Ep #3: Creating Your Future with The Magic ‘If’

You’re listening to the Storied Life Coaching podcast with Aaron J. Jacobs, episode number three.In this episode, I will be showing you how to use The Magic ‘If’ as fuel to propel you toward your future self. Forward!

What if you could write your own life story? How would you spend your time? What would your career or business look like? What kind of parent or partner would you be? Welcome to Storied Life Coaching, the only podcast that will show you how to stop living life by default, and teach you how to build a thriving business that fuels an amazing life on your terms. I’m Aaron J. Jacobs, and as a master coach and CEO of OMH Creative and Storied Coaching, I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to learn what it takes first hand to rewrite your own life story. It’s never too late for a rewrite.

Hello, my friends. So, for today’s topic, I wanted to start with having you do a little bit of memory work with me. So, I want you to think about your favorite television show, it might be one that you’re watching now, it could be a movie as well something that you’ve seen in the past. It’s your favorite movie, and one of the reasons it’s your favorite movie or television show is because there’s a specific actor in that role. There’s a performer in that role that to you they just embodied that person, that role that they’re playing.

They just seem like they are that person even if you saw them in other things before, and you thought they were good. But they were just the perfect fit for that role. And I want you to think about that performance because there are certain actors that get matched up with a certain performance, and it’s just magic. When it clicks, it clicks.

When I was a casting director and doing a lot more of that, we would spend so much time having performer after performer come in and really just finding that magic moment where the person looks, sounds acts just the way that the writer had intended for this amazing character that they created on paper, and they brought that character to life. I want you to think about that and think about the way it made you feel, and that’s going to tie into what we’re talking about today because there is a specific type of acting. Some of you may have heard of it called method acting.

This is something that when I was going through my own acting training a long time ago now, but when I was going through my acting training, this was called the Stanislavski Method. He’s a famous teacher that came up with something that was very simple but very powerful. It was this supposition that you could create any character from scratch by using something called The Magic ‘If’, and the reason I want to talk about this today is because you can use this technique that performers use, called The Magic ‘If’.

They use this to create amazing, full-blooded, well sketched-out characters that they can breathe life into. You can use this very same thing for work that you want to do in your own life, whether it’s personal or professional, and I’ll give you a couple of examples of that. First, a little bit more information about The Magic ‘If’.

So, The Magic ‘If’, it asks the question, asks the actor to begin his or her work by asking what would I do if I were in these specific circumstances? If you were a hero in this role, and there were these obstacles to overcome, how would you feel about that? How would you react to it? What kinds of things would you do? What kinds of things would you not do in order to become that character? That’s what The Magic ‘If’, is.

It’s really allowing your brain off the leash and to maybe even disregard some of the current circumstances that you’re in, in real life in order to inhabit a new character and to empathetically think what would it feel like to walk a mile in that person’s shoes? That’s another way you can think about it. What would it be to feel empathetically to be that person?

And so, using The Magic ‘If’ to create a new version of yourself, a new version that you want to move toward, whether that is in your personal life or professional life. It can be very specific, or it can be very broad. This can be an amazing, magical tool for you to give your brain something to use as a template to pull you toward what we call your future self. Maybe there’s a version of yourself professionally where you want to grow your business to a point where it’s not at right now. You have a hard time thinking about how the current version of yourself could ever be that future version of yourself.

Well, The Magic ‘If’ can be the way that you do that. If you start thinking along the lines of what you would need to do to become this other character, this other person, this future version of yourself that has the thing that you’re hoping to do. Or in your personal life as well. You can use this as well in a specific circumstance where you’d like to evolve your relationship with a family member and have a different version of that or your relationships with your friends, The Magic ‘If’ can help you there as well.

It can be the emotional fuel if you set it upright. If you make a character to pull you toward, that propels you, that pulls you toward your future self. So, let’s dive into a couple of examples of how to do this. I find that this is the best way for students to understand this, and it can be very simple, or it can be something large that might seem daunting to you. So, start by picturing your future self you’re trying to create.

So, let’s start with a personal example, something that we all can probably relate to. In fact, one of my children, my son, he had a situation come up in the last couple of weeks that we talked about, where at school, he had a friend, another classmate, that was kind of following him along like a puppy dog, and that my son liked being friends with him. Still, this friend was very overeager to get his attention and to spend all of their time together and things like that. And it was a little bit overwhelming for my son at first because he was like, you know, I want to be this person’s friend, but, like, I’m not sure I’m in the same headspace that they are as far as our friendship level and spending all of our time together, and stuff like that.

