#32 - Time Travelers: Living for the Moment and Your 10-Year Future

Do you ever feel caught between savoring today and planning for tomorrow? In this episode, we're becoming "time travelers" to explore the delicate balance between living fully in the present and intentionally building the life your future self will thank you for. I share a personal story that dramatically shifted my perspective and offer actionable insights on how to avoid regret, make mindful decisions, and embrace the power of both "now" and "next."

Key Highlights:
1. The Present vs. Future Dilemma: Understanding the common struggle of balancing immediate gratification with long-term financial and life goals.
2. Your Future Self's Perspective: Learning to tap into the wisdom of your future self to guide present decisions and cultivate intentional living.
3. The Power of Small Moments: Discovering how seemingly "boring" or small daily actions can be profoundly transformative for your long-term success.
4. Overcoming Resistance to Planning: Addressing the reasons we often resist planning for the future and how to integrate strategic thinking without sacrificing present joy.
5. Cultivating Peace and Intentionality: Practical insights on how to choose peace, avoid burnout, and make choices that contribute to the story you want to tell 10 years from now.

This isn't about rigid rules, but about finding a harmonious strategy for a joyful present and a thriving future. You won't want to miss this!

Links:
Get Notified: Personal Finance Course

Always and Never About Money Episode Links:
Video Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyMasteryWithChelsea
Socials: https://linktr.ee/the_money_whisper
Money Mastery Website: www.moneymastery.work
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AlwaysandNeverMoney/

Transcript

Today's episode is about something. I live by the art of being fully present while living for the person you're becoming 10 [00:02:00] years from now. I'm gonna share a story about the moment that shifted everything for me when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. And how in that moment, my future self became the loudest voice in the room.

If you've ever struggled with knowing when to pause, when to say no, or when to override your emotions in favor of your evolution, this episode is for you. Let's talk about boundaries, vision, presence, and the version of you who's watching from the future. Whispering. You've got this. I find it difficult to take the advice that somebody's giving you for your future self and implement it into your everyday life.

Telling yourself, I don't wanna think about 10 years from now, or, it's too hard to think about that, or I just forget, or, living in the here and now is more important than thinking about my future. Well, I get it. [00:03:00] And what I wanna talk to you about today is that balance between living in the here and now and enjoying every moment while still keeping your future self in mind.

This is something that kind of happened to me instantaneously when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, who's now 17, about to be 18. Oh my gosh. They grow up so fast. I talk about that story a lot because when I looked at that pregnancy test and that second line showed up telling me that I was gonna be a mom, I had an overwhelming physical, mental, emotional paradigm shift, and I felt it in the moment, but I didn't really know or understand what that meant for me moving forward.

One of the abilities that kind of opened up to me in that moment that I realize now looking back and retracing my [00:04:00] thoughts and my actions and how I managed life after that moment was the ability to always think 10 years down the road here in the now and being able to. Put myself 10 years from whatever that point was, and ask myself, what do I wanna tell my daughter about this moment right now?

What is the story that I wanna create that I can tell her? That is the truth, and that will make me proud to be able to tell her how I handled these situations or what I did. And so to give you a little bit of vulnerability and context around how that showed up for me with my daughter, me and her father had one of those love triangles that so many of us get caught up in, and there was a lot of pain and shame and humility.

And drama and even violence within that love triangle. And so when I found out I was [00:05:00] pregnant and I started thinking 10 years down the road and, and envisioning myself, telling my daughter, this is what happened. This is what I did, these are the situations that came up, and this is how I handled them.

That was a really hard thing to do. It was this tug of war between all of the feelings and emotions and ways that I would conduct myself within that situation. Pre finding out I was pregnant and then after, because. Even though my mind had decided I am going to act today, like the person I wanna tell the story about 10 years from now, my feelings and my emotions weren't there.

My mind had changed, but my feelings and emotions were still stuck in the toxicity of the situation. And so what I had to do was use my head over my heart. For years, and it did take years for [00:06:00] my heart to catch up with what my head knew I wanted. And what I had to do was think about 10 years from now. 10 years from that moment, this woman could be her stepmom, her children are her siblings, and very innocent.

So shifting my perspective around that was not difficult, but it went from the children of the man I love to my daughter's siblings. I had to see that as a possibility and navigate and make decisions as a person who was gonna end up. Being cordial, being possibly being in these kids' lives and working as a team because the kids always come first, and adult drama and toxicity never serves our children.

So this was a perspective shift for me. And I painted that picture in my head of 10 years from that moment and what that could look like and what I wanted to be able to say around [00:07:00] what I did, what I said, how I acted, and the decisions that I made to handle each and every situation. But the truth for me and the truth for you is that life-changing decisions require a long-term lens, even when your heart isn't there yet.

