt of feel-good chemicals.
– Dr. Daniel Amen
Having negative thoughts can reduce activity in the area of the brain involved with self-control, judgment, and planning, which can lead to poor decisions.
These patterns of negative thoughts, negative self-talk can cause a downward spiral. So, exactly how can you turn around negative self-talk?
I have outlined how to do this in an easy-to-remember acronym we are all familiar with; A-E-I-O-U.
A-E-I-O-U
A – First of all, Awareness! Awareness is a superpower. Identify and write down the negative thoughts. Often these thoughts are a pattern of thinking. Writing them down will allow you to refer back to them later and see if there is a pattern. It will also allow you to determine what triggered the thought, and then, of course, how you can KILL it—or HEAL from it. If you are already aware of the issue, you might consider looking at it a bit deeper, what might have happened earlier in your life, and why you continue to feel this way now? When we are children, we sometimes over-dramatize situations because they look so much “bigger.” And the traumas don’t only occur in our childhood. There are thousands of my military brothers and sisters who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) that occurred from the stresses of military life. Awareness can be an important first step in interrupting a recurring dragon.
E – Evaluate. Make an honest appraisal of the situation and ask yourself a few key questions. Is it true? Did you over-dramatize it? Is the meaning you are bringing to this absolutely true or just partially correct? Are you participating in ALL or Nothing thinking? Are you comparing yourself to others? Who would you be without these thoughts, these feelings? Write your evaluation down. Writing it down will help you keep track of your assessment—especially if your review changes over time.
I – Intention. What would you most like to feel in this situation? How would you want to feel in this situation? What are some empowering thoughts you might share with others to give them strength? What would you feel and learn if instead of believing this happened to you, you believe this happened for you? What empowering belief can you bring to the problem? If you assume that all things happen for you rather than to you, what would you learn? Write your answers to these questions as you will want to repeat them and reinforce them later.
O – Optimism. Positive thoughts are also SUPERPOWERS. Bring a touch of optimism into your thinking, and what might be the positive outcomes of this situation? How can you bring a positive aspect or way of thinking that might influence others? Do you know what Martin Seligman found in a 22-year study at the University of Pennsylvania? In his book, Learned Optimism, he summarized that being optimistic is the most important quality you can develop for personal and professional success and happiness. Optimistic people seem to be more effective in almost every area of life. To drive this point home, once again, write down your answers and review them consistently. Just repeating the phrase, “I have a choice in the meaning I bring to this situation,” or I have learned from this situation and that makes me happy and more powerful.” Yes, the perception you bring to a previous event changes the whole meaning and how you react to it.
U — YOU! You need to reinforce your new way of thinking. Only YOU can do this. I like to use affirmations or what I call “I-CAN-TATIONS.” State the new empowering feelings, emotions, thoughts that you have created about the situation. Use positive, first-person sentences of “I am” or “I have.” This is the real gist of transformational vocabulary (TV). Then visualize yourself in the situation and demonstrate in your mind’s eye your preferred outcome.
There are other ways to develop your mindset, but these are just a couple of quick ones to get you started.
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Write your “I AM” statements down and state them; imagine them twice a day, morning and night. If you need additional reinforcement, you might try bringing different ways of thinking to them by going through the process again. To take it a step further, imagine yourself in the same situation in the future and see yourself acting out the new empowering behavior. This technique will help reinforce your thoughts into actions and your new identity.
So here we are with a clear, or at least a healing past. What is the next step we might take to continue to grow? Imagining your future is the next step in our journey of time travel. Going forward in time. Moving into the future.
Developing Your Future Self
Successful people create their own opportunities by focusing on goals. It is well established that a person that sets a goal is more likely to accomplish it. Setting goals can be empowering.
Start with the empowering part—change from the inside out.
—Dave Razo, Rich Life, Wealthy Life
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Empowerment
Empowerment is defined as giving power or authority. My goal in this section is to give you the power and authority to make changes in your life. It really comes down to the words and images we use about ourselves. Using positive imagination and positive self-talk can transform that self-talk into your identity. It sounds easy, and it is easy. However, it does require some daily action, persistence, resilience, and discipline. You can do it!
How Can You Apply This to Your Life?
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
—Leonardo Da Vinci
Imagine the cumulative effect of choosing more empowering words on a consistent basis. “I can’t” and “I don’t” are statements that seem similar. We often interchange them, but psychologically they can provide very different feedback and, ultimately, result in very different actions. They aren’t just words and phrases. They are affirmations of what you believe, reasons for why you do what you do, and reminders of where you want to go. To put it simply, you can either be the victim of your words or the architect of them, building your future victory. Victim or victory—the choice is yours. Which would you prefer?
Dream lofty dreams and as you dream, so shall you become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
—James Allen
Turn your dreams into reality. Start by setting goals, and then through a process, you can define your destination and begin the work toward reaching it. You can start with this short seven-step sequence. For a more detailed explanation of each step, you can download my book at
- Write your goals—develop a positive mindset
- Identify your why
- Develop empowering strategies
- Overcome obstacles
- Set your deadline
- Hold yourself accountable
- Take massive action
There are other ways to develop your mindset, but these are just a couple of quick ones to get you started.
For a more complete explanation sign up below and I will send you a one-page summary.
The future isn’t a reality—it’s a projection. The future is a tricky business. As humans, we’re able to visualize, intellectualize, and emotionalize a reality that doesn’t yet exist. The problem is that sometimes we misuse our ability to think about the future. Part of the reason for this is bad messaging.
This is how people can get tricked by the future. It’s dangerous stuff, our being able to visualize a reality that doesn’t exist, because there’s the risk of our becoming determined to make it happen without realizing that it’s an ideal, something we can never reach.
If you think about it, any vision of a future result before that result has happened is make-believe. You’re making believe that that future is true.
The tricky part is what you do with the make-believe. It’s there for emotional, psychological, and intellectual motivation. It is not there as a measurement of how you might live a fulfilling life.
A fulfilling life is measuring the accomplishments of your past and having some form of authentic pride or gratitude for them.
Bringing new meanings and values to our past and creating an empowering future are two ways that we can make the PRESENT more meaningful. The goal here is not to live in the past or in the future, but to live each day in the present – maximizing your values and leading a fulfilling life. The meaning and values that you bring to this are keys to having that inner peace—that fulfilling life.
Dave Razo
Author – Speaker – Leader - Investor
Dave spent a long and distinguished career as a pilot and leader in the United States Air Force. Along the way, he managed to obtain three graduate degrees. As an investor in the stock market for more than 37 years, Dave has seen his share of ups and downs. When Dave retired as a Colonel in 2006, he founded Razor Sharp Investments. Subsequently, he worked with an investment education company, teaching new investors how to handle their money, and then two brokerage firms doing the same thing. In 2012, Dave founded his own investment firm. Dave has always been fascinated by the question, Why do people do the things that they do? On his discovery journey, he encountered Tony Robbins. He worked with his event staff to eventually progresss through the Institute for Strategic Intervention as a coach, making him ideally suited to tackle the most formidable challenges in a relationship. Dave continues to be committed to a life of service, mainly serving those struggling in their relationships over money.
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