We talked through that, and you know how to set some expectations and things that made him feel comfortable. But, what was interesting was we used it as a template for him to think about how he could apply this as his future self in order to be the kind of friend he wanted to be, maybe in this circumstance, but also in another circumstance, and to think about what it would feel like to be on the other side of that. We’ve all been in a situation before, I know I have, where I have basically fallen in love with someone, like, friendship-wise.

I’m like, this person is so neat. They’re so cool. I want to spend time with them and to think about coming at it from that angle that at some point, my son will be on the opposite side of that where he will want to pursue a friendship with someone else or a relationship with someone else. Now he knows what it feels like to be the person being pursued for friendship, and how can he use that in order to be kind in the current situation that he’s in? Knowing that at some point, that will probably be a role reversal for him.

There will be a future version of himself where he wants to become friends with someone and how to make that work. So, how would he need to feel? How would that person feel right now that wants his attention? And to think about how he can apply that for the situation he’s in now and for his future self where he might want to be better friends with somebody else. And that was really useful for him to really in the moment be able to think about how to be a good friend now and to set expectations with a sense of kindness that at some point that situation will probably be reversed.

So, he was thinking about his own personal future self, and that’s a very small specific, school-based example. Still, you might be able to see how you can apply that to your own life as well. Now, let’s take this in another regard. Let’s take this in the direction of how you can use The Magic ‘If’ to create a new version of yourself, a new character for yourself if you were trying to do something really big, maybe something really big with your business? I know I’ve had to do this as well because as a small business owner that has had a business that’s growing and gotten very healthy, there have needed to be different versions of myself.

The first version of myself was really fun. I had to do all of the things. For anyone else that’s listening to this, that’s an entrepreneur, and you might be just starting a business, and it’s really exciting, right? If you need a new website set up, you’re doing a lot of that yourself. If you need to set up invoicing for your first few clients, you’re figuring that stuff out yourself. You’re figuring out what system to use and how to use it and how to use the templates and how to send it, and looking up a payment system.

You’re doing all the things. You’re marketing, you’re sales outreach, all of that, but if you want to grow, there have to be other future versions of yourself. Where you step into a role of leadership position and need to hire people, and you need to provide them with support, but let them do their jobs. You need to stop doing all of the things, and if you have a specific goal, let’s say you wanted it to be a million-dollar revenue version of your business. You knew as a leader that right now, you’re at 200k.

You’re going to need to create a character using The Magic ‘If’. Say what if I was that million-dollar revenue goal by the end of the year? That if I was that CEO? If I was that person, what does that person do on a regular basis? Do they do the same exact things that I’m doing now with my business as a leader at 200k? In most instances, the answer is no. So, that person makes different decisions.

Their magic if, is thinking about other things. Thinking about what specific sales hires need to be made? Who’s handling the marketing and the outreach? If videos are being made or something like that, probably you can’t do that anymore. Someone else needs to be doing that. Someone else needs to be handling billing. There need to be different things that you think about as a leader in order to grow beyond that million-dollar version of yourself because if that meant you’re using The Magic ‘If’ and you’re at that million dollars.

That million-dollar person is thinking about the next one or thinking about how they can support their current employees or grow their teams. So, think about what that version of yourself would be. You might even take out a piece of paper and start writing down the things that you do now and the current version of yourself and if you’re using The Magic ‘If’ and you do a line down the center. Then, you said, okay, my future version of myself, my million dollars in revenue business to move from two hundred K to a million K. What things does that person do differently?

How do they spend their time? When do they wake up? How do they prioritize their schedule? What things do they have to stop doing now that they’re currently doing in order to have enough time to do those things? And what’s amazing about this is once you start thinking along these lines, you can start living that future version of yourself in small increments, in small stories, and train yourself to become that future version of yourself right now.

Use that as emotional fuel to start taking some of those things and how that future version of yourself spends their time. Start amending your own schedule in small ways in order to make the steps toward becoming that future self. All of a sudden, the distance between your current self, that 200K version of yourself, and the million-dollar in revenue version of yourself, the distance between those two things starts getting closer and closer until you step into that role.

