When I was younger, I had a bizarre infatuation with late night talk show host Conan O’Brien. My love ran so deep that I had Conan’s face put on my birthday cake, I had Conan t-shirts and I painted a giant portrait of him ( pictured below). Taking the crazy train to the next level, I picked out an image of Conan that I wanted to get tattooed onto my hip. I plotted and planned how I was going to get this tattoo and how cool I would look with this red heads face plastered onto my body.
Years have since passed and my love for Conan has become less rabid. I am now so relieved that I didn’t get that tattoo ( only because my parent’s wouldn’t let me). I think of how awkward it would be to have this tattoo now.
Adult Jane would have been none too pleased.
Although this choice to not get the tattoo was made for me, this brought me to a thought about the decisions we make.
We are faced with many decisions throughout our day:
Decisions like:
Should I eat this entire bowl of triffle in one sitting?
Should I stick the fork in the toaster to get my poptart out?
Should I buy this $48 dollar lipgloss? (it’s sooo soooo sparkly!)
Should I get Conan O’Brien’s face tattooed onto my nether regions?
We are always asking. Should I or shouldn’t I? But, the real question is not “Should I, or shouldn’t I?”
Rather, the real question we need to be asking ourselves is this,” Will this help or hurt me down the road?” When faced with a decision we need to ask ourselves, “Will my future self thank me?, Will future Jane thank me?”
We all value feeling good and groovy in the moment (it’s part of human nature) but, sometimes it’s easy to focus on the immediate happy tingly feelings of our choices and forget the impact this may have on us down the road.
Sometimes, we even make choices that we know will be harmful to our future self, but we make the choices anyway.
But, eventually our tomorrow turns into our today and we have to live in the choices that we have made.
If we have the privilege of living a long life, our someday will become our present reality.
I find when I’m faced with a decision, putting it through the lens of “future Jane” is very helpful. It let’s me look at the long term impact of my choices down the line and evaluate my actions.
The next time you are about to make a choice, ask yourself this: Will this help or hurt future me? If the question involves a triple cheese burrito from seven eleven, chances are the answer is the latter.