I. This shows up so often in money because you know, I tell people to save no matter how much, I don't care if it's 50 cents. Start building that habit of saving for your future self. And I get some kickbacks sometimes around, oh, making money isn't an issue. I can go make money and I wanna live here and now, and tomorrow's not guaranteed.

And while that is true, think about 10 years ago and. You standing here now and who you were 10 years ago and what you were telling yourself and how that might look different if you knew that you were gonna be here today. There is a delicate [00:08:00] balance between you now and you 10 years from now, and both deserve your energy and attention.

I have never. Ever, ever, ever, ever, in 17 years of working with people and their money heard somebody say, I regret starting to save too soon. I regret starting to think about retirement or investing too soon. I wish I would've waited longer. To start these things. It's never ever happened. Living in the moment today, right now is where we feel happy, where we feel abundant.

A lot of us are very distracted and it's very easy in today's world to get distracted. We're scrolling on our phones. We're keeping our minds so busy. That we're not slowing down and absorbing the moment for what it is now, the memory before it becomes a memory with our kids, [00:09:00] with our family members, with our friends, with the people that we love.

Whether it's a concert that we wanna enjoy and be able to look back on and just feel those emotions again, of excitement and having fun. The presence is arguably the most important moment because it is true. Tomorrow's not guaranteed. What's equally essential is to know who you want to be 10 years from now.

Start doing the things and saying the things so that you can fall into alignment with that person, with that vision that you have for yourself. What we also have to realize is that in this point in history, we are inundated with information, with storylines, with social media, with instant gratification and instant gratification.

It is what is sucking our finances and our attention. It is really easy to. Go on to Amazon and pay money to have something delivered to your house that day. [00:10:00] It is really easy to turn the phone on and keep your mind occupied with things that are actually irrelevant to your here and now to your life.

One of the hardest things to do in today's day and age is to pause, clear our minds and be fully present in each moment. So here's a question I want you to think about. What would your 10 years from now self thank you for doing today? And not just in the money in how you're showing up as a parent, as a daughter, or a son, or a mother, or a father, or a cousin, or in your finance.

Picture yourself 10 years from now, who do you want to be? What do you want to be doing? How do you wanna live? Who is in that picture with you? How do you want your relationships to look with the people around you? And when you think about that and you have that vision in your mind of [00:11:00] what your life looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like 10 years from now, what are you proud of?

What did that person have to say no to, to get to that place? And what did they stay committed to? One of the things that most of us have heard at some point in our life that stuck with me pretty hard for some reason is dress for the job you want, not the job you have. And I see a lot of people going back and forth on this in terms of, oh, that's being inauthentic, or that's not being true to yourself, or that's showing up as something that you're not.

But my perception around this saying is, if we think about this. Literally dress for the job you want, not the job you have. First of all, how we appear on the outside is important, even if you would like to think that it's not. First impressions are a real thing, and yes, it should be an [00:12:00] expression of who you are and it should reflect your authenticity.

But if you are, let's just say a receptionist in a law firm and you want to be an attorney someday dressing for the job you want. Not The job you have is only the beginning. How you look is only the beginning. Your words need to follow. Your actions need to follow, your decisions need to follow. To me, it's similar to my mind over heart matter.

There are some situations where we need to follow our mind and let our heart catch up. So how can you? Act like the person and navigate life, like the person that you wanna be in 10 years today, in every moment. And how can you prepare for the hard nos that are going to come your way? That's going to be difficult.

[00:13:00] Your feelings and your heart and your emotions are going to be dragging you in one direction while your head is gonna tell you. Now you know that that is not the decision to make. If you want to be at this place in your life, in the future. It's gonna require hard conversations, hard decisions. It's gonna require you sit with these hard feelings and emotions and do different anyway, and choose something different anyway, despite how hard it is.

So do yourself the favor. Prepare yourself. Try to think about the nos that are gonna come from the people, the places, the situations, the environments, what potential nos are going to be put in front of you that you are going to have to carry out despite how you feel. What's going to happen is that over time it's going to get easier and easier to say no to the people, places, things, [00:14:00] and situations that are not going to serve your tenure self.

And it will be. Easier to say yes to that person. It you will become that person. One decision at a time. One no at a time. And every yes you say to that person is going to get you closer to becoming that person. And one day you are gonna look in the mirror and you're gonna say, holy shit. I am that person.

My heart is now in alignment with my head, and I have fully embodied this person that I saw in my mind and one hard decision at a time. I became her. I became him because what is going to happen is if you can embody that vision in your mind, despite the doubt, despite the feelings that you have, that may pull you away from.