Now, here’s something I want you to know this is not easy or painless. Certain things that you might pride yourself on right now that you do in your business that maybe you even enjoy, maybe you enjoy tweaking the website, you enjoy doing the marketing, you may need to have a future version of yourself where other people do those things. You may start writing your own first job descriptions and need to learn how to do that and learn how to interview team members and get it wrong a few times.

I’ve had to do that in my business as well. I’ve thought for sure the way that I set up this job description and the way that I did my interview process. The way that I had them do a small project and pay them for it in order to see how they thought and their quality of work that like, this is bulletproof process is going to work on the first try, and it didn’t. You know, it really didn’t. I had to go through 2-3 different iterations of that where I had to grow as a person toward that future version of myself that makes mistakes and doesn’t just stop because I made one mistake. So that means it’s not going to work, and I’m never going to reach that future version of myself for my business.

Probably that million-dollar version of that 200K version; the difference between them is that the million-dollar in revenue version of you or of that entrepreneur is okay with making mistakes. Do they enjoy making them? Of course, not. No one enjoys having setbacks as a general rule, but they don’t allow it to stop them. If that thing didn’t work, then you tweak it, you learn, and you try again, and you try again and again until you are becoming that future self, and you’re gaining that new skill.

So, that is how you can use The Magic ‘If’ in your personal life, in your professional life, in order to create new versions of yourself that you can move toward. You might think of it as being pulled toward your future self. Now, here’s how you can take action on this today, not tomorrow, not next week, today. What I want you to do is when you have 10 minutes to yourself, I want you on your lunch break or in the car wherever you are, just imagine that using The Magic ‘If’ of that character that you want to become in the future.

It might be a lot different than who you are now, and that’s okay. Still, think about what they do on a daily basis. If it’s for your professional life, what’s the revenue goal? What new things do they do differently in their role in their business that’s different than the current version then you are now? How do they do that? What are do they not worry about anymore? What kind of actions do they take on a daily basis? What kind of key members of their team do they have that do those things that you don’t want to do anymore?

Then, I want you to take out a piece of paper, and I want you to draw a line right down the middle. On the left-hand side, I want you to write out the things that your character does right now in that situation, whether it’s personal or professional. What kinds of character traits do you have? Are you patient? Are you less patient? Are you in control of your schedule? Are you not so in control of your schedule?

Do you intentionally spend time planning for the week? Do you not intentionally spend time planning for the week? Write those things down and be really honest with yourself. Then, on the right side of the paper, I want you to write the character traits that the future version of yourself has, whether it’s professional or personal. What do they do that’s different? How do they spend their time?

What kinds of things do they think about? What sorts of things do they not worry about anymore? What sorts of things would that character in your future self, using The Magic ‘If’, say to your past self version that hey, you’ve already got it figured out. You already know what to do. After you take just a few minutes to do this, look back and forth between those two columns, and what’s different?

You’re more than likely going to find a couple of key pieces of information, little nuggets of gold, that are attractive for you to maybe start moving toward? To start moving from present self to your future self, that version of yourself where life is that much better. So, I want you to start doing that today. Make that promise. Make that time for yourself. Give it a shot. You’ll be glad you did.

So, if you can start to train your brain to come off the leash and to start to think about what does that new version of myself think about on a daily basis, what do they do that’s different than I’m doing right now? All of a sudden, the time and the distance between where you are now and where you want to go, either personally or with your business and where you want to grow it, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller between where you are now and where you want to be.

I’ve had this happen for me in my own business and in my own life. I know that it works. The next time that you are thinking about or watching your favorite performance think about how they inhabited that character and know that you can create a new version, a new character for yourself that maybe will blow your own mind as far as what you can create for yourself and for your friends, family, personal life, as well as limitless different versions of yourself that you can step into in order to grow your own business to grow your own career.

Alright, my friends, I’ll talk to you next time.

To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away an amazing on-camera kit which includes a high-quality webcam, lighting set up, and a microphone. This is the very same kit we provide to students enrolled in our storied team’s course that is used by our storied clients like Microsoft and SAP.

I’ll be awarding three lucky listeners who follow, rate and review the show. It doesn’t have to be a five-star review, although I sure hope you love the show. I just want your honest feedback so we can create an awesome show that provides tons of value. Visit storiedcoaching.com/podcastlaunch; again, that’s storiedcoaching.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode.

Thanks for listening to Storied Life Coaching with Aaron J. Jacobs. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, visit us at storiedcoaching.com.