Episode 18: Planning Your Future
Welcome to episode 18 my friends. For the past two episodes we have talked about the past so naturally now it is time to leave the past behind and talk about the future.
How much time do you spend thinking about the future?
What does the future you think about look like?
Now sometimes when I think about the future – I am preventing disaster mode. I am anxious. I am quite fearful. I am trying to prevent all possible worst-case scenarios.
This often creates the emotion of my greatest fears. Right here, right now. I am experiencing the fear, confusion, panic sometimes of those things happening when they haven’t happened and in all likelihood may not even happen at all.
Thinking about the future in this way creates a negative experience now.
In some cases, it is good to look at and analyze the possible scenarios that could happen if we can take action to prevent them without causing a negative experience now.
This looks like chasing cows with my dad.
He walks the corrals we are moving them into before we start gathering them.
Making sure the gates that need to be closed are actually closed and the ones that need to be open are actually open.
We drive down the road or have a lead vehicle going ahead of the cows – where we shut gates into fields that we don’t want the cows to go into or leave someone to guard till the cows go by.
If there are fences broken and we know calves might go through the holes when there is pressure put on them, we try to make sure those things are taken care of.
We try to have a plan - knowing how many people we need and where they each need to be.
This way of thinking about the future leads us to take action that helps us to have a positive experience in the future.
This way of thinking can have us taking care of things like we do when we are chasing cows or it can also have us taking actions so we have something even better in the future then we have now.
This looks like my dad and cattle genetics.
He looks at the bull catalogs.
He looks at all the AI catalogs.
He looks at the EPDs on all of the animals.
And he plans.
He talks to others in the industry. He finds out if they have had trouble or any issues they have seen if they used different genetics and bloodlines.
If he breeds these genetics into his current herd what will happen.
He knows the characteristics that he wants in his herd.
We like cows that are gentle.
We like cows that have lots of milk for their babies.
We like cows that we don’t have to help them when calving.
We like cattle that grow quickly.
We check the genetics to see if these characteristics are likely or not.
He plans for the future.
One big part of this is knowing what you want.
Having those characteristics in mind.
Believing that it is possible to make progress in your herd's genetics and in the future.
Knowing that you will make adjustments every year.
Knowing that there will be surprises, things that worked better than expected and things that went way worse. But none of that is the end of the world because you just adjust to the next thing.
Mistakes are not a problem because our future self can just adjust and correct for them.
So how are you thinking about your future?
Is it paralyzing you with fear?
Is it inspiring you to plan and take actions?
Does your future feel inspiring and bright? Or does it feel like you are stuck?
Here is the power in this.
YOU GET TO DECIDE YOUR FUTURE.
Yes, my friend - you actually do.
There is so much power in your mindset about the future. So, let’s decide what we want. Let’s decide that we are going to be successful at gathering the cattle in and check the corral and the gates before we go out. Let’s decide what kind of cattle we want to raise and let’s take the action to have that type of cattle.
Let’s decide the relationships we want.
Let’s decide the career and work life balance we want to have.
Then let’s start taking small steps toward that future today.
All these little steps are something your future self will thank you for later!
It will be fun.
Have a wonderful week.