Your Wisest Advisor

In Rediscovering You - Part 1, I talked about this journey of life that we're all on and how our decision making in the moment is influenced by where we are in that moment, emotionally, financially, relationally and all the other allys you can think of. Bottom line is that decisions made in the moment can have consequences further down the line that may surprise you and not in a good way. So I introduced you to a wise advisor that would help you look at things from a longer term perspective - your future self.

The great thing about your future self is that it has some skin in the game of your life. In fact it is fully invested in you because it is you, just older, wiser and hopefully happier. Future you will have to deal with the consequences of the stuff you do in this moment, so is a fantastic virtual advisor to ask and will be a much better advisor than a sycophantic AI assistant that will just blow smoke up your bottom. (Note - if your deepest desire is to have smoke blown up your bottom, I'd probably swap out future you for an AI assistant).

I started chatting with future me in lockdown in 2020 (he was part of my virtual household and I didn't need to use Zoom or keep 2 metres apart) and he helped me a lot in terms of managing my physical and mental health. I even had a hashtag for it:

#WWYFSD? - What would your Future Self do ?

From an Art of Brilliance perspective, lockdown meant our face to face work dried up completely. This was, like for a lot of other sectors, more than a little bit sh1t as 100% of our work was face to face. But we pivoted quickly, learnt how to stream online and soon we added virtual delivery to our menu. Five years on, virtual delivery is here to stay and fits well with the hybrid workplace I talk about in Connection in the Workplace.

In 2020 and 2021 we ran three 'wellbeing workouts' that we streamed on Facebook. These were fronted by my great friend, Art of Brill colleague and fellow welshman, Sanjeev Sandhu and I did the techy bit in the background. A number of our trainers got involved including the boss, Dr. Andy Cope, and it was in one of those sessions that he proposed an upgrade on #WWYFSD.