Carrying this out, the decisions that you end up making around your finances, around, and [00:15:00] maybe even against your emotions, but your lifestyle will start to align with where you want to land, not just where you are now. And I think one of the hardest things around this, and I can speak from experience because the situation I was in with my daughter pre finding out I was pregnant was.

Highly emotional, highly triggering. There was a lot of pain and trauma around that, and my emotions wanted to lead me to making different decisions and saying different things. Emotions can be incredibly loud and unhelpful. And so in those moments, and this is what people talk about with through the term emotional intelligence, regulating your emotions, I.

You have to lead yourself with a vision through those emotions. You have to let those emotions be there and make a decision to do [00:16:00] something different at the same time. And here's a truth that we all need to hear at some point or another. You don't have to accept every invite to chaos. You don't have to entertain every dramatic conversation.

You don't have to accept the invitation to gossip. You don't have to accept the invitation to go down a path of negative thinking around any situation. You can politely and respectfully say, no, I don't want to be a part of that conversation. I don't want to be a part of that environment. I don't want to condone this decision or be a part of this decision.

Saying No is what's going to keep you in your Yes. And something that a lot of us attend to that we do it coming from a good place because we have big good hearts. But what some of us really need to hear is that someone else's emergency is not [00:17:00] your emergency. And I see this a lot in the financial world when people are forced to make a decision around lending money.

To a family member or a friend, they want to help this person. They want to also get paid back, and a lot of times it doesn't go the way that it was promised to go. And what you need to hear is that in some situations, instead of helping the person, like your intention is to help them, you are actually enabling them from taking accountability over their current financial position.

You did not make the decisions for them that led them to a place of needing money. And especially if lending money to somebody is going to put you in a spot, saying no is often what needs to be done. Despite how we feel about the situation, boundaries and priorities are a tool that helps you [00:18:00] stay in alignment and.

Honoring your boundaries and requiring other people to respect them is not wrong. And when you run across somebody who takes it personal, that you have boundaries that is more of a reflection of them than it is of you. You are right to have boundaries and priorities and protect them. And saying no is an art.

You can say no. In such a way that it leaves somebody feeling still loved and empowered, you can say no in a way that makes people think more about their situation and possibly even choose to position themselves differently and take ownership over their life circumstances. This is not selfish. This is not a wrong thing to do.

Nobody's coming to save you just like nobody's coming to save them. You can be completely selfish in how you live your life today and [00:19:00] what you want in 10 years and still make people feel loved and cultivate abundance in your relationships. You don't have to choose. You can have both. So now ask yourself, have I been accepting?

Things, people, situations, circumstances that aren't aligned with my future self. And if so, how can I break those ties with love while upholding my boundaries and priorities? So the art of balancing what's now and what's next is an ongoing art, and you're never gonna get it perfect. You're going to be a student of it for the rest of your life.

There are moments in life that deserve 100% of your attention without your mind wandering to other things. Moments with your kids and your family and the people that you love. For example, are the moments that your 10 year from now self is going to thank you for [00:20:00] being present in, because those moments are going to turn into memories that drive you 10 years from now and that you're gonna be able to enjoy.

So your future self depends on you enjoying life right now and not wasting it with people, places, things and situations that are not contributing to who you wanna be. And some moments may be disguised as important, but they actually aren't. And there may be some moments that feel boring, but they're actually transformative.

So what story do you want to be able to tell 10 years from now about how you handled this season in your life? Identify one area that you're letting the now overrun the next, and identify one way your resisting presence by living only in the future. Because you can hold both. You can hold joy in the now and faith and [00:21:00] action in what's coming.

But when in doubt, because you will have moments of doubt. Ask yourself, what would my future self do? Because she or he already knows, and she's you 10 years from now, self is counting on you not to be perfect, but to be present and intentional. They don't want you burnt out. They need you rooted. They don't want you stuck in someone else's chaos.

They want you choosing your peace. So today, ask yourself, what story do I wanna tell 10 years from now about how I handled this season of my life? If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who's navigating the same. Pull between now and next and remember breaking old habits, building new boundaries, and living for your future starts with one moment of clarity.

[00:22:00] Maybe this was it. Until next time, keep moving with love and strategy. If this episode hit home and you are realizing your personal money equation is off, whether that's how much you make, keep spend to save or invest, then I want you to do yourself a favor right now. I am creating a personal finance program designed to help you rebalance your entire money equation.

It's built on a proven framework that gets you grounded in your money right now without shame, spreadsheets or burnout. I'll help you move past the ick of budgeting and into a system of boundaries that protect your future financial freedom. While still giving you freedom within your spending today. If that sounds like what you've been needing, go to our website and join the email list.

As soon as the program launches, you'll be the first to know, and trust me, you are going to want to be in the room for [00:23:00] this.