Humans, just like many other animals are great at identifying short term problems and threats
and are great at avoiding them.
At the same time, we have the ability to think about the future and how it will impact us
but that ability is very weak.
We have the ability to think long term but we need to train it.
Long term thinking is especially important if you want to improve your personal finances
or make a business that lasts long term or even be happier.
In this video, I will cover the benefits of long term thinking and how to train your brain
to think long term and we are starting right now.
First, we have to understand how we normally think.
We can look at how most people think of their jobs to see that.
Most people look at their jobs most of the time in terms of getting through it to enjoy
the weekend.
We do have occasional long-term thoughts about our job and where we’re headed in life,
but those thoughts are pretty minor and are usually drowned out by the short term.
That is how most of us think in most aspects of our life like our finances, health, and
time.
This way of thinking causes a lot of problems such as losing money and not being productive.
If you can switch over to think long term, you are able to be more focused on your goals,
help yourself overcome short term setbacks, and be happier overall.
For goals, it gives you a clear direction to go and you can set small milestones on
the way to stay focused.
If you only thought about goals short term, you will be constantly asking yourself so
what’s next?
For overcoming setbacks, when you think long term, you are able to see it as a minor process
that is part of a greater plan unfolding.
You are able to prevent the obstacle from consuming you and stopping your progress.
As for happiness, you are able to be more happy overall because you won’t have to
constantly be thinking about what’s next.
So how can we think long term?
Well, long term thinking is just like a muscle.
If you use it more, it becomes more natural and you can rely on it more.
It isn’t a switch where you can flip it and you are suddenly creating a 10 year plan.
You have to train your brain to think long term and then gradually you can become a long
term thinker.
To train your brain, do this simple activity every month or 2.
The activity is to make a detailed picture of your life at some point in the future.
Where do you want to be in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years?
It's a simple question and one we daydream about sometimes but the difference here is
you have to write down the details and it has to be realistic.
You first start with a time frame.
Choose either 5, 10, or 20 years.
You then go through each area of life and figure out what things will look like.
For health, think about how healthy you are and what your health goals for the future
are.
For intellect, think about what skills you want to learn in the future.
For spiritual, think about what your purpose is and try defining it.
For relationships, think about your friends and family and how you can strengthen those
relationships in the future.
For professional, think about what you want to accomplish in the future.
For financial, think about if you are financially secure and what you can do to be financially
free.
Those are the 6 main areas you want to think about and you can add more areas if you want
to.
Come up with a concrete answer of where you want your life to be for each area at the
point of time you are thinking about.
Make sure those answers are positive and realistic.
From there, start making plans for the near future.
What do you need to do to make that future happen?
This method is a lot better than having negative answers because if you put down negative answers,
you will be thinking about what you need to do to make sure this outcome doesn’t happen
which is not pleasant.
As a bonus, if you want to train your brain to think long term even more, spend time self
reflecting.
When you self reflect, you normally think about what happened during the day but in
this case, you also want to think about the future.
What do you want to happen in the future?
How can you make it happen?
Self reflecting shouldn’t take too long and it is something you can do everyday.
Do you think long term?
Leave a comment below and check out my other videos if you enjoyed this video and want